Companies seek to concentrate on their value-adding processes and often consider IT infrastructure as a noncore area. Thus, a current trend in the organization of IT departments is outsourcing. When outsourcing, companies aim to reduce cost while getting a better grasp on service-level agreements (SLAs). However, IT -- especially business intelligence (BI) systems -- is becoming a key element for enabling agility in enterprise adaptation to changes in the business environment. This poses a serious challenge to traditional IT outsourcing contracts.

Companies seek to concentrate on their value-adding processes and often consider IT infrastructure as a noncore area. Thus, a current trend in the organization of IT departments is outsourcing. When outsourcing, companies aim to reduce cost while getting a better grasp on service-level agreements (SLAs). However, IT -- especially business intelligence (BI) systems -- is becoming a key element for enabling agility in enterprise adaptation to changes in the business environment. This poses a serious challenge to traditional IT outsourcing contracts.

With all of the planning rules and principles we have covered so far in this series, there is only one rule that is always be applicable: once a plan is finished and approved, it is wrong! This is the only thing I have ever guaranteed my stakeholders about a plan. That is because I have found no one prescient enough to be able accurately to predict future events.

Last summer (see "Nurturing the Hidden Architect," 6 June 2007), I wrote about the importance of avoiding a common problem with the establishment of EA programs: namely, that it disempowers some of the very people who understand and have been looking after the "important stuff" that an EA program seeks to address.

No doubt about it: open source BI continues to make inroads with organizations of all makes and sizes. However, one important question surrounding the adoption of open source BI tools is how are end-user organizations actually using them?

Advanced data visualization tools have been around for some time. They first gained a following among scientists and engineers, who used them to build models for fluid-flow analysis, aerodynamic simulation, and other complex applications involving large data sets with many cause-and-effect variables.

With so much talk about the management of innovation, we have lost sight of something more important: innovation in management. When innovative products wow us, innovators of those products receive our praise and adulation. It is a time-honored tradition as old as civilization itself. After all, every age will have its Michelangelo.

With so much talk about the management of innovation, we have lost sight of something more important: innovation in management. When innovative products wow us, innovators of those products receive our praise and adulation. It is a time-honored tradition as old as civilization itself. After all, every age will have its Michelangelo.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines concrete as "an actual, specific thing or instance." Chip and Dan Heath (in Made to Stick ) state that "even the most abstract business strategy must eventually show up in the tangible actions of human beings." Concreteness, they say, is an indispensable component of sticky idea

In my last Trends Advisor ("Is Parallel Computing the Next Big Thing?" 17 July 2008), I discussed the hardware trend toward an increasing emphasis on parallel computing.

In my last Trends Advisor ("Is Parallel Computing the Next Big Thing?" 17 July 2008), I discussed the hardware trend toward an increasing emphasis on parallel computing.

Behavioral economics has emerged as the hot subspecialty in the dismal science today. While traditional economic theory assumed people were always rational actors in their decision making, from our experience in IT investments, we know otherwise. What can behavioral economics tell us about how to avoid the pathologies that creep into IT investment decision making and destroy value creation?

Philosophers and scientists have been speculating about the operation of the human mind for at least 2,500 years. In recent years, the knowledge of how our minds actually process information has increased rapidly due to the research of neurologists, psychologists, linguists, and computer scientists.

Almost all organizations have some level of ability to see a snapshot of how their organization is faring on a regular basis. That ability allows them to keep an eye on how well the organization is meeting its objectives on a daily or sometimes even a real-time basis. These dashboards typically cover the organization's financial data at the very least and often extend into monitoring of production line outputs and related metrics.

Almost all organizations have some level of ability to see a snapshot of how their organization is faring on a regular basis. That ability allows them to keep an eye on how well the organization is meeting its objectives on a daily or sometimes even a real-time basis. These dashboards typically cover the organization's financial data at the very least and often extend into monitoring of production line outputs and related metrics.

IBM has announced it is buying business rules management systems (BRMS) vendor ILOG for Euro 215 million (approximately US $340 million). This deal is important because it gives IBM a leading BRMS it can use to add rule-based management and complex decision-processing capabilities to a range of IBM products and services.

Users are not interested in programs. If they are, it is our fault. What users want is systems that produce needed outputs with the minimum of additional input and with the maximum of integration (or the ability to integrate) with other systems with which they share data.

A strategic audit is a useful tool to help organizations identify which IT areas require increased focus, which represent potential risks, and where hidden opportunities may lie.

Hardly a day goes by that you can't pick up another publication espousing the necessity of "IT strategic alignment." The importance of this concept has grown over the years as corporations have seen the increasing role that information management plays in their business.

Innovation is a key to the competitive differentiation equation. This Executive Report presents a story that with charming acuity conveys key principles of innovation, relates the lessons to system development. 

Innovation is a key to the competitive differentiation equation, and technology factors strongly in that equation. This Executive Summary and its accompanying Executive Report present a story that with charming acuity conveys key principles of innovation, and relate the lessons to system development. 

With this issue of Cutter Benchmark Review, we return our focus to the strategic role of the IS function and to issues of innovation. We do so on the basis of the recognition that it is the norm today for the IT shop to be, or have the potential to be, a boundary-spanning function.

Like marketing, the IS function in organizations can be viewed as a "boundary spanner"1 -- a function that attempts to influence external environmental elements and processes -- since boundary spanning primarily concerns the exchange of information.2 The IS function deals with users within its home organization (or perhaps more correctly, its internal customers), and, increasingly, nowadays it also crosses organizational boundaries to interface with the enterprise’s external customers by means of dat

A survey such as the one conducted for this issue of CBR that is intended to gain insight into the strategic orientation of organizations and businesses is something that is timely and pertinent in today's complex, fast-moving, competitive environment. The subject is especially intriguing in light of the tremendous amount of focus on innovation in the business world. How does an organization's strategic orientation toward customers and product development affect its ability to innovate? How does a business both view and treat its customers as a part of its overall strategy?

This issue of CBR focuses on a very high-level topic, beginning with an evaluation of the role of the IS function within and outside of the organization. The inescapable trend is that of the IT shop increasingly being called upon to interact directly with customers and partners outside of the firm's boundaries. While the trend is clear, how to manage it and take advantage of it is much less so.