A year ago I argued in an Advisor that sourcing was about to get more strategic (see "Sourcing Is Getting More Strategic," 7 March 2007). That is, going forward, organizations would source more strategic business processes other than just IT service functions. I have concluded that even this definition is too limiting. Strategic sourcing can mean the sourcing of such functions as R&D, product development, or supply chain, but really should mean far more.

A year ago I argued in an Advisor that sourcing was about to get more strategic (see "Sourcing Is Getting More Strategic," 7 March 2007). That is, going forward, organizations would source more strategic business processes other than just IT service functions. I have concluded that even this definition is too limiting. Strategic sourcing can mean the sourcing of such functions as R&D, product development, or supply chain, but really should mean far more.

We've gotten very interested in the issues that led to project development success or failure. A simple Google search on "why do projects fail" leads to many hundreds of sites that offer advice about what leads to failure and what to do about it. Presumably, this leads to project success.

Last September, I discussed the latest Web 2.0-related development to make its way into the corporate world: mashups, which (as defined by Wikipedia) are Web applications that can combine data from more than one source into an "integrated experience." The aim of using mashups is similar to other Web

Enterprise IT leaders who seek customer value from a master data management (MDM) project [1] can find themselves in a Catch 22. They can't put all development on hold while they wait for a full enterprise data model to be developed and approved, yet they know anything that is developed in the interim will be subject to a costly, lengthy, and, quite possibly, ugly remediation when the new standard is available.

A debate is going on as to what actually constitutes "business performance management" and how it differs from so-called "traditional" BI. Because a number of readers have contacted me regarding this subject, I've decided to make it the topic of this week's Advisor.

So much emphasis has been placed on negotiation in outsourcing contracts that an inexperienced person could believe it is the pinnacle of the outsourcing lifecycle and involves the greatest amount of work and the greatest risk of signing a bad contract. If it does become the pinnacle, then something has gone seriously wrong in an earlier stage.1

As more organizations face transitions to agile methods and those transitions involve larger segments of those organizations, the need for transition or transformation strategies increases.

In my last Trends Advisor (see "What Was Microsoft Thinking?" 6 March 2008), I took Microsoft to task for its latest set of mainline products, particularly Word 2007.

In my last Trends Advisor (see "What Was Microsoft Thinking?" 6 March 2008), I took Microsoft to task for its latest set of mainline products, particularly Word 2007.

In my last Trends Advisor (see "What Was Microsoft Thinking?" 6 March 2008), I took Microsoft to task for its latest set of mainline products, particularly Word 2007.

As always, I'm riding a bunch of hobby horses, but none so often as the difference I think I see between innovation as it relates to particular products, services, or ideas, and innovation as it relates to the great changes that are shuffling their feet in the wings, ready to come on stage and change our lives.

As always, I'm riding a bunch of hobby horses, but none so often as the difference I think I see between innovation as it relates to particular products, services, or ideas, and innovation as it relates to the great changes that are shuffling their feet in the wings, ready to come on stage and change our lives.

Business-IT alignment is often approached as a discrete goal to be achieved in a specific moment in time, as opposed to a continuous organizational process. This discrete one-off perspective creates the illusion that, if properly managed, an alignment initiative will lead to the desired final state of having the IT system fully aligned with the business needs.

It is clear that the EA landscape is changing. For many practitioners, EA has transformed over the past few years from a set of strategic principles (originated at the ivory towers) to become an essential set of business-driven blueprints (used at the ground level) for their enterprise solutions.

In the December 2007 Cutter IT Journal covering Enterprise 2.0, I took the contrarian view that adding collaboration computing capabilities to the business environment is not sufficient to define a next generation of the enterprise (see "Attributes of the Next-Generation Enterprise"). Unlike the other authors, I described a number of attributes of the enterprise that will need to change.

What if someone established a blog whose sole purpose was to engage disgruntled consumers in a running commentary about how lousy your company's customer service is and to tell people to "do themselves a favor" and avoid buying, banking, renting, etc., from your business? Or what about a video on YouTube that slams your company's product?

What if someone established a blog whose sole purpose was to engage disgruntled consumers in a running commentary about how lousy your company's customer service is and to tell people to "do themselves a favor" and avoid buying, banking, renting, etc., from your business? Or what about a video on YouTube that slams your company's product?

As Tony Paoni of Diamond Consulting likes to remind his listeners, the new networked economy is not just the old industrial economy with a mess of wires hanging off it. Even mass-produced consumer products like detergent, bread, and soft drinks, or traditional consumer durables like automobiles, are changing.

In this Executive Update, Cutter Consortium Fellow Steve Andriole offers his expert advice as to the type of business technology education today's undergraduates should be receiving. These students will be your future IT employees. What do you think these students should be learning from their coursework? Read on to see whether you agree with his recommendations.

While CORBA has less than a handful of program language bindings, Web services clients can be a JavaServer Page, servlet, or Java application or an executable written in languages such as C++, Perl, Visual Basic, JavaScript, and so on -- it's a truly ubiquitous protocol.

In January 2008, Cutter Consortium conducted a survey of 101 end-user organizations regarding their use of business performance management practices. The goal was to determine the degree to which companies are implementing business performance management techniques and technologies.

With any new approach, there will be those who think it's the best thing since sliced bread, those who think it's just a fad, and those who simply don't care. When it comes to agile project management, however, everyone should be paying attention, because it really does matter. It's not just a management fad; it's a wake-up call for an industry that has an awful track record and is in need of serious help.

The controversy over Net neutrality raised its head again when the Associated Press reported in October 2007 that Comcast was throttling peer-to-peer (P2P) Internet traffic. Proponents of Net neutrality saw it as the smoking gun that definitively proves the need for Net neutrality legislation. The debate and the various calls for legislated remedies have introduced an air of uncertainty in the marketplace.

The controversy over Net neutrality raised its head again when the Associated Press reported in October 2007 that Comcast was throttling peer-to-peer (P2P) Internet traffic. Proponents of Net neutrality saw it as the smoking gun that definitively proves the need for Net neutrality legislation. The debate and the various calls for legislated remedies have introduced an air of uncertainty in the marketplace.