Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa. Easter, Independence Day, Halloween. Pick the event; it comes but once a year. For each of these events, you can anticipate certain activities and behaviors. You can anticipate certain risks. Surprisingly enough, we seem surprised as similar risks happen to us year after year.

Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa. Easter, Independence Day, Halloween. Pick the event; it comes but once a year. For each of these events, you can anticipate certain activities and behaviors. You can anticipate certain risks. Surprisingly enough, we seem surprised as similar risks happen to us year after year.

Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa. Easter, Independence Day, Halloween. Pick the event; it comes but once a year. For each of these events, you can anticipate certain activities and behaviors. You can anticipate certain risks. Surprisingly enough, we seem surprised as similar risks happen to us year after year.

As business architecture initiatives continue to take hold, executives are seeking to clarify the role of the business architect. It is important to understand the diversity of roles within core and virtual business architecture teams. Defining these roles will help ensure the successful deployment of business architecture initiatives.

While it is obvious that firms exist to serve customers, it is not so obvious why business and IT strategy often does not start nor end with the customer. Over and over, I have worked with organizations that, while they genuflect before the customer altar, show up in church only once a year.

In a recent Cutter survey on offshoring, turnover in offshore staff was identified as a challenge by 30% of the respondents [1]. And, indeed, it is a subject that has received considerable attention in the press over the last year. According to an article in Information Age earlier this year, among the challenges that offshore service companies in India face is "staff turnover averaging at 15-20% annually in software development and at anything between 30% to 140% in business process outsourcing" [2].

In a recent Cutter survey on offshoring, turnover in offshore staff was identified as a challenge by 30% of the respondents [1]. And, indeed, it is a subject that has received considerable attention in the press over the last year. According to an article in Information Age earlier this year, among the challenges that offshore service companies in India face is "staff turnover averaging at 15-20% annually in software development and at anything between 30% to 140% in business process outsourcing" [2].

To multisource or not to multisource? This is a question that will grow in importance as the size of sourcing and the varieties of processes sourced marches upward. In true, two-handed fashion -- on the one hand, on the other hand -- let's consider multisourcing's value first, then some of its risks.

IBM's latest announcement that it plans to buy BI vendor Cognos, Inc. for approximately US $5 billion continues efforts by the major enterprise players to bolster their positions in the lucrative market for BI and analytics through strategic acquisitions.

IBM's latest announcement that it plans to buy BI vendor Cognos, Inc. for approximately US $5 billion continues efforts by the major enterprise players to bolster their positions in the lucrative market for BI and analytics through strategic acquisitions.

One of the strengths of the US economy is the diversification of industries along with free markets that function well enough, if not always at 100% efficiency. The variety of products produced, ranging from branded consumer goods to energy resources, is truly impressive. Often Americans take for granted the scope of the US economy.

One of the strengths of the US economy is the diversification of industries along with free markets that function well enough, if not always at 100% efficiency. The variety of products produced, ranging from branded consumer goods to energy resources, is truly impressive. Often Americans take for granted the scope of the US economy.

One of the strengths of the US economy is the diversification of industries along with free markets that function well enough, if not always at 100% efficiency. The variety of products produced, ranging from branded consumer goods to energy resources, is truly impressive. Often Americans take for granted the scope of the US economy.

collaboration = innovation

collaboration = innovation

Software development is about building abstractions, right? We try to understand the customers and build abstract domain models out of their concepts and ideas; out of that we build new abstractions named code, an abstract virtual machine interprets this code, and during the interpretation it uses another abstraction -- the database schema -- to store the information, and so on.

It was 1998 and the company I worked for at the time was running a series of workshops for CIOs. I was facilitating a breakout session on communications and one of the CIOs said, "You know, what I'd really like to have is a dashboard of key IT performance measures that senior management could refer to at any time," and I wrote "CIO dashboard" on the flip chart.

Any business intelligence strategy should be business goals-aligned in order to ensure that the BI roadmap meets the client's business requirements as closely as possible. A business goals-aligned BI strategy allows the BI infrastructure and other BI related resources to be optimally utilized toward achieving core business goals. This will ensure that the business users are able to quantitatively relate the BI initiatives to their business goals, thus achieving higher acceptance rates for both the IT and business groups.

It is generally accepted that everything changes. Anything that exists, that we know of, is constantly in flux -- transforming, moving, expanding, contracting, yielding, and morphing into the next thing.

It is generally accepted that everything changes. Anything that exists, that we know of, is constantly in flux -- transforming, moving, expanding, contracting, yielding, and morphing into the next thing.

Despite some of the rhetoric we hear, agile development is not a religion. It is a methodology for identifying and building the right application to meet a business need. It involves close interaction between the business client(s) and the developers from the outset, small teams, colocation in a "bullpen" setting, frequent builds or iterations ("Did we get this part right?"), high trust and openness among members, and very high work involvement.

"For any business function, one key sign of having 'arrived' is the pressure to 'benchmark,'" according to Michael Mainelli, the Mercers' School Memorial Professor of Commerce at Gresham College [5]. Why then does Rich Karlgaard, publisher of Forbes, claim that "a flaw common to business and rampant in government is the failure to benchmark" [4].

"For any business function, one key sign of having 'arrived' is the pressure to 'benchmark,'" according to Michael Mainelli, the Mercers' School Memorial Professor of Commerce at Gresham College [5]. Why then does Rich Karlgaard, publisher of Forbes, claim that "a flaw common to business and rampant in government is the failure to benchmark" [4].

Over the past three years, Cutter Consortium has been charting the growth of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market by conducting a series of annual surveys that was the first to discover widespread interest and adoption of SaaS solutions among organizations of all sizes.

Over the past three years, Cutter Consortium has been charting the growth of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market by conducting a series of annual surveys that was the first to discover widespread interest and adoption of SaaS solutions among organizations of all sizes.