If you like alphabet soup, then information technology asset management (ITAM) shouldn't be a hard concept to swallow. This methodology is just one in a parade of management acronyms -- ITIL, EAI, CobiT and ROI analysis -- that pass before the palates of busy IT managers. The accompanying Executive Report explores the ingredients of ITAM and makes the case for its IT management value.

As we all know, IT-business alignment has been at or near the top of the CIO issues list since the early 1990s. This means that no common wisdom has yet emerged on how to deal with it. As Cutter Senior Consultant John Berry puts it in a recent Cutter E-Mail Advisor, "Ah yes, like a weed, the alignment issue seems never to go away; perhaps because it is never fully resolved" [2]. Perhaps, but ignore this weed at your peril.

In recent years, the advancement and proliferation of IT have generated a surge in the purchase and application of computer-based solutions to enterprise-level problems. It is commonplace today for product vendors and CIOs to gather and exchange information and data on promising products that can increase efficiency and productivity in a cost-effective manner.

The governance process manages the lifecycle of shared resources, provides decision and issue resolution, and ensures conformance as enterprises engage themselves in maturing their architecture while integrating their businesses. The governance and conformance processes are better structured around meeting enterprise business integration goals and supporting stakeholders.

The governance process manages the lifecycle of shared resources, provides decision and issue resolution, and ensures conformance as enterprises engage themselves in maturing their architecture while integrating their businesses. The governance and conformance processes are better structured around meeting enterprise business integration goals and supporting stakeholders.

In thinking about enterprise architecture and the value it provides, one can see the focus is moving toward supporting big IT-enabled endeavors, which means providing them with the possibility of improved alignment with the existing information systems environment as well as the projects just being rolled out.

In thinking about enterprise architecture and the value it provides, one can see the focus is moving toward supporting big IT-enabled endeavors, which means providing them with the possibility of improved alignment with the existing information systems environment as well as the projects just being rolled out.

Is IT innovation important for your organization? If so, the time has come to find a way to create enough slack resources in your IT shop to buy time and brain-cycles for your employees to have the best chance to succeed at it. Sure enough, IT innovation is again a hot topic in corporate boardrooms and IT shops, and we are working hard to do our part to help you navigate it. While this issue of CBR focuses on dynamic IT capabilities, our next issue will be on the emerging topic of open innovation. In short, open innovation is the orchestration of knowledge inflows and outflows designed to speed up and improve a firm's innovation cycle (but, be patient for now, a lot more next issue.)

A burning question for IS managers is whether and how their companies can address the challenges of today's turbulent environments and build a competitive advantage. Competitive advantage in turbulent environments is largely based on undertaking change better, faster, and cheaper than the competition. Therefore, in turbulent environments, companies must rapidly change, adapt, and reconfigure themselves in order to quickly match the changing environment. Since long-term strategy is difficult in turbulent environments, the advice for managers is to institute flexible and agile companies.

The focus for this Cutter survey is "dynamic IT," meaning IT's capability for innovation, flexibility, and effectively supporting business response to turbulent, competitive conditions. We're particularly interested in how IT organizations ready themselves through the use of management and systems development practices to be able to innovate, to be flexible, and to respond to changing business conditions.

The idea for this issue of CBR came about in part as a reaction to the constant call for innovation barraging IT shops all over the globe. It is fine to suggest, as I did in one of my recent editorials, that innovation is the ticket and that you need to set up your IT shop to deliver new products, services, and value propositions. But if we are going to put our money where our mouth is, we need to follow up with some tangible guidelines about how to do it.

This survey investigated various dimensions of IT's capability to be dynamic and innovative. Of the 116 responding organizations, 11% have more than 50,000 employees, 12% have between 10,000 and 50,000 employees, 27% have between 1,000 and 10,000 employees, 26% have between 100 and 1,000 employees, and the remaining organizations have 100 or fewer employees. In terms of location, 40% are headquartered or based in North America; 26% in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; 13% in the Australia/Pacific area; 19% in Asia; and 2% in South America.

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) -- a paradigm for "design, development, deployment and management of a loosely coupled business application infrastructure." 1

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is on everybody's agenda. While almost every aspect of SOA implementation has been discussed, one area has been neglected -- data. With all the discussions about its process and service layers, there hasn't been enough focus on the "data bus" role in the SOA.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is having a significant effect on corporate computing -- including the application of BI and data warehousing. Available on-demand BI offerings today range from reporting, dashboards, and focused analytic applications (offered as licensable services) to hosted data integration services and managed data warehouses.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is having a significant effect on corporate computing -- including the application of BI and data warehousing. Available on-demand BI offerings today range from reporting, dashboards, and focused analytic applications (offered as licensable services) to hosted data integration services and managed data warehouses.

Innovation is essential to business. It can be applied to products, services, and business processes, and creates new value or marketing differentiation. The development of a creative new product or new approach -- which offers improvements over existing products or approaches -- provides competitive advantage.

The current business climate has raised the profile of innovation as a means of dealing with an increasingly complex environment. Factors of importance include:

Innovation is essential to business. It can be applied to products, services, and business processes, and creates new value or marketing differentiation. The development of a creative new product or new approach -- which offers improvements over existing products or approaches -- provides competitive advantage.

The current business climate has raised the profile of innovation as a means of dealing with an increasingly complex environment. Factors of importance include:

In late 2004, members of the Cutter Business Technology Council discussed Fellow Lynne Ellyn's assertion that "smart companies will soon borrow the best of open source practices and begin to internalize a radical new way to develop software." 1 Three years later, I'd like to reopen that conversation.

Open source software is software that can be freely used, modified, and redistributed. 1 Open source products have attracted significant interest from business decision makers who see such products as an opportunity to save money, reduce vendor lock-in, reduce the effort of customization, and so on. However, even more interesting than the products themselves is the process that created them.

A certification test can determine if people have a certain amount of knowledge on a given subject, but it can't determine if they can apply this knowledge appropriately, much less measure their judgment, communication skills, or how well they operate in a given work environment. Even in technical positions, nontechnical skills are typically more important when evaluating who is capable at their jobs.

Many people have the view that an organization can let go of commodity functions but must not let suppliers get their hands on strategic areas. Others call that nonsense and use third parties wherever they think they should. The arguments over this point generally result from inappropriate generalizations made on either side.

Many people have the view that an organization can let go of commodity functions but must not let suppliers get their hands on strategic areas. Others call that nonsense and use third parties wherever they think they should. The arguments over this point generally result from inappropriate generalizations made on either side.

There are many opinions as to the goal of negotiations and how to approach them based on experience, culture, and industry norms, as well as ideology, and in some cases, ego. This Executive Report will help you plan negotiations that focus on obtaining sustainable results through a series of planning and analysis steps.

There are many opinions as to the goal of negotiations and how to approach them based on experience, culture, and industry norms, as well as ideology, and in some cases, ego. This Executive Report will help you plan negotiations that focus on obtaining sustainable results through a series of planning and analysis steps.