Last week, an article titled, "Big Spenders Reveal they know little about the value of IT Assets," appeared in the Financial Times (1 October 2007). The article reported on research conducted by MicroFocus, UK provider of enterprise application management systems. The essence of the findings (covering 250 firms, half in the US and half in Europe):

Most CIOs (and half of CFOs) do not quantify the impact of IT investments on the company

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.

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.

An agile requirements strategy is one where there is no wasted effort. All the effort you spend on requirements (meeting, interviewing, modeling, reviewing, prototyping, documenting, testing -- everything) brings you closer to being able to meet your project's goals. But not all projects have the same potential for agility.

The majority of organizations using -- or planning to use -- on-demand BI and data warehousing solutions require that the application/service be customized to support their data analysis and data management needs.

The majority of organizations using -- or planning to use -- on-demand BI and data warehousing solutions require that the application/service be customized to support their data analysis and data management needs.

Recently, Nokia purchased an American company named NavTeq for US $8 billion and some change. Like most technology acquisitions, the people on the business channel had a little trouble explaining what all the money was about and why one of the stock market's darlings, Garmin, had suddenly taken a hit.

Recently, Nokia purchased an American company named NavTeq for US $8 billion and some change. Like most technology acquisitions, the people on the business channel had a little trouble explaining what all the money was about and why one of the stock market's darlings, Garmin, had suddenly taken a hit.

Last month (see "The Roots of Agile, Part 1," 6 September 2007), we broadened the concept of agile software development by considering the underlying factors that make any development process more agile, whether it is a software development process that can take advantage of certain special characteristics of the software medium or the development of a non-software product for which conventional agile software techniques would not apply.

In my last Advisor, "ITSM and SOA Part 1: Coincidence?" (26 September 2007), I discussed ITSM and its service management processes. Now let's look to see how or if they really apply to SOA. To do this, we'll start by examining the service lifecycle and some of the challenges that face successful SOA adoption.

There is new interest in an old standard to improve IT management performance. The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is well known in name, if not as much in usage. While we hoist our glasses in recognition of the noble intentions of organizations that seek an internal transformation through ITIL, bountiful good means bountiful change. Some organizations might lose the institutional endurance to see through a multi-year ITIL implementation effort when they comprehend the implications of this fact.

The latest Web 2.0-related developments to move into the corporate world are mashups.

For some time now, Oracle has offered what it calls "Information Appliance Foundations," which are reference configurations that specify a recommended database, server, and storage mix for a customer's data warehousing requirements. These specifications, however, do not actually bundle the various software and hardware. Thus, they are not a data-warehousing appliance, per se.

Perhaps one of the greatest paradoxes in management is the explicit belief that workforce quality is the driver of enterprise success while evidence from day-to-day practices shows otherwise. Some CEOs spout the virtues of their employees, yet their organizations spend little time exploring the complex and interdependent forces that drive improvements in workforce performance, which contribute directly to success in innovation, customer relationships, and financial performance.

Organizations looking for a real source of potential competitive advantage cannot overlook the possibilities in human capital management (HCM). HCM is designed to reconcile two immutable facts: (1) labor is viewed as an expense and a drag on financial statements; and (2) enlightened managers intuitively believe that labor is an asset worth managing for measurably greater value.

Web 2.0 tools and technologies -- like wikis, blogs, podcasts, mashups, folksonomies, RSS filters, social networks, virtual worlds, and crowdsourcing -- offer new opportunities for corporate productivity and management. But how do you know which ones to pilot? How do you know what to assess?

In this Executive Report, I explore data architecture in detail, putting it into the context of your overall IT architecture strategy and describing the critical aspects that should be addressed by effective data architecture. My primary goal is to make you aware of, and understand the complexities of, the issues that your data architecture must address.

In the accompanying Executive Report , I explore data architecture in detail, putting it into the context of your overall IT architecture strategy and describing the critical aspects that should be addressed by effective data architecture.

This Executive Update presents an approach in conducting an application architecture assessment in a software industry. As business grows, there is an ever-increasing demand from the enterprise applications to meet more and more automated business features with an increased user base. And as an enterprise application scenario becomes more complex, there is pressure to meet the same service-level agreements in order to get an expected quality out of the applications.

This month's CBR is particularly important because what we have on our hands may be shaping up as a big crisis that, to be successfully addressed, requires joint efforts from different communities that seldom interact. I am not going to use cheesy terms such as "a perfect storm," but what we can see is, on the one hand, dropping enrollments in computer science degrees and increasingly limited number of mainframe skills being developed in universities; while on the other hand, mainframes continue to run many of the large mission-critical software applications of modern organizations. On the "third hand" (or the underhand as the famous blues song goes) is the lack of awareness and planning for the impending mass retirement of the baby boomers who hold the great majority of mainframe skills and knowledge today.

IT offshoring is demonstrating phenomenal growth this century. Increasingly, it is seen as a necessity rather than an option. All executives need to explore IT offshoring; competitors' use, or perceived use, makes evaluation inevitable. Even IT organizations that choose not to go the offshore route may be put into the position of needing to convince their senior management that they have carefully considered this option and explain why it's not being used. Those who do choose to offshore IT must decide how they want to work with an offshore provider.

"Oh no," you think, "another article on offshoring!" It's true, and having been involved in offshoring activities for over 10 years, I have certainly read enough of them myself! So what sparked my interest, and why did I choose to devote some of my time to this topic?

The idea for this issue came about while we reflected on the impending global shortage of IT skills. With outsourcing and, even more, offshoring being considered by many as a silver-bullet solution for organizations' unmet IT needs, it should come as no surprise that we at CBR would take a hard look at it.

This survey investigated the extent to which organizations use offshore resources and their experiences and challenges with offshoring. Of the 129 responding organizations, 13% have more than 50,000 employees; 13% have between 5,000 and 50,000 employees; 30% have between 500 and 5,000 employees; 21% have between 50 and 500 employees; and the remaining organizations have 50 or fewer employees.