Will there ever emerge a total and complete solution to the scourge of e-mail spam? The open, ubiquitous spirit of e-mail is under true assault by the morons and nitwits who continue to pound businesses and residences with unwanted, unsolicited messages. Where the force of law continues to fail in helping to solve the problem means the ingenuity of technology must save us from this pestilence. One technological answer, amidst a standards war, is slow to adopt.

Will there ever emerge a total and complete solution to the scourge of e-mail spam? The open, ubiquitous spirit of e-mail is under true assault by the morons and nitwits who continue to pound businesses and residences with unwanted, unsolicited messages. Where the force of law continues to fail in helping to solve the problem means the ingenuity of technology must save us from this pestilence. One technological answer, amidst a standards war, is slow to adopt.

In my last Advisor (see " Collaborative Leadership Basics, Part 1: Why Is Collaborative Leadership Required for Agile Environments?" 6 July 2006), I began this series by offering some thoughts about why collaborative leadership is necessary for agile environments.

"Can-do thinking makes risk management impossible. Since acknowledging real risk is defeatism, the risk management function in a can-do organization is restricted to dealing with those smallish risks that can be mitigated by quick action. That means you confront all the risks except the ones that really matter." (Tom DeMarco, Why Does Software Cost So Much? .)

"Can-do thinking makes risk management impossible. Since acknowledging real risk is defeatism, the risk management function in a can-do organization is restricted to dealing with those smallish risks that can be mitigated by quick action. That means you confront all the risks except the ones that really matter." (Tom DeMarco, Why Does Software Cost So Much? .)

Conducting audits of outsourcing deals is not something every organization focuses on. There are usually so many operational fires to be put out that review and compliance processes can easily be overlooked. Imagine, however, if you never reviewed your staff: they may become disinterested and unmotivated, and (worst of all) you may not know what they are actually doing! Outsourcing arrangements are no different.

Conducting audits of outsourcing deals is not something every organization focuses on. There are usually so many operational fires to be put out that review and compliance processes can easily be overlooked. Imagine, however, if you never reviewed your staff: they may become disinterested and unmotivated, and (worst of all) you may not know what they are actually doing! Outsourcing arrangements are no different.

Strategic work on EA should not be confused with portfolio and project planning. IT strategy is an important input to the project portfolio (and ultimately budget) planning process, but it is not the only one. Any IT organization will have to run both strategically aligned projects as well as projects that respond to the current business units' woes and pains. Confusing the two might push a strategic EA team into too low a level of detail.

The word "service" crops up all over the information technology world. There's service-oriented architecture, managing IT like a business (meaning a service business), the "service catalog" coming out of the ITIL community, service-level agreements (SLAs), and so forth.

This week, I thought I'd comment on some of the important recent developments that have taken place in the data warehousing extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) tools market.

Oracle finally released the latest version of its Oracle Warehouse Builder ETL toolset (version 10G, release 2). This is the eighth release of the product since Oracle started marketing it in 2000.

This week, I thought I'd comment on some of the important recent developments that have taken place in the data warehousing extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) tools market.

Oracle finally released the latest version of its Oracle Warehouse Builder ETL toolset (version 10G, release 2). This is the eighth release of the product since Oracle started marketing it in 2000.

As the classic "dog days" of summer approach in the Northern Hemisphere, there is a temptation to take a break -- to draw a deep breath and forget about one's individual and organizational worries for a little while. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, the price of organizational freedom is eternal vigilance.

Candor is an interesting thing. It frees us on the one hand but constrains us on the other -- and so it is with the people in our technology lives. Sometimes we love them, sometimes we hate them. Sometimes they perform well, sometimes they perform poorly. How candid are we about the technology professionals we rely upon so much? How candid are we about the executive teams that depend on them and direct their efforts?

The accompanying Executive Report focuses on the human factor in the business technology relationship. After asking how well you really know the people in your organization, the report takes a look at the important traits -- including the three types of knowledge -- that employees should have and how you should go about finding these types of people.

Thomas C. Schelling was awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in economics, 1 but his most famous work was not strictly in that field; it was in game theory. In his 1960 landmark book The Strategy of Conflict [2], Schelling explains how you can increase your bargaining power by voluntarily binding yourself (e.g., "I can't pay you more for this project because I informed the board that I would resign if I did").

The Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) is incomplete and evolving. However, it has reached a level of detail and prevalence within the US federal government that agencies are now developing or honing FEA-based enterprise architecture programs, and system development projects include FEA considerations.

The Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) is incomplete and evolving. However, it has reached a level of detail and prevalence within the US federal government that agencies are now developing or honing FEA-based enterprise architecture programs, and system development projects now include FEA considerations.

This is the second Executive Update in a series of three that examines enterprise architecture (EA) -- specifically, its organization and programs, how it provides governance, and the value it brings to companies. The series is based on data from a recent Cutter Consortium survey.

This is the second Executive Update in a series of three that examines enterprise architecture (EA) -- specifically, its organization and programs, how it provides governance, and the value it brings to companies. The series is based on data from a recent Cutter Consortium survey.

Budgets serve an a priori planning and communication role as well as a control and monitory a posteriori role. I hope that you will find this issue of CBR packed with useful data that helps you prepare your own IT budget (planning role) and survey-based ammunition that helps you back up your decisions with evidence (communication role). As always, the insight and guidelines brought to bear by our contributors should help you refine your own thinking about the appropriate course of action in your own organization.

The budgeting process is of critical importance to IT and business professionals in our subscriber base; it is perhaps even more important nowadays as we begin to see a recovery in IT spending and, increasingly, a shifting of priorities away from a narrow focus on cost cutting and efficiency. It is within this context that we at Cutter Benchmark Review decided to take stock of current budget trends and priorities. We wanted to do so at a time of year when we could get good data (i.e., your organization has begun to think about its next budget and the priorities it wants to pursue), provide useful results (i.e., this issue comes out before you have closed your cycle), and offer practical guidance.

The budgeting process is of critical importance to IT and business professionals in our subscriber base; it is perhaps even more important nowadays as we begin to see a recovery in IT spending and, increasingly, a shifting of priorities away from a narrow focus on cost cutting and efficiency. It is within this context that we at Cutter Benchmark Review decided to take stock of current budget trends and priorities. We wanted to do so at a time of year when we could get good data (i.e., your organization has begun to think about its next budget and the priorities it wants to pursue), provide useful results (i.e., this issue comes out before you have closed your cycle), and offer practical guidance.

The budgeting process is of critical importance to IT and business professionals in our subscriber base; it is perhaps even more important nowadays as we begin to see a recovery in IT spending and, increasingly, a shifting of priorities away from a narrow focus on cost cutting and efficiency. It is within this context that we at <em>Cutter Benchmark Review</em> decided to take stock of current budget trends and priorities. We wanted to do so at a time of year when we could get good data (i.e., your organization has begun to think about its next budget and the priorities it wants to pursue), provide useful results (i.e., this issue comes out before you have closed your cycle), and offer practical guidance.

The budgeting process is of critical importance to IT and business professionals in our subscriber base; it is perhaps even more important nowadays as we begin to see a recovery in IT spending and, increasingly, a shifting of priorities away from a narrow focus on cost cutting and efficiency. It is within this context that we at Cutter Benchmark Review decided to take stock of current budget trends and priorities. We wanted to do so at a time of year when we could get good data (i.e., your organization has begun to think about its next budget and the priorities it wants to pursue), provide useful results (i.e., this issue comes out before you have closed your cycle), and offer practical guidance.

Enterprise systems (ES) are being widely adopted by organizations in all types of industry and geographical locations, and there now exists considerable research on the impact of ES implementations on these organizations [6, 7]. The promoted strategic advantage of an ES is that it can integrate business functions into a single system with a shared database, allowing organizations to develop a homogenous enterprise-wide information systems (IS) infrastructure.