At last Windows Vista (the operating system formerly known as Longhorn) has reached beta, and Microsoft is confident that the client version will enter production by the end of 2006. However, the server (which for some reason is still called Longhorn) will not be generally available until 2007.

Whether they're driven by the need for business-IT alignment, the spread of service-oriented architectures, or other factors, enterprise architecture (EA) programs are clearly proliferating. In this month's Cutter IT Journal, you'll see how Subaru's EA effort transformed a maze of overlapping applications and unsupported technology platforms into a simple, flexible IT environment that keeps pace with changing business needs.

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the XX Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy. Being from the US state of New Hampshire, I had to root for our local competitor Bode Miller, who's from Franconia. At the Men's Combined event (downhill and slalom), he was in first place after the downhill portion of the race, clocking the fastest speed of the day at a blistering 126.8 Km/hr (79 MPH -- I don't even drive that fast). But in the slalom portion of the race, he missed a gate and was disqualified. This was to be the second of five disappointing appearances for Bode.

Ah yes, the much endorsed, much maligned business case. Before I dive into the business case for visualization, let me share some assumptions regarding business cases that will guide this discussion.

Ah yes, the much endorsed, much maligned business case. Before I dive into the business case for visualization, let me share some assumptions regarding business cases that will guide this discussion.

Ah yes, the much endorsed, much maligned business case. Before I dive into the business case for visualization, let me share some assumptions regarding business cases that will guide this discussion.

Our clients' business executives often ask us to tell them the appropriate level of IT spending compared to the company's total revenues. Some companies spend 2% of revenue, others spend 8% or 10% or even more. Of course, the industry in which the company operates affects this; probably financial services firms, for example, spend a higher proportion of revenue than, say, manufacturing firms. But maybe not.

It seems that enterprise architecture (EA) is finally becoming mainstream. Opinions on what is driving this trend are as varied as the opinions on EA itself, ranging from requirements on government agencies to IT complexity and the new economy to requirements for IT/business alignment and service-oriented architecture (SOA). Although we could debate which of these factors are at work, there is little doubt that EA programs are proliferating.

Over the years, I've had the pleasure of working in a range of IT organizations around the world, and I've often worked with, or at least reviewed, many of the enterprise architecture (EA) teams within those organizations. In all cases, the EA team is staffed with some of the best and brightest within IT, all of whom have the organization's best interests at heart.

In today's turbulent economy, change is the only thing we can be sure about. It is primarily the ever-changing business and technical environment and increasing pressure to shorten the time of just about everything we do in business that has made the agile approaches to common management practices popular.

As consultant-educators, we need to be able to quickly grasp an organization's architecture at different levels of abstraction. We have created a new framework, the Extreme Architecture Framework (XAF), in order to do just that. The XAF presents a unified view of human activity and software systems from the perspectives of business, information, and technology. The unified view strikes a balance between architectural perfection and the chaos that inevitably ensues when there is no architecture.