Organizations are bursting with information and knowledge these days. For each, the challenge is to harness all this know-how and make it available to everyone throughout the organization. Today, there are myriad learning gems available for the taking; coupled with the Internet, the resources are boundless.

IT offers a major source of competitive advantage in almost all industries. Companies rely on technology to reduce internal inefficiencies, connect to external partners (suppliers, clients, and distributors), and implement business models that sometimes transform the rules of the game in their market space.

IT offers a major source of competitive advantage in almost all industries. Companies rely on technology to reduce internal inefficiencies, connect to external partners (suppliers, clients, and distributors), and implement business models that sometimes transform the rules of the game in their market space.

Editor's Note: This report addresses component and application architectures in detail and builds on the discussion covered in the author's previously published report, "Making Components Work" (see Cutter Consortium Distributed Enterprise Architecture Executive Report, Vol. 4, No. 9).

The accompanying Executive Report details two of the key architectures necessary for efficient and productive application development: component architecture and application architecture.1

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

-- Elphonse KarrLes Guê Pes, 1849

Those who cannot learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

-- George SantayanaThe Life of Reason, 1905

One of these things is not like the others.

-- Big BirdSesame Street

The Object Management Group (OMG) began developing CORBA in 1989. The idea was that organizations would be moving to object and component technologies and that everyone would be better off if they had a common, open standard to use when they wanted to link together objects or components on different platforms.

It's no secret that insurance companies are big IT spenders. Larger insurers have been consistently spending hundreds of millions of dollars per year on software alone. For some time, insurers have been focusing the vast majority of their technology spending in two areas: computing infrastructure and business process automation.

Competitive intelligence (CI) is the purposeful and coordinated monitoring of your competitor(s), wherever and whomever they may be, within a specific marketplace. Your competitors are those firms that you consider rivals and with whom you compete for market share. CI also involves determining what your rivals are planning to do before they do it.

Competitive intelligence (CI) is the purposeful and coordinated monitoring of your competitor(s), wherever and whomever they may be, within a specific marketplace. Your competitors are those firms that you consider rivals and with whom you compete for market share. CI also involves determining what your rivals are planning to do before they do it.

If asked, just about any manager today could define competitive intelligence (CI). You should expect to hear responses ranging from "stealing business secrets" and "industrial espionage" coming from the truly deluded to a more accurate "collection and analysis of competitor behavior and plans" from those better informed.

If asked, just about any manager today could define competitive intelligence (CI). You should expect to hear responses ranging from "stealing business secrets" and "industrial espionage" coming from the truly deluded to a more accurate "collection and analysis of competitor behavior and plans" from those better informed.

The Internet continues to change the role that software plays in the business world, fundamentally and radically. Software no longer simply supports back offices and home entertainment; instead, software has become the lifeblood of our businesses and has become deeply entwined into our lives.

The Internet continues to change the role that software plays in the business world, fundamentally and radically. Software no longer simply supports back offices and home entertainment; instead, software has become the lifeblood of our businesses and has become deeply entwined into our lives.

In the first five months of 2001, leading antivirus vendors detected more viruses than they had in the entire previous year. This development led media outlets such as ZDNet to refer to 2001 as the "Year of the Virus." Not only were more viruses detected, but according to MessageLabs SkyScan virus-scanning service, the ratio of infected e-mail messages to total e-mail messages increased from roughly 1:1,500 to 1:1,000 [4].

In the first five months of 2001, leading antivirus vendors detected more viruses than they had in the entire previous year. This development led media outlets such as ZDNet to refer to 2001 as the "Year of the Virus." Not only were more viruses detected, but according to MessageLabs SkyScan virus-scanning service, the ratio of infected e-mail messages to total e-mail messages increased from roughly 1:1,500 to 1:1,000 [4].

Agile project management creates an opportunity for a business to comanage a project with its IT department. This Executive Report explains how comanagement works and how to maximize the project's return on investment (ROI). After all, ROI is the only important measure of success in agile project management.

The accompanying Executive Report presents the application of empirical process control to the practice of project management. Traditional project management lays out a plan and ensures that the activities conform to the plan.

Software estimation has been a tough beast to control ever since the early days of programming. Some may say that we have succumbed to the dragon. During the 1980s and 1990s, there were many infamous stories about software projects running out of control and ultimately being abandoned, due to significant cost and time overruns [1].