As the world slowly sinks into a recession and companies lay off employees to reduce costs, IT organizations are going to be under increased pressure to find ways of doing more with less. Throughout the 1990s, the installation and use of computer systems managed to improve the productivity of organizations by some 2.5% a year. At the same time, however, most of those who work in IT understand that companies haven't begun to wring all of the productivity they can out of recently installed systems.

This article is based on a Cutter Consortium survey on XML-related data conducted in the second quarter of 2001.

There's no shortage of XML hype these days, but it's nevertheless a very new standard. In most cases, when people talk about XML, they are assuming it can do things that are well beyond the basic XML standard issued by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). I've argued that there are really four issues to consider:

In the last article, I focused on core XML updates DOM and Schema. Here, I want to focus on broader architectural issues. I've already discussed the fact that XML can serve two functions: it can pass text between human users or pass data between software applications. When XML functions in the second mode, it starts to function as a middleware system. Before it can do this, however, it must be extended in a number of ways.

In this article, I'll focus on XML languages. One key to understanding the value of XML is recognizing that XML is a metalanguage -- it allows the creation of tailored languages that describe data that can be passed from one user or application to another. In essence, anyone can create an XML language simply by agreeing to use a given set of XML tags in a consistent manner.

Here, I will briefly consider four XML business process initiatives. They include: IBM's Web Services Flow Language (WSFL), Microsoft's BizTalk with its Orchestration Designer and XLANG, the Business Process Management Initiative's Business Process Management Language (BPML) schema, and the business process initiative sponsored by e-business XML. All four of these initiatives are built on top of the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and extend WSDL so that more precise information about business processes can be exchanged between partners.

This report is divided into three sections. The first section provides an overview of the history of clicks and mortar strategies. The second details two in-depth case studies: Dell Computer and Charles Schwab. The third section discusses developing a clicks and mortar strategy, including the role of culture and the strategy formulation process.

When the Internet emerged as a business concept in the mid-1990s, it provided established businesses with three basic choices: ignore the Internet and hope it goes away; launch standalone Internet businesses; or integrate the Internet into existing business models, possibly modifying these business models in the process (otherwise known as a clicks and mortar approach).

Music to any company's ears is the promise to help it realize its goals and enable it to face the future with confidence. Taking that a step further, for the shareholder, this translates into improved share price and shareholder value.

There are lots of steps we're all taking to succeed in the 21st century. Now that the fear of a worldwide meltdown due to Y2K noncompliance is well behind us, we can turn to supply chain connectivity, customer relationship management, and business intelligence (BI).

Executive Summary

Modeling is an important part of any software process. Prescriptive software processes such as the Rational Unified Process (RUP) [17] include modeling activities: three of the six core process disciplines (formerly called workflows) focus on modeling, and the Enterprise Unified Process (EUP) [7] introduces a fourth modeling-oriented workflow called Infrastructure Management.

Modeling is an important part of any software process. Yes, even Extreme Programming (XP), includes modeling techniques. Contrary to what XP's detractors will tell you, XP does not abandon modeling; instead, it minimizes modeling efforts by taking a test-first approach to design in which you develop your tests before you develop your code.

In the last Executive Update, I reported that Cutter Consortium recently conducted a survey of more than 170 companies from around the world.1 In this Update, I'll continue to draw from this survey data to consider company attitudes toward the Object Management Group's (OMG) services.

"The business plans we're developing now will need a big increase in responsiveness from the IT group."

I was sitting in the CEO's office in a midsized brokerage in New York City; the CEO had just said that IT productivity was crucial for his company's future.

"How big is 'big'?" I asked.

"Tenfold," said the CEO.

Few people would quibble with the benefits and opportunities awaiting companies that build, nurture, and maintain strong relationships with their customers.

The benefits awaiting companies that build and maintain strong customer relationships are significant. They include greater customer loyalty, higher retention rates, lower acquisition costs, and expanded opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell products and services.

British Petroleum (BP -- London, UK) has been judged Europe's top knowledge-based enterprise. The 2001 European awards were given as a result of a benchmarking survey and study conducted by the Know Network.

The immortal words "The Web changes everything" are never more appropriately applied than in the present era of knowledge-, content-, and business intelligence (BI)-based portal and Web services for globalization. In Part I of this series, we talk about why and how nearly all US companies are affected by, and have substantial new opportunities in, global markets.