Most companies today demonstrate a considerable gap between the goals of IT and those of the business -- and I believe the gap is growing. For example, the executive team of one of our clients hired us to solve its IT governance crisis. Another client is struggling because its business units are acting at cross purposes with its IT service units.

Cutter Consortium: We understand you've been working with a client on an integration project. Can you describe it?

In every facet of life the question of who you can trust surfaces, though the answer often eludes us. In the information security game, we try to create mechanisms to help us answer this question, and our reputation as well as professional pride are tied up with getting it right. But is that possible?

Microsoft's .NET is many things. It is not a product or even just a marketing campaign; it is an all-encompassing vision of a future Internet and the new ways of working and living that the new Internet will make possible. This vision sees a new Web, one that connects people to services and information everywhere and makes collaboration and sharing information much easier.

Microsoft's .NET is not a product or even just a marketing campaign; it is an all-encompassing vision of a future Internet and the new ways of working and living that the new Internet will make possible. This vision sees a new Web, one that connects people to services and information everywhere and makes collaboration and sharing information much easier.

Sustainable competitive advantage usually results from a company learning how to create its product or service more efficiently than its competitors or charging a premium because the company's product is widely believed to be superior. Top managers seek to develop strategies that will provide their companies with a secure competitive advantage.

Sustainable competitive advantage usually results from a company learning how to create its product or service more efficiently than its competitors or charging a premium because the company's product is widely believed to be superior. Top managers seek to develop strategies that will provide their companies with a secure competitive advantage.

In this Executive Update, one in a series on Extensible Markup Language (XML), we'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.

It's a great time to be a technologist. Over the last few decades (and with no end in sight), there's been stunning progress in any number of information technologies. Communications bandwidth and networks are expanding, seemingly without limit. Databases capable of storing ever-increasing amounts of data in evermore complicated ways are being developed.

If information technologies are the engines of the Information Age, data is the fuel. Unfortunately, the fuel -- specifically the quality of the fuel, has received far less attention than the engines. Most people, when they think about it for even a few minutes, intuitively realize that the quality of the data is lagging far behind the technologies.

Meeting the challenges of today's business world essentially requires reinventing a company's approach to conducting business. To do this, companies must focus on increased collaboration between people and organizational entities -- that is,people-centric knowledge management.

Cutter Consortium continues to survey companies about their customer relationship management (CRM) practices. In this Executive Update, we discuss findings on a number of CRM issues, including:

Cutter Consortium continues to survey companies about their customer relationship management (CRM) practices. In this Executive Update, we discuss findings on a number of CRM issues, including:

Integrating technology is a complex proposition. Integrating business is even more complicated. If it were only the technology, figuring out how to interface diverse hardware and software would be the challenge. But integrating business requires venturing into the most unexplored and unpredictable territory -- people. In this article, you will read:

Integrating technology is a complex proposition. Integrating business is even more complicated. If it were only the technology, figuring out how to interface diverse hardware and software would be the challenge. But integrating business requires venturing into the most unexplored and unpredictable territory -- people. In this article, you will read:

History has shown us that integration is a tangled web of desires, realities, risk, planning, and work. Whether racial, political, or cultural, every integration effort has come with its own set of complex challenges. Typically opposed by the masses, these efforts were eventually embraced over time in spite of the pain and loss incurred.

History has shown us that integration is a tangled web of desires, realities, risk, planning, and work. Whether racial, political, or cultural, every integration effort has come with its own set of complex challenges. Typically opposed by the masses, these efforts were eventually embraced over time in spite of the pain and loss incurred.

Application integration is a complex problem. Although we have witnessed some notable successes in addressing it, these successes have been narrow and limited. The simple reality is that most application integration projects exist just at the entry level. We have yet to see the real-time coupling of thousands of applications. This is not as discouraging as it sounds.

With the bursting of the dot-com bubble over the last year, some of the pressure for pushing IT departments onto the Internet has lessened. This is all to the good, as many companies were adopting off-the-shelf solutions that really did not fit their needs or were building poorly thought-out B2B or B2C implementations.

With the bursting of the dot-com bubble over the last year, some of the pressure for pushing IT departments onto the Internet has lessened. This is all to the good, as many companies were adopting off-the-shelf solutions that really did not fit their needs or were building poorly thought-out B2B or B2C implementations.

One of the core practices of agile modeling (AM) is active stakeholder participation.

One of the core practices of agile modeling (AM) is active stakeholder participation.

In February 2001, a group of "who's who" in software development methodologies convened in Snowbird, Utah, USA, to create the Agile Alliance and deliver a Manifesto for Agile Software Development (www.agilealliance.org). The Agile Alliance is a group of methodologists who have shed the use of traditional methodologies and processes. This decision was not taken lightly.