I'll admit it: I'm one of those people who has made an occasional disparaging remark about COBOL. It's such an easy target, it could almost be the subject of a skit on Saturday Night Live if the actors knew anything about programming languages.

Many firms are having serious doubts about IT's ability to deliver business intelligence (BI) systems. After participating in many BI strategy and implementation efforts, it has become apparent that neither the IT function nor the business users have the mindset to deploy and utilize BI systems correctly. Corporations today are drowning in terabytes of transactional data.

Many firms are having serious doubts about IT's ability to deliver business intelligence (BI) systems. After participating in many BI strategy and implementation efforts, it has become apparent that neither the IT function nor the business users have the mindset to deploy and utilize BI systems correctly. Corporations today are drowning in terabytes of transactional data.

Over the past 12 months, I have been teaching a series of public object technology courses across the US. To my continuing surprise, most of the participants were from sophisticated organizations that I would have believed had undertaken and completed the migration to object technology years ago.

Over the past 12 months, I have been teaching a series of public object technology courses across the US. To my continuing surprise, most of the participants were from sophisticated organizations that I would have believed had undertaken and completed the migration to object technology years ago.

Partnerships. Alliances. Outsourcing. Joint ventures. Today's economic climate requires companies to speed their time to market while lowering costs and increasing the amount of functionality they can deliver. Many seek to achieve this through partnerships, establishing metrics and benchmark frameworks to ensure that performance goals are being met.

In the April 2001 issue of ITMS , I tackled the subject of metrics and negotiation. I described how negotiation using metrics is crucial when IT organizations face inevitable cost constraints that occur in an economic slowdown. This is compounded by the fact that IT organizations are often aiming for Internet-speed deadlines. It's a double whammy for IT organizations today.

In Part 1 of this story (see ITMS, May 2001), readers learned about a process improvement project taking place in a company based in the US Midwest, along with some of the organizational dynamics involved. With the stage set and the cast of characters assembled, the story of the project is ready to be played out.

Business-IT alignment can be an elusive challenge for organizations riding the shifting tide of industry changes, globalization, and emerging information technologies. Yet aligning IT with critical business initiatives is essential to the ongoing success and survival of most companies.

Business-IT alignment is critical to the near-term profitability and long-term success of your enterprise. Business-IT alignment is achieved when business requirements, strategy, infrastructure, and processes are synchronized with each other and with IT infrastructure, data, systems, and processes.

E-business benefits fall into three categories: revenue enhancement, cost savings, and intangibles. Revenue enhancement comes from greater sales, whether through e-commerce on the Web or brochureware that attracts more customers to traditional channels. Cost savings are generated by improved efficiency, such as cost cutting or simply getting a bigger bang for the same buck.

Misconceptions about the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) abound. Perhaps the most pernicious is that this vendor-neutral middleware standard, although technically viable, is irrelevant to real-world computing.

By any reasonable measure, the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a success. Yet it continues to be underestimated, belittled, or completely ignored. Some critics deride the idea of distributed object computing.

One can hardly read a computer magazine these days without encountering at least one article and a half-dozen advertisements touting the use of the Extensible Markup Language (XML).

The term enterprise information portal (EIP) was first used in a Merrill Lynch report dated 16 November 1998. In this report, Merrill Lynch indicated that EIP systems provide companies with great competitive advantage.

The accompanying Executive Report reviews the concepts, product categories, features, and benefits of enterprise portals -- also called corporate portals or enterprise information portals (we use the term enterprise portal in this report). These three equivalent terms are defined as:

This is the second part of our analysis of Cutter Consortium survey data measuring corporate customer relationship management (CRM) initiatives. The findings in this analysis (as well as the preceding) are based on answers provided by 159 survey participants.