As the Internet reshapes the business landscape, companies are racing to deploy customer-and-supplier-driven solutions at every level of the enterprise. As the pace of change quickens, information technology is finding its way into every corner of the enterprise. The IT organization, based on industrial era management structures, is at the center of this dynamic shift.

Information technology, by way of distributed systems and the Internet, has penetrated every inch of the enterprise. Business units are launching supply chain alliances, building e-commerce sites, and spinning off e-business ventures.

Software metrics is one of those great ideas that just never seems to take hold. It certainly has vociferous advocates, and it is mandatory for Level 2 certification on the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model. Software metrics is available as dashboards, scorecards, and instrument panels. There are plenty of qualified consultants ready to help would-be users, but it just hasn't caught on.

Paul Harmon, Editor

In the past, large-scale commerce systems were monolithic applications that were tough to build and difficult to maintain. Today, the global economy created by the Internet has created a great need for technology that allows commerce sites to be developed quickly, yet exhibit the scalability and reliability features of traditional enterprise-class deployments.

This Executive Report provides an overview of a mission-critical Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) project: the creation of a system to provide banking services to corporate customers over the Internet.

The 1970s and 1980s saw the widespread adoption of database management systems (DBMS). Based on a seemingly simple -- and now obvious -- principle of the separation of creating, retrieving, updating, deleting, and managing data from the various application programs that used the data, at the time, DBMS proved to be a disruptive technology.

Contrasting with the enthusiastic e-business hype found in the popular press, several recent studies have suggested that large companies are moving toward e-business development rather slowly.

In the February issue of ITMS, I featured an interview with Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone, two of the authors of the best-seller, Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most.

Since that time, I've had the pleasure of working with Heen and Stone, presenting with them at various conferences. I can tell you that their message has struck a chord among IT audiences.

Geographic information systems (GISs) consist of spatial data analysis software that functions by using location information such as address, zip code, census block, or latitude and longitude coordinates to map information for better analysis.

In the April 2000 BIA, I managed to irk several readers with my statement, "I can't imagine how anyone could enter personal or financial information into, say, a financial Web site and not feel uneasy about where the information will

Hewlett-Packard (HP) has announced E-Vue, billed as "intelligent data integration" software that facilitates real-time customer relationship management (CRM) by pulling together disparate data sources to form a single customer view.

In the March 2000 issue of BIA, I analyzed the case for outsourcing various business intelligence (BI) applications via an application service provider (ASP) model (see " Business Intelligence for Rent"). I also said that knowledge management (KM) applications are particularly appealing candidates for outsourcing to an ASP.

When the news media began pronouncing "victory" over the dreaded Year 2000 bug a few seconds after midnight last New Year's Eve, more than a few IT managers wondered if the celebration wasn't a bit premature.

When the news media began pronouncing "victory" over the dreaded Year 2000 bug a few seconds after midnight last New Year's Eve, more than a few IT managers wondered if the celebration wasn't a bit premature.

Writing a review of one of the most significant events in IT history, it is very easy to be glib and beat our breasts. How did we get it so wrong? Why is the stock market still around 11,000 instead of 2,000? Why are we still living in thriving cities instead of shooting at each other in the wilderness?

Writing a review of one of the most significant events in IT history, it is very easy to be glib and beat our breasts. How did we get it so wrong? Why is the stock market still around 11,000 instead of 2,000? Why are we still living in thriving cities instead of shooting at each other in the wilderness?

It's good practice to wrap up a project with a postmortem, a review of what happened, what went well that could be a lesson for the future, and what went badly that needs to be avoided in the future. The Year 2000 project ought to be a particularly good source of lessons that can be applied to any other mass change project with an imposed deadline, such as the changeover to the euro currency in Europe.

It's good practice to wrap up a project with a postmortem, a review of what happened, what went well that could be a lesson for the future, and what went badly that needs to be avoided in the future. The Year 2000 project ought to be a particularly good source of lessons that can be applied to any other mass change project with an imposed deadline, such as the changeover to the euro currency in Europe.

Imagine you are in a room with 100 people. Take a moment to think about how you would, with a team of four other people, gather as many signatures as possible on a single sheet of paper in two minutes.