Piecemeal, poorly coordinated integration initiatives can send an enterprise one step forward and two steps back. Integration is at the top of many corporate agendas; but what are we really trying to integrate? And how do these efforts interrelate across business units, data architectures, applications, suppliers, customers, and other integration initiatives?

Microsoft has made a number of major announcements in the last couple of weeks. If one was a cynic, one might suggest that Microsoft is eager to drive up its stock value and to counteract the despair surrounding Judge Jackson's order to break up the company into two separate companies.

The quality of a Web site is fundamentally based in its information content -- if that content is hard to locate and understand, the value of the site is significantly diminished. Here are five reasons why you should conduct usability testing of your e-commerce site:

Microsoft has made a number of major announcements in the last couple of weeks.

Microsoft has made a number of major announcements in the last couple of weeks.

The quality of a Web site is fundamentally based in its information content -- if that content is hard to locate and understand, the value of the site is significantly diminished.

The quality of a Web site is fundamentally based in its information content -- if that content is hard to locate and understand, the value of the site is significantly diminished.

Once upon a time, there was a fairy-tale princess who was very, very sensitive. She could feel a pea through her mattress, and it kept her awake at night. In the version of the tale that we saw, the princess was played by comedienne Carol Burnett, and you can imagine how sensitive she could be! Her attendants piled up mattresses on the princess's new bed until they were seven feet from the floor. Sitting on top of the pile, Carol screamed, "I can still feel the pea!"

In the field of IT, measures are intended to frame discussions. Often, having the wrong measures, or no measures at all, results in difficult conversations. The substantive issues are clouded when information is sketchy, leading to disputes and fractured negotiations. Problems associated with late projects, aggressive deadlines, or fuzzy requirements become tough to solve.

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.