Read the Addendum: Starting Off the New Year by Looking Back: Latin America
As we've done for the past couple of years, we are starting off the new year of CBR with another installment of our yearly series on trends and technologies for the coming year. This is the third yearly issue of CBR where we ask our contributors to look forward to the coming year and see what technologies and IT trends we can expect to endure, which ones are emerging, and which ones seem to be losing steam. Our ability to do trending and year-over-year comparisons is strengthening with every survey and the cumulating of results. We have been very careful in keeping some of the questions consistent so that we can comment on changes over time. Our contributors offer some interesting food for thought and insight based on the data.
The trends issues are particularly important in my opinion as they give us more than a spot evaluation of what is going on and instead enable us to take a more long-term view. I think it is also very valuable to have trends issues of CBR because of the unique characteristics of our publication. As regular readers know, each of the issues of CBR draws commentary from both established academics and practitioners with decades of experience in information technology and IT management. These individuals bring their significant experience to bear in their commentary and are less likely than younger, "junior analyst types" to buy into the hype that oftentimes surrounds new technology and emerging trends.
Our academic contributor, with us since the inception of the yearly trends issue, is Dennis Adams. Dennis is Associate Professor in the Decision and Information Sciences Department at the University of Houston (USA). A staple of CBR, Dennis is the academic voice on both of our yearly installments: this one and the one on IT budgeting. His counterpart on the Cutter practice side is Jeroen van Tyn. Jeroen is a Senior Consultant with Cutter Consortium's Enterprise Architecture practice and was the practicing expert voice on last year's IT trends issue.
Dennis's contribution begins with a general introduction and some reflections about the enduring challenges in IT management at the end of each year. He then dives into the survey data, organizing his comments around the major components of the survey: security and compliance, tools, human resources, enterprise architecture (EA) and service-oriented architecture (SOA), Internet 2.0, and innovation. Based on his reading of the data and his own experience, Dennis draws some implications for management and closes with a few ideas on how to benefit from the moderately positive climate he senses.
As is customary for him, Jeroen gets right into the data in his contribution and does extensive year-over-year trending. He discusses Sarbanes-Oxley, virtualization, open source, intrusion detection, IT staffing and outsourcing, Web services and SOA, EA, and innovation. I think you will find Jeroen's insights and no-nonsense writing style very useful and appealing. His conclusions provide some ideas about how to interpret and leverage the incoming year's trends.
I hope you find this issue of CBR both of use and timely as you seek to evaluate the opportunities and priorities for the coming year.
Incidentally, the start of a new year seems like an apropos time to thank the CBR team. As faithful readers know, producing CBR is no easy task. It begins with the choice of a topic we think you'll be interested in. Ever since I returned from the Cutter Latin America Summit 2007, we have been focusing on innovation and how to do it. We looked inside the firm at dynamic and improvisational IT capabilities (Vol. 7, No. 11), and we then looked at interorganizational collaboration and the emerging concept of open innovation (Vol. 7, No. 12). In 2008, after this trends issue, we will briefly go back to basics in our next issue and focus on how to craft a winning business case. However, for the issue following that one, we will again ride the wave of new technology and its innovative uses with an issue on mashups.
Once we conceptualize an issue, we recruit an academic and a practicing expert from the field. I typically prowl the halls of academia looking for outstanding thinkers and writers. Cutter Managing Editor Cindy Swain does the same within (and at times outside) the Cutter family to identify the appropriate practicing expert. With our writing team in place, we ask those contributors to craft a relevant survey on the topic, which Cindy publishes (after making sure it makes sense). You, our readers, then voice your opinions and provide information about your practices (we thank you as well for that, as it is a critical part of this process!).
With the results in hand, our contributors write their reactions, I edit them, and Cindy keeps us all in line and working on time. Once our work is done, the Cutter production editors oversee the editing, layout, and publishing of each issue. CBR is made up of a nice team; although my picture is at the top of every introduction, much of the credit goes to the individuals that work behind the scenes to bring you professionally edited, timely, and relevant food for thought every single month. Thank you all for a great 2007; let's get ready for an even better 2008.
On behalf of the entire crew at CBR, I send you all our best wishes for a productive and rewarding 2008!
