In an effort to take stock of this growing phenomenon -- and the surrounding propaganda -- and in an effort to provide you with some unbiased no-hype analysis and guidance, we focus this issue of Cutter Benchmark Review on Web 2.0. Our academic contributor on this installment is Joseph Feller, a Senior Lecturer of Business Information Systems at University College Cork (Ireland). Providing our view from the trenches of business is Tom Welsh, a Senior Consultant with Cutter Consortium's Enterprise Architecture advisory service and former Editor of Cutter Consortium's monthly Web Services Strategies. Together, Joe and Tom pool their years of experience and do a great job dissecting the Web 2.0 phenomenon in all its facets.

This issue looks forward to the incoming year and identifies what technologies and IT trends organizations can expect to endure, which ones are emerging, and which ones seem to be losing steam. The issue begins with an introduction about the general trends the industry has been experiencing since the economic recovery started, and then dives into the major components of the survey: technology, architectures, compliance, staffing and labor trends, innovation, and business intelligence. Explore the renewed importance of alignment, and its incarnation in enterprise architecture development efforts, and discuss concerns about labor issues and looming staffing difficulties for IT shops. Take a close look at SOA implementations, and considers the increasing hype regarding innovation -- without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

In this issue, we tackle the following question: how are we doing with the acquisition and retention of mainframe skills in the face of the looming mass retirement of baby boomers?