As highlighted in this month's issue of Cutter Benchmark Review, the terms "success" and "failure" are not black and white. Unfortunately, IT efforts are often forced into one category or the other without regard as to why they're successful or have failed -- and whether "failure" may have in fact been the best possible outcome. The articles that follow provide some criteria you may want to add to your own when labeling your projects as successful or failed.

This edition of Cutter Benchmark Review will focus on the strategies that companies are implementing to get the most value from their IT department. We examine how companies are aligning their IT strategies with their business strategies and how they are structuring their IT departments to achieve this goal. We then look at how project management impacts the bottom line and finish with an overview of how companies who have outsourced IT overseas have fared.

Welcome to the second issue of Cutter Benchmark Review; this month, we look at the technological choices IT managers are facing now, or will be in the near future. The articles in this issue focus on technologies that are in the early adopter phase of implementation, including the computing utility model, instant messaging, the new mobile workforce, and the use of ASPs and XML.