As IT professionals we are not generally famous for our polished savoir faire, some recurrent stereotypes in fact have us being just the opposite when it comes to social skills. Yet if it is true that "life is service," working on our customer orientation and service skills can be a great investment, not just individually but collectively as the IT professionals in our respective organizations. This issue of the CBR is full of tangible guidelines and actionable ideas to help you get started.

Is there any opportunity for organizations seeking to benefit from their customers' use of social networks? How can organizations take advantage of the explosive growth of social networking? Here the answer is not so simple. For this reason, we focus this issue of Cutter Benchmark Review on this important and timely topic: organizational uses and opportunities in social networking.

In this issue of Cutter IT Journal, we'll examine the critical - and overlapping - areas of information security, privacy, and compliance.

Despite the generally positive and upbeat outlook for SaaS and cloud computing, there are a number of risks and pitfalls that must be carefully managed in order to exploit the potential offered by the emerging paradigm. Our contributors offer important insight that will help you assess the risks as they manifest themselves in your specific context.