Emerging technologies and digital disruption will transform the enterprise, but they will also transform the ways in which we architect. What will this mean for enterprise architecture in general and for the role of the enterprise architect?

Technology seems to be moving at the speed of light these days, so we decided to ask Cutter’s team of experts for their insights on some of the technologies and trends that are going to be game changers in 2016 and beyond. In true Cutter IT Journal fashion, our call produced a wide range of opinions on what everyone from C-suite executives to technology managers should plan for as they strive to meet their business and technology goals.

An unrealized potential to transform existing businesses and industries exists. Many observers have identified a significant gap between organizations' recognition of the importance of new digital technologies currently at their disposal and their understanding of how to optimally exploit them. This signals that many questions surrounding digital transformation are left unanswered and even unidentified. The articles in this special issue help us deepen our understanding of what digital transformation means and provide us with practical advice on how to transform organizations to address the digital world.

This issue of Cutter Benchmark Review, the 10th and final installment in our annual IT budgeting series, can be summed up by the subtitle: "Folks, It's Time to Remodel." This theme manifests itself in three ways. The first two relate to IT budgeting practices; the third relates to CBR itself.

Many organizations are still on the fence about moving their infrastructure to an IaaS model. IaaS can be deployed in different models, including on-premises and off-premises, managed by a third party or managed internally, and/or using private or public cloud environments. Which model(s) should an organization adopt? How do firms know if moving their hardware, software, servers, storage, and other infrastructure components to a third-party provider is right for them? Should they consider IaaS only for temporary or experimental workloads? Also worth considering and planning for are the technical/security risks, scalability, and legal/contract issues that are critical to a successful IaaS platform deployment. In this issue of Cutter IT Journal, our authors share their insights on the issues organizations should contemplate before moving to IaaS.