Business Transformation Requires Transformational Leaders

With the ongoing proliferation of certifications available to business professionals of every type, it's no surprise that risk management has popped into the picture in the cost, IT development, and project management communities.

Regardless of a company's objectives, it must invest in operational and strategic technology. Operational technology has obviously become commoditized as prices have dropped and the industry has consolidated, but if acquisition, deployment, and support best practices are ignored, all of the advantages of commoditization disappear.

Many client organizations nearing the end of an outsourcing contract start to consider whether they should retender the deal.

In the world in which we live, a world that changes almost daily, there are truths and untruths. There's hype, and there's reality. There are technologies that work, and there are technologies that stay forever in the trough of disillusionment. There are subtleties and nuances. There are smart people and nasty people.

Businesses depend heavily on use of the Internet to perform their activities. But have business personnel received enough training and ongoing awareness communications about how to use the Internet securely? Has your staff received any training or awareness communications at all?

It's not the technology, stupid; it's the processes. Processes are good, bad, ugly, or indifferent depending on how well -- or poorly -- you incentivize their efficacy. Let me repeat: it's not the technology. In fact, among the triumvirate of people, process, and technology, technology is the least likely case of failure. Then comes people.

Traditionally, software has been perceived as a product, requiring possession and ownership in order to receive the desired performance. The transition from software as a product to software as a service (SaaS) is reflected in the distribution of software, where an application is offered as a service to customers through the Internet. The SaaS approach can be viewed as a combination of application service provision and outsourcing. 1

The term "service-oriented architecture" is relatively new, but the architecture is not. Even though architectures that used the CORBA or DCOM specifications in the 1990s were not called "service-oriented," they were essentially service-oriented architectures. Some other organizations preceded CORBA and DCOM with their own specifications and developed what we would today consider an SOA.