Strategic advice to leverage new technologies

Technology is at the heart of nearly every enterprise, enabling new business models and strategies, and serving as the catalyst to industry convergence. Leveraging the right technology can improve business outcomes, providing intelligence and insights that help you make more informed and accurate decisions. From finding patterns in data through data science, to curating relevant insights with data analytics, to the predictive abilities and innumerable applications of AI, to solving challenging business problems with ML, NLP, and knowledge graphs, technology has brought decision-making to a more intelligent level. Keep pace with the technology trends, opportunities, applications, and real-world use cases that will move your organization closer to its transformation and business goals.

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CIO Says: Free At Last!

"Finally, I can get out from under the tedium and challenges of IT operations and simply harness cloud computing to meet my organization's computing needs."

CIO Says: There's No Free Lunch

"Cloud computing is more complex than the marketplace acknowledges. Before I do anything with third-party cloud services, I'd better do my homework."

Cloud computing is truly one of the major technology shifts of our era. It's natural for a technology solution as pervasive and beneficial as cloud computing to be oversold to users with inflated expectations.

A healthy debate is going on about the relative merits and risks of the cloud computing model. Consultants are learning and writing about this, aggregating knowledge and opinion for the benefit of our clients and readers.

A lot has been said about cloud computing this year in the press and especially in marketing campaigns, much of it hype. It never ceases to amaze me how people continue to believe in silver bullets. One such popular perspective, illustrated in Figure 1, is particularly dangerous to the enterprise and to CIOs.

Cloud computing fits the classic modus operandi of emerging technologies inasmuch as it has been around for a long time -- at least 10 years -- waiting for the technology resources to become available. In the case of cloud, these would be broad network access and smart handheld devices. Without these technologies, it is possible to adopt cloud computing, but with severe limitations. With them, cloud computing becomes much more viable as a business resource.

First, as a man with unusually large feet, let me formally state a truism -- one size does not fit all in men's socks.

Here's a question for you: who do you think is planning to spend $20 billion a year on cloud computing, every year? I can't imagine that you came up with any answer other than the US government, and you're right. Well, almost.

Recently I was helping a client develop some processes for their EA program. Like many EA programs, the role of the architect there is somewhat undefined.