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.
Insight
In companies everywhere today, it is increasingly common to find people acting in explicitly named "business architect" roles. Currently, there is no industry-wide, consistent definition of the role, and there are vast differences in how organizations choose to utilize their business architects.
"Even though they (and we) may not know it, all organizations already have an embryonic business architecture in place. But today’s problems require a more formal business architecture to connect the business with the technologies it increasingly depends on."
-- Ken Orr, Guest Editor
Modeling is stock in trade for architects. We use modeling for a variety of different purposes: to help analyze problems, to conceptualize solutions, to formalize specifications, and to communicate concepts and solutions, just to name a few. So how do we know if the model is successful, correct, or complete? Here are a few basic rules about models and modeling to guide you.
I've been a big proponent of business process intelligence (which some call "process performance intelligence" or "process performance management") -- the ability to monitor the efficiency of distributed business processes in near real time -- ever since I was first shown the technology back in 2005.
Approximately 19% of end-user organizations' business performance management applications currently provide proactive alerting and event notification capabilities. However, indications are that use of such facilities is expected to increase as organizations progress with their business performance management efforts.
I never thought I would see the day that the firewall would have outlived its useful life. However, with the advent of WS-Security, which includes functionality for confidentiality, authentication, and integrity, the firewall may be an endangered technology. 1 Witness the fact that I am now hearing security professionals within large corporations actually talking about the possibility of doing away with firewalls.
Despite the promises of Web 2.0, few organizations have actually applied Web 2.0 principles in any significant way. Enterprises need something to assist them in realizing the potential of Web 2.0. Therefore, in Part I (Vol. 8, No. 2) of this two-part Executive Update series, we proposed the Web 2.0 Reference Model, which provides a holistic perspective for enterprises to consider the many constituents and factors that lead to the realization of Web 2.0 principles.