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 my last Advisor (see "On Tools in Agile Development, Part 1," 23 August 2007), I talked about tool requirements for agile developers. In this article, I focus on tools for team support, while the next Advisor will discuss tools that help in planning agile projects.
Last week, we saw Cognos acquire multidimensional database and performance management analytics vendor Applix, Inc. in an effort to broaden its BI and financial business performance management offerings (see "Keeping Up With the Joneses: Cognos Buys Applix," 11 September 2007).
The software-as-a-service (SaaS)1 model is having a profound effect across the entire spectrum of corporate computing.
Executive Update
What's (Not) New About Web 2.0
WHAT IS WEB 2.0?
"Web 2.0" is a phrase in search of a meaning. This can be a very convenient state of affairs for consultants, since it can be used to add shine to just about any idea. My first reaction to the idea of Web 2.0 was a quick roll of the eyes (after all, there is nothing new under the sun). I fell into the camp with Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of what we can presumably call Web 1.0, who said, "Web 2.0 is, of course, a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means" [3].
In my last Advisor (see "Doing a Tap Dance on a Waterbed, Part 1," 30 August 2007), I posed a question that has plagued large systems project managers for a very, very long time: "where do you start your systems requirements -- with the inputs, database, or the outputs?" I suggested that defining the o
In my last Advisor, "Ten Things an Architect Does to Add Value" (29 August 2007), I provided a list of activities that an architect performs, roughly organized along the lifecycle of creating and applying architecture.
