An impressive array of business technology visionaries, strategists, and practitioners will present the keynote addresses at Cutter Consortium's Summit 2004 conference, to be held May 3 to 5 at the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The speakers will discuss and debate issues such as maximizing IT's bottom-line impact, security practice measurement, implementing agile project management practices, supplier relationship management, applying enterprise architecture, board-level IT oversight, and much more.

The Cutter Consortium Summit is known as the most stimulating IT conference of the year, an opportunity for attendees to gain direct access to the top thinkers in IT. Kent Beck, the founding father of Extreme Programming, has said "The Summit is the single most valuable event I know of for promoting thoughtful software development."

The informal setting of this intimate gathering provides both attendees and speakers alike an opportunity to candidly discuss the challenges they face -- from technical concerns and strategies they're considering, to trends they're seeing in their own organization. The format encourages personal interaction and debate and provides an atmosphere that facilitates knowledge sharing and learning.

Details on the keynote addresses are below. For further information, visit the Summit 2004 Web site.

Maximizing IT's Bottom-Line Impact: From Business Strategy to IT Action

Bob Benson will show you how to adopt and implement principles and practices for planning new IT investments, controlling the costs of existing IT activities, and assessing their business impact.

Security Practice Measurement -- The Future Belongs to the Quants

Dan Geer will reveal why the time has come for the security field to have quantitative metrics and how we can borrow heavily from other fields that were once innumerate but now are not.

Creating Innovative Products using Agile Practices

Jim Highsmith will demonstrate how you can create quality products quickly by systematically reducing the uncertainty over the life of the project, stripping away nonvalue adding activities, and developing individuals and teams that are highly self-disciplined

Negotiation as a Supplier Relationship Management Activity: Building Organizational Capabilities to Prevent Value Leakage

Stuart Kliman will show you how to look at negotiation as an ongoing relationship management activity, not simply as a one-time sourcing transaction, and how to ensure there is alignment and consistency in how it is performed by individual and groups throughout a company - key ingredients to preventing value leakage.

Applying Enterprise Architecture

Peter Herzum will provide you with a comprehensive overview of the state of the art, best practices, and pragmatic evolution of enterprise architectures efforts. This keynote will bring you up to speed on the latest advances, and illustrate the direct relationship between Business Strategy, IT Strategy, enterprise architecture, strategic programs, and individual projects.

Board-Level IT Oversight: The Next "Big Thing"

Richard Nolan will reveal his latest research uncovering why and how, with the continued importance of both operational and development IT, we can expect to see IT represented at the highest levels in many corporations.

For more information on Summit 2004, or to register for a press pass, contact .

Register for Summit 2004 online, by calling + 1 781 648 8700, or by email to summit@cutter.com.