Of all the IT projects underway during the past 15 years, only a small proportion can be classified as “bleeding edge.” The vast majority have been mod­ernizations of existing operational IT systems using proven computing technologies. Thus, it is hard to understand why the level of IT failure has remained relatively constant. This Advisor examines the factors underlying these failures.

CISOs, CIOs, and other technology leaders are well-served with a strong digital- and cyber-savvy corporate board, as are shareholders and other corporate stake­holders. In a world increasingly dependent on complex digital systems for growth and resiliency, ensuring the boardroom is a critical digital and cyber-control point is a necessary and overdue step.

Digital twins provide an advanced form of simulation and modeling for building virtual digital versions of real-world entities and processes. How are organizations using digital twins to implement sustainability projects? This Advisor considers the use of digital twins in sustainability scenarios — including some real-world applications involving smart cities, smart buildings, and clean energy production.

This Advisor explores how the power behind quantum computing can enable today’s most difficult algorithms to be solved in a matter of seconds, enabling real-time processing, analysis, and modeling of data unthinkable with current methods. Parallel processing will accelerate the effectiveness of teams using data analytics to boost efficiency.

Why do technology projects succeed? The most vital ingredient is organizational and personal courage.

Today’s Internet of Things (IoT) solutions have tremendous potential to enhance healthcare operations and generate overall improvements to care outcomes, cost, and efficiency. New IoT solutions for healthcare are smarter and, more importantly, tailored to the needs and requirements of healthcare organizations. In this Advisor, we explore two practical use cases of IoT solutions in healthcare.

Increasingly, organizations are adopting a decentralized approach to R&D, carrying out a significant amount of activity within the business units. This Advisor explores the challenge of gaining R&D insight, from project management systems that don't fit the bill, to the need for better system configuration.

Good data is honestly and ethically sourced, fully contextualized, reliable, resilient, widely available, and well-understood. How can this be achieved? Contemplating these characteristics, we are led directly to principles and programs for data/information governance, ethics, and the organizational structures needed to support and drive their success. This Advisor explores the path forward to good data.

How are today's organizations adopting and deploying emerging technologies? Research suggests that companies have abandoned their obsession with “requirements” and — however quietly — appear to instead endorse a “technology-first/requirements-second” approach to technology adoption.

Organizations can utilize business architecture to inform and shape software designs to achieve more stable, maintainable, and scalable software systems. This Advisor examines the root cause of ineffective software design, specifically, the lack of consistency and clarity of the business perspectives being used as input to software design efforts.

Neural networks and other ML model development typically use large amounts of data for training and testing purposes. Because much of this data is historical, there is the risk that the AI models could learn existing prejudices pertaining to gender, race, age, sexual orientation, and other biases. This Advisor explores how the Data & Trust Alliance consortium created an initiative to help end-user organizations evaluate vendors offering AI-based solutions according to their ability to detect, mitigate, and monitor algorithmic bias over the lifecycle of their products.

Project success is evaluated by the degree to which an end goal is achieved. Having a vivid understanding of the result, its impact, and the potential impediments to success can help improve a project. This Advisor explores the three beginning stages of a technology proj­ect and their keys to success: define, assess, and plan. Each stage has its own characteristics that need examination.

Communications-platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) products offer quick and easy ways for businesses to build features that allow them to communicate with their customers safely and reliably. This Advisor explores key CPaaS use cases and identifies three desirable benefits of CPaaS.

As we explore in this Advisor, new Internet of Things (IoT) solutions for healthcare are smarter and, more importantly, tailored to the needs and requirements of healthcare organizations. With 5G being rolled out, now is the time for healthcare providers to set their IoT roadmaps.

We encounter AI in our daily lives with services such as Netflix and Amazon using AI and predictive technology to analyze billions of records to suggest films, books, and other items we might like based on our previous reactions and choices and those of others like us. But the potential of AI goes far beyond entertainment and shopping services.

How powerful are today’s artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, and which areas are showing the most promise? This Advisor explores how AI can help the environment through the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the enormous potential for AI in patient care, and provides additional examples of how AI is impacting everyday life.

Cloud-based carbon intelligence platforms can help companies track, measure, and model their CO2 emissions — including providing the ability to integrate and analyze carbon emissions data acquired from across their supply chains — and chart the progress of their overall sustainability initiatives. This Advisor explores some of the new products on the market utilizing distributed ledger technologies to support carbon intelligence platforms.

There is no better way to socialize and gain traction with business architecture than to deliver results using it. This Advisor explores best practices, tips, and hacks for establishing and socializing business architecture, ensuring it is appreciated and embedded within the fabric of the organization.

As artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) gain attention for their potential to tackle the environmental challenges posed by climate change, their requirement of heterogeneous data takes center stage. This Advisor addresses the fact that while heterogeneous data plays a critical role in the use of AI and ML to combat climate change, there is a dual side that is not environmentally friendly.

Technology — artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), in particular — shows enormous promise in tackling the complexity inherent in sustainability problems. However, technology itself can leave its own environmental footprint. This issue of Cutter Business Technology Journal explores the challenge of leveraging technology to move us toward a more sustainable future, while mitigating its own impact.

Security threats and compulsions are increasing. Attacks on critical infrastructure and ransomware attacks are not unusual, and it's only a matter of time until we see insider attacks and attacks on IoT devices. In this Advisor, the author asserts that architecture's time has come to help address the complexity and sprawl in the security landscape.

AI and other advanced, innovative technologies are being applied to precision agriculture to help reduce the environmental impact of such operations. This Advisor explores how one cutting edge company, Iron Ox, is using ML, machine visioning, and autonomous robots to transform the agricultural industry.

The hype and reality of artificial intelligence (AI) bombards today’s enterprises on an almost daily basis, but what does it take to actually implement it? Simply put, organizations need to address issues across several critical steps in making AI work to their best advantage, including acquiring AI and machine learning (ML) tools. This Advisor explores six main components of AI and ML tools.

This Advisor explores the main function of the quantum bit (qubit), how qubits enable exponential scaling, and how quantum computing is being utilized in the real world, from hybrid approaches to experimenting with development kits.