Traditional analytics is generally restricted to merely providing a better understanding of historical data or predicting future business outcomes. Consequently, the potential of traditional analytical processes is limited as they only offer insights and patterns based on data provided but they lack the ability to offer or make business recommendations. Prescriptive analytics, however, is substantially different and more powerful because it allows businesses to not only make predictions but also suggests an optimal solution.

This Advisor considers the impact of the Internet of Things (IoT) on traditional business and technology architectures and introduces the role of EA as an effective methodology for developing and implementing IoT strategies. 

Actions, words, and intent should echo and support the foundation of your principles. Guided by your moral compass, work to establish an IT organizational culture based on what’s important to your customers and to you. In leading your IT service and support organization, establish trust and confidence in your service delivery with your business customers. 

Empowering the people who face the customer to drive business decisions is a hallmark of the Agile organization. Agile leadership, explored in this Advisor, replaces command and control in the Agile organization.

The new frontier for competition is the entire customer experience (CX) — from thinking about a purchase to the renewal (of a service) or replacement (of a product).

Natural language processing (NLP) is an enabling technology employing neural nets, rules-based systems, statistics, and various linguistic analysis techniques to analyze and uncover meaning within data, typically in free-form (i.e., unstructured) formats.

The best response to digital disruption from the EA team is to examine the dis­ruption, understand the implications in terms of the components and configuration of the architecture (i.e., translate them into architectural thinking), and present options for responding as potential changes to the architecture. The important thing is to present these options as clearly as possible so that stakeholders can make architecturally informed decisions.

Core computer vision and imaging technologies include facial recognition, image recognition, character recognition, medical image recognition, video analysis, and autonomous driving visioning systems. Organizations are now applying such core vision and image recognition technologies to enhance a myriad of applications across many industries.

Understanding certain perspectives of privacy allows us to detail why it is important in the context of blockchain, distributed ledger, and smart contract technology. Thus, questioning the importance of privacy to anyone deploying the technology, using the technology, or regulating the technology, is important. How is a blockchain different than any database? How is it used differently than normal databases? What are the implications of deploying an immutable record of information in a distributed consensus network? How is the technology used in blockchains different from any other information or data storage technology? These are the questions firms should be asking as they attempt to understand the concept and its implications on an active, and evolving, basis.

While cash still has its place in society, we cannot ignore the growing digitization of money. If digital forms of commerce simplify users’ lives and make it easier for customers to get what they want, when they want it, we can expect to see a much more rapid migration toward merchant mobile applications.

This Advisor offers a model that identifies the big data capa­bilities needed to connect data analysis with a specific business context and to do it quickly. 

The June issue of Cutter Business Technology Journal offers perspectives from seven authors on fog/edge computing to bring some sunlight to the challenges, benefits, and possible uses of these emerging technologies.

In this Advisor, we provide a database perspective on business continuity. Starting from a contingency plan, we elaborate on various single points of failure: availability and accessibility of storage devices, availability of database functionality, and availability of the data itself. 

In a world where cyber threats are becoming ubiquitous, being able to apply a specific set of international standards combined with a dedicated and worldwide certification program, is one of the best ways of ensuring long-term cyber protection of critical infrastructure.

In the context of cloud computing, big data analytics requires careful consideration of storage, integration, security, and pricing.

Systems that simplify and enable an autopilot mode can help in dealing with complex real-world situations, unless they lead to implicit and unquestioning trust that ends up taking relevant human intelligence out of the loop.

Before implementing analytical model factories or advanced AI solutions, your line managers must be convinced that they want to adopt evidence-based decision making. Whether in marketing campaign targeting, investment management, customer claim evaluation, or product pricing, decisions can be based either on a “gut feeling,” anecdotal evidence, stiff rules, or fact-based insights.

Almost 50% of survey respondents indicated that their organizations are interested in adopting NLP, making it third among all AI technologies organizations say they are most interested in adopting.

In this Advisor, we align the Agile leadership framework to the key players in the Scrum process.

While the name DevOps points toward a merger of the role of the developer (creating software) and operations (making software run), this is not really the case. What DevOps does is automate as much as possible the work of operation, and in a way that is comfortable and usable by developers.

Analytics can be performed at various points in the deployment of a solution. Certainly, there are situations where “localized” analytics may be more appropriate than analytics performed in the cloud, and still others where analytics on the organization’s network might be more appropriate. The location of analytics can also determine where and when to integrate data into the analytical solution.

This Advisor describes the first step in implementing a digital backbone: scoping. It draws on the lessons the author has learned in his work with transformational change in technology organizations.

Blockchain’s cryptographic capabilities can be applied directly to the business process, via the distributed ledger and data flow, obviating the need for third parties and ensuring privacy and confidentiality. In this Advisor, we present an example of blockchain’s use in the financial industry.

Among all metrics, share of wallet has evolved into the go-to financial metric for customer experience because it is a true measure — relative to alternatives — of how customers spend their money at the point of sale.

To develop an exponentially growing Lean/Agile organization that will have the capabilities to meet uncertainty/unpredictability and adaptability/maneuverability on demand, we must develop the potential of its people with a primary emphasis on designing and developing the whole organizational system(s).