In the entirety of a project, there is one second that is often the determining factor. That is the second between an observation and a reaction.1

To multisource or not to multisource? This is a question that will grow in importance as the size of sourcing and the varieties of processes sourced marches upward. In true, two-handed fashion -- on the one hand, on the other hand -- let's consider multisourcing's value first, then some of its risks.

IBM's latest announcement that it plans to buy BI vendor Cognos, Inc. for approximately US $5 billion continues efforts by the major enterprise players to bolster their positions in the lucrative market for BI and analytics through strategic acquisitions.

One of the strengths of the US economy is the diversification of industries along with free markets that function well enough, if not always at 100% efficiency. The variety of products produced, ranging from branded consumer goods to energy resources, is truly impressive. Often Americans take for granted the scope of the US economy.

collaboration = innovation

Software development is about building abstractions, right? We try to understand the customers and build abstract domain models out of their concepts and ideas; out of that we build new abstractions named code, an abstract virtual machine interprets this code, and during the interpretation it uses another abstraction -- the database schema -- to store the information, and so on.

As I head off to the annual Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco, California, USA, this week, I can't seem to stop thinking about what Oracle's proposed acquisition of middleware maker BEA Systems, Inc. would mean for Oracle, end-user organizations, and the market in general. It appears that I'm not the only one, as the topic is definitely on other attendees' minds, too.

Not long ago, the Wall Street Journal announced that joining management by objective and total quality management as approaches that have marched in the management discipline hit parade is a new methodology called management by data (see "Now, It's Business By Data, but Numbers Still Can't Tell Future," by Scott Thurm).

I believe that there are some very basic things that systems engineers should learn. In the first installment of this Advisor series (see "Undergraduate Basics for Systems Engineering, Part 1: Principles," 3 October 2007), I discussed the first of these fundamental lessons: principles (heuristics, laws).

The data steward role is not a business role in the "take customer orders" or "prepare invoices" sense. It is clearly a role that bleeds over into what was traditionally the IT space. IT and business must come together, and the data steward is one of many roles that will help accomplish that.

The majority of organizations using on-demand BI and data warehousing solutions and services maintain copies on-site of the data generated or used by their on-demand software.

In my last Advisor (see "Steve Jobs: Architecture, Platforms, and the Big Picture," 25 October 2007), I talked about Steve Jobs and "closed architectures." A number of things have transpired in just two weeks. The first is Apple's announcement of its developer environment for the iPhone.

As more organizations face transitions to agile methods and those transitions involve larger segments of those organizations, the need for transition or transformation strategies increases.

To create an effective enterprise risk management process -- one where risks are going to be managed as a system -- you need to have both your enterprise management of risk strategy and your risk management processes in alignment.

IT affects the environment in several different ways. In terms of the computer, each stage of its life -- from manufacture to use to disposal -- presents environmental problems. For instance, the typical manufacturing process for a PC requires two tons of raw materials and lot of water and generates 25 tons of carbon dioxide [3].

At first glance, the title might not sound especially sexy: Architecture and Patterns for IT Service Management, Resource Planning, and Governance: Making Shoes for the Cobbler's Children, by Charles T. Betz.

Last month we began this three-part series on a Cutter survey on IT budget and costing practices (see "IT Budgeting/Costing Is a Mess -- and Hinders IT Governance, Part 1," 26 September 2007; for more on Cutter's survey, see the Cutter Benchmark Review, August 2007). The results indicated that IT budgeting and costing practices, generally, are a mess.

In our most recent survey on outsourcing (see "Outsourcing Insights Redux: Part I -- Truths and Perceptions"), we asked respondents how they evaluate supplier project estimates on applications development and maintenance projects.

First I must share a bias. To be effective, IT departments must be no more than half a step ahead of the business partners it supports. If IT has the temerity to be more than this elusive half step, it will be accused of arrogance and be seen as disconnected or following its own agenda. If IT is seen to be lagging the business, the fate is equally unpalatable.

There's a "new" data warehousing database vendor that deserves a closer look: ParAccel, Inc. ParAccel has developed a high-speed, columnar database -- utilizing a massively parallel (shared-nothing) grid architecture running on standard hardware -- that is optimized for data warehousing, BI reporting, and operational analytic processing.

The world is moving at a fast pace, and globalization is increasing. Financial markets are interlocked and the role of information becomes more important with each passing day.

collaboration = innovation

Declare trust? Come on, get serious! I can't declare that you'll be trustworthy. You have to show me that.

True. And before I can show you that, you have to show me that you can be trusted with my trust. And so on, and on.

For people to take action -- such as to move to a new software development methodology, they have to care. Feelings inspire people to act. We make people care by appealing to things that matter to them.

The analysis of the enterprise business cycles is an important step in EA efforts. However, to find gaps and future directions for an enterprise IT architecture, we introduce another concept, which we call enterprise architecture capabilities. We use them instead of specific information systems functions to point out the relationship of IT logical architecture to business architecture, described as a set of business cycles and business capabilities.

I came across a saying the other day at one of my favorite Web sites, www.despair.com, that is particularly applicable to IT: "You can do anything you set your mind to when you have vision, determination, and an endless supply of expendable labor."