As it was two millennia ago, today a decimation of sorts remains a distressing part of our cultural experience.

As 2009 brings dramatic change to the economy, politics, and IT, some consistency might be in order. So, as I have in the past, I've devoted my first Advisor of the year to suggestions for New Year's resolutions.

It's 2:12 am. The cell phone is ringing. What now? It's Amy, a data center technician. She wouldn't be calling me unless something is wrong. Very wrong. She tries to explain that the primary storage network is failing. And the path to the backup is failing, too. She can't tell what it is. Everything is coming down.

BI and data warehousing appliances -- prepackaged offerings bundling software and hardware designed to support specific data warehousing and BI applications -- continue to garner strong usage. This trend is expected to continue through 2009 as end-user organizations look for ways to cost-effectively advance their data management and analytic needs.

Challenges abound in every enterprise, but the success of most major initiatives requires that all relevant parties understand the breadth and depth of the problem, the current environment in which the problem exists, and the impacts and implications of potential solutions.

How much architecture does an agile team need up front? Most agile methods are surprisingly silent when it comes to this question. Scrum regards architecture as an issue the team has to deal with on its own discretion -- and thus does not include any advice.

The beginning of 2008 started off with the French bank Société Générale reporting that a low-level employee, Jérôme Kerviel, had executed a series of "elaborate, fictitious transactions" that cost the bank more than €4.9 billion, the largest loss ever recorded in the financial industry by a single trader.

Among other things, 2008 was the year that models died on Wall Street. After decades, the "quants" were just as surprised as everybody when the market started down and, instead of pulling out, just kept on going south. For years, the idea of "program trading" has gained a bigger and bigger foothold in the world of high finance.

The beginning of 2008 started off with the French bank Société Générale reporting that a low-level employee, Jérôme Kerviel, had executed a series of "elaborate, fictitious transactions" that cost the bank more than €4.9 billion, the largest loss ever recorded in the financial industry by a single trader. However, Kerviel's escapade pales in comparison with those of investment advisor Bernie Madoff, who admitted in early December to defrauding his clients of upward of US $50 billion in a "giant Ponzi scheme" for years.

This Advisor looks at debriefing the unsuccessful bidders after a competitive bidding process has closed. This is often treated as an optional process -- and is usually one to be avoided. However, if done well, with the right intent, it is a valuable exercise for all, and can also create support for your future bidding opportunities.

This Advisor looks at debriefing the unsuccessful bidders after a competitive bidding process has closed. This is often treated as an optional process -- and is usually one to be avoided. However, if done well, with the right intent, it is a valuable exercise for all, and can also create support for your future bidding opportunities.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) -- and even divestitures -- represent opportunities to reengineer technology acquisition, deployment, and support. Like other major corporate events (such as missing earnings estimates five quarters in a row), M&As can be exploited to make decisions that somehow get endlessly tabled in the routine ebb and flow of many companies.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) -- and even divestitures -- represent opportunities to reengineer technology acquisition, deployment, and support. Like other major corporate events (such as missing earnings estimates five quarters in a row), M&As can be exploited to make decisions that somehow get endlessly tabled in the routine ebb and flow of many companies.

Despite the reality of service-oriented business -- as evidenced by partnering, collaboration, outsourcing, core competency focus, and the like -- many software solution projects aimed at solving business problems do not yet use service-oriented architecture (SOA) as a key enabler. I hear a variety of reasons from project managers for this, including the following:

Cloud computing is a prominent concept in the IT technology world. Cloud computing and software as a service (SaaS) promise fast return on investment, agility, improved scalability, availability, and more.

Grid computing did not generate as much attention in 2008 as it did in 2007. However, our research indicates that use of grid architectures to support data warehousing and BI by end-user organizations has grown considerably. Yet despite this development, use of grids in such a capacity still remains fairly limited.

In 2002, the most common remedy for schedule problems was overtime. Now, six years later, a Cutter Consortium survey has revealed some interesting news: when projects run into scheduling problems, the two most common remedies are extending the schedule and reducing functionality, with overtime relegated to third place, followed by adding staff. This represents a distinct change from 2002, when Cutter conducted an identical survey. Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant E.M. Bennatan spearheaded both surveys.

Innovation can be orchestrated in many ways, such as by:

Using an internal process alone

Engaging customers and experts

Partnering with key suppliers

Creating a teaming arrangement with other companies including competitors

Using the new distributed cocreation approach1

I spent quite a bit of time studying martial arts in the past. While I wouldn't say that this made me more capable of coming out of a bar fight unscathed, the effort kept me (relatively) physically fit, introduced me to my future wife, and taught me some valuable lessons. Two lessons that translate quite nicely to the workplace are (1) the notion that you don't become agile overnight, and (2) true agility transcends such traits as flexibility.

IT is sort of caught in the middle of a debate. In one corner stands a group of researchers and enthusiasts who look at the marvels of how the human mind can make quick, accurate judgments and decisions. This group tends to look optimistically at the capabilities of the human mind to work effectively in the environment.

Although we in the IT professions don't eat our young, we certainly do take clear concepts and make them completely vague and less than understandable -- to the point of making the concept unusable. Asset management is one of these concepts. Through the normal IT developmental processes, asset management now means almost anything we want -- ranging from project portfolio management to help desk support tools to procurement.

This is the time of year when everyone makes resolutions and projects what they'd like to see in the new year. As I thought about what CIOs could wish for, it occurred to me that they might wish for inclusion of US President Elect Barack Obama's Infrastructure Investment Program for 2009.

Generally, in software development, process is described as the steps we take to get things done. It is often captured as a specified approach to building our products that involves some sort of lifecycle, a collection of roles and responsibilities, a series of artifacts we produce along the way, perhaps some milestones, and some checks and balances to help keep the whole system running smoothly. There is more than meets the eye, though, if we want our approach to be successful.

Happy New Year! I wish everyone a terrific 2009 and success in all projects you undertake.

We face a crisis that is affecting everyone, not just one business or one industry, or even one country. Many businesses will survive this recession, or as some assert, a depression, but a number of companies will either go bankrupt or be acquired. A few businesses will figure out how to thrive and take advantage of this situation.