The third building block in our model of architecting outsourcing relationships -- strategize -- is where we conduct the planning that enables objective and knowledgeable decisions throughout the remainder of the lifecycle. This building block is crucial to the effective navigation of the entire outsourcing lifecycle.

I love technology. I have to admit it. I love my computer and my integrated PDA and phone, even though they give me a lot of grief. I can't imagine not having all my stuff online and easily accessible. I love having information at my fingertips with the Web. I love being able to communicate so easily via e-mails, text messages, and instant messages.

In the 8 September 2006 issue of MSNBC Newsweek, journalist Andrew Romano tells us something of his relationship (close but not huggy) with his sister:

Last week, I wrote about Business Objects buying business performance management vendor Cartesis S.A. in response to Oracle's acquisition of Hyperion Solutions in February (see "Business Performance Management Full Speed Ahead -- Business Objects Buys Cartesis," 1 May 2007).

In Part 1 of this article series (see "Easy As Implementing a Package ... Part 1," 1 March 2007), I described the productivity characteristics of large IT package implementations, including enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications.

Recently, I saw an interesting opening slide in a presentation made by a German IT consulting company. To demonstrate the company's slogan, "Knowing upfront what comes out in the end," the slide showed an ancient cave painting with a bunch of Stone Age hunters fleeing from an attacking saber-toothed tiger.

I was looking for a catchy phrase I could use to quickly and simply articulate how we should think about Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance, particularly now that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) have signaled their intents with the simplified Accounting Standard 5 (AS5).

You've probably been aware for some time that Amazon.com has made its catalog available online via Web services. Typically, when a Web site references a book and provides details about it, the information is obtained using one of Amazon's Web services. This has worked well for both Amazon and the users of the services.

The project management office, or PMO, is a concept that has been around for a half-dozen years or so, has proven useful in many instances, and is ubiquitous in medium- and large-sized IS departments.

Successful offshore initiatives rely heavily on the initiative teams and executives involved. A common topic of discussion surrounding these efforts is the culture of offshore vendors and how cultural differences affect collaboration in a global work environment.

We hear a lot these days about the need for aligning IT and business objectives. Certainly this is an issue, and the frustrations that both IT and their business organizations feel are well documented. However, I would assert that the root cause is that we've allowed IT to have its own objectives in the first place.

Let's put it a different way. Does the logistics organization in your company have any of the following objectives?

The first step in getting smart about outsourcing is to gather insight. The goal of this appraisal is to gather intelligence from those who have preceded your organization and to determine the potential implications for you. It is wise to cast your net wide across diverse sources when gathering knowledge.

Last month, I wrote that Oracle Corporation sucked the air out of the other BI vendors' lungs when it announced it would buy business performance management/OLAP database vendor Hyperion Solutions (see "Upping the Ante, Oracle Buys Hyperion," 6 March 2007).

Last week, IBM announced that it would attempt to collect the very minimum personal information from its online customers in the name of privacy. This rang a bell with me. A while back, I was involved in a privacy, confidentiality, and security committee manned by industry and government folks.

A long time ago in a world far away, a flame-breathing dragon was troubling a kingdom. Periodically the dragon would swoop down from the sky and ravage the village, burning homes and eating the livestock. When the problem finally came to the king's attention, he called upon one of his brave knights, saying, "Go and slay the dragon in the western hills.

The crash happened suddenly. The other car appeared as a brief blur in my windshield. In an instant, the airbag deployed, ruptured, and surrounded me in white dust. My vehicle and I came to an abrupt and violent halt.

Software AG's announcement that it is acquiring business process management suite (BPMS) vendor webMethods for approximately US $546 million is an important development for the BPM market. First, it signals that the latest round of consolidation continues (one could point to IBM's acquisition of FileNet last fall as the start of this latest round).

We recently completed a workshop about strategic IT planning. The participants raised three key questions:

What exactly is a strategic IT plan?

Why should the business pay for a strategic IT plan?

What are the barriers to doing a successful strategic IT plan?

There are no hard-and-fast rules about what should and should not be outsourced. Certainly, industry and academia are most comfortable with the outsourcing of activities that have mature markets, predictable demand, predictable costs, and well-known performance standards.

India is a nation with rich tradition, history, and heritage, and many industrious and highly educated people. The country has been the center of one of the oldest and most ancient civilizations known to mankind and has been in the forefront of many scientific innovations and inventions since the early days of the industrial revolution.

To be successful, architecture development efforts should be approached as an executive-sponsored, well-funded project with dedicated business and technology staff -- what's new? A frequent justification for the undertaking is the requirement for a new business-driven IT strategic plan, often the result of disenchantment with previous IS-driven IT strategic planning efforts.

Several weeks ago I wrote that findings from a recent Cutter Consortium survey (conducted in March 2007) of 119 end-user organizations (based worldwide) and their data warehousing and BI practices indicated that few organizations today express a high level of satisfaction with the quality and integrity of their customer data (see "For Most, The Qual

Last month's Advisor (see "Intelligent Data," 29 March 2007) dealt with the idea of creating intelligent data as a means of improving data connections across the Internet.

I recently did some consulting work for a small company; one that has had many project successes but a couple of significant, if not outright, failures, then nonoptimal outcomes, to say the least. In talking through the problem projects with the staff, it seems like deja vu all over again.

In this first of a two-part analysis, I examine the simple first steps that individuals and organizations can take to implement Monte Carlo analyses effectively without creating a huge administrative overburden.