In my previous Advisors in this series (see the sidebar), I have submitted my conservative views on getting started with SOA and I have explored the challenges of SOA initiative planning. While addressing these challenges, like many other practitioners, I observed the concept of enterprise service bus (ESB) pop up many times for many of my SOA initiative engagements.

In previous issues in this series, I suggested that there are three aspects to the external technological environment that IT should track and consider. These include the following:

Competitive factors -- plans and moves of traditional and nontraditional business competitors

My new smart, stylish, cool PDA is a pain in the neck to actually use. There are so many features embedded in so many more -- these people have perfected hierarchical menus to everywhere -- that I find it nearly impossible to optimize its performance.

In response to a recent Advisor on important BI and data warehousing trends for 2007 ("BI Trends and Developments to Watch for in 2007," 2 January 2007), one reader inquired as to my thoughts on grid computing architectures, in general, as well as the use of grids for data warehousing and BI.

Much has been made over the last few days about Hewlett-Packard's (HP's) recent announcement that it is entering the market for data warehousing and BI software and services, and how it plans to challenge market leaders Oracle, IBM, Teradata, SAS, Microsoft, and so on.

Over the years, I've found a tendency in large organizations, especially government ones, to equate oversight with control. In fact, as far as I can tell, there is no positive correlation between the amount of oversight and the success of large projects.

In this Advisor, Jim Highsmith shares his list of the top 30 books on agile project leadership. Reading -- or even better, reading and discussing -- these books would be a good New Year's resolution for furthering project leadership in your organization.

Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. The Kubler-Ross cycle is a classic of psychology and is largely seen as relating to serious loss, death, or grief.

In my last Advisor ("Smart Sourcing: Getting Your People Ready," 20 December 2006), we discussed the "people" component of getting your organization ready for smart sourcing. Without a doubt, people or the workforce play a significant role in the success of smart sourcing.

Last month, I discussed why Business Rules Management Systems (BRMSs) are increasingly becoming an important part of organizations' service-oriented architecture (SOA) initiatives (see "The Role of Business Rules Management Systems in Service-Oriented Architectures," 27 December 2006).

collaboration = innovation

The easiest thing of all is to deceive one's self; for what a man wishes he generally believes to be true.

-- Demosthenes (384 BC - 322 BC)

I was recently rereading one of my earliest e-mail Advisors from Cutter Consortium's Agile Project Management Practice (it was actually e-Project management then). The Advisor was about why this different way of managing projects was so important. After reading it, I decided it was time to revisit and update that issue.

The first big data warehousing industry development of the new year is NCR Corporation's announcement that it is splitting into two separate companies.

Everyone -- or most everyone -- likes to think positively about the new year. That's where New Year's resolutions come from. But what about the glass-is-half-empty crowd? How do they ring in the new year?

This Advisor continues the topic of product management that began in Part 1 of this two-part series (see "Product Managers in an Agile Team, Part 1," 28 December 2006).

A wise philosopher once said that the limits of language reflect the limits of our understanding. That is, if we can't assign words to a phenomenon, then we don't truly understand it. A similar situation exists in the discipline of information security and risk management: assigning inexact words means we can't truly manage it. Terms to describe specific phenomena in this discipline are used loosely or interchangeably with others. Out of a kind of verbal promiscuity, confusion is sewn.

It stands to reason that an organization embarking on a business process offshoring initiative would have a complete understanding of how the processes it is actually offshoring work. Surprisingly, you would be wrong to assume that this is the case.

As enterprise architecture (EA) programs mature, I'm seeing a shift in focus toward business architecture. This is something that I see both with my own clients as well as across the industry. For example, one client that has a relatively mature EA program is building expertise and adding more head count in business architects.

It's that time of year again, when we all look ahead to the coming year. Aside from the fact that this has again come much too quickly (didn't we just solve Y2K?), it is interesting to speculate on the important issues that will come onto the CIO's agenda in 2007.

Over the past 10 years, almost all companies in the IT industry have either been exposed to or have experienced one or more industry mandates, government regulations, or corporate policies. So you may think that IT practitioners must be familiar and well informed in the relevant challenges and issues of compliance, right? Think again!

My new smart, stylish, cool PDA is a pain in the neck to actually use. There are so many features embedded in so many more -- these people have perfected hierarchical menus to everywhere -- that I find it nearly impossible to optimize its performance. There are also way too many decisions for me to make: do I really need 50 ring/vibrate combinations (not to mention the six-gazillion I can download)?

In response to last week's Advisor on important BI and data warehousing trends for 2007 (see "BI Trends and Developments to Watch for in 2007," 2 January 2007), one reader inquired as to my thoughts on grid computing architectures, in general, as well as the use of grids for data warehousing and BI.

The world of the blogosphere, based on the key elements of the Web and the machinery of blogs, is a rich and intensely social place. While broadcast media is based on a one-to-many dynamic, where the organization publishing pushes "content" to an "audience," the user experience of reading blogs is many to many, much more like hanging out at a noisy dinner party than watching television.

The world of the blogosphere, based on the key elements of the Web and the machinery of blogs, is a rich and intensely social place. While broadcast media is based on a one-to-many dynamic, where the organization publishing pushes "content" to an "audience," the user experience of reading blogs is many to many, much more like hanging out at a noisy dinner party than watching television.