Last week, Oracle announced that it had acquired the intellectual property assets of Sigma Dynamics, a developer of real-time predictive analytics. Oracle plans to use Sigma Dynamics technology to enhance the analytic capabilities of its BI, CRM, and various enterprise applications offerings.

In the field of enterprise architecture, many architects are very critical of John Zachman's well-known framework. A number of extensions have been proposed for the framework (see, for example, the work of Cutter Senior Consultant Ken Orr, including his Executive Report "Business Enterprise Architecture Modeling").

A year or so ago, I got some water on the keyboard of my laptop. Immediately thereafter, the delete key on my laptop stopped working. When you hit the delete key, it no longer sent a signal, or worse, it would begin to send a stream of delete signals to the computer like it was being depressed repeatedly. This happened only at certain points, such as when I opened Microsoft Outlook.

With this Advisor, I return to my series on agile integration (see sidebar). This is the sixth in the series and considers governance.

Even the most innocuous-seeming technology can't escape the malevolent grip of information security risks today. Like the cute ground squirrel carrying bubonic plague, instant messaging, a harmless enough technology on its face, is the facilitator of some truly ghastly viruses and worms.

Given the poor track record of success for long-term, large-scale outsourcing agreements, it is no wonder that a growing number of organizations are seriously considering taking a new path for their sourcing strategies. Rather than give up on the idea of outsourcing entirely, many organizations are adopting a more selective, or "out-tasking," approach aimed at downsizing the scope of their third-party agreements in order to increase the likelihood of their success.

Two important events took place recently in the business process management (BPM) market. The first is when Oracle cut a technology licensing and marketing agreement with business process analysis (BPA) and modeling tools vendor IDS Scheer. The second is IBM's announcement that it intends to buy BPM/enterprise content management vendor FileNet Corporation.

For years now, CIOs have contended with business management's questions about the value of IT. But this is only half of the issue: CIOs also have to contend with the cost of IT. In our experience, the ways in which IT cost is managed -- how IT's cost affects the business units -- is a critical element of IT management and governance. For example, it's hugely different whether business units pay for IT (with fungible money) or whether the costs are assigned to them.

IT managers and executives alike see time accounting as dreaded paperwork -- a drudge activity that satisfies the auditors and ensures vendors get paid. Most IT time accounting systems reflect this mentality -- providing a rear-view-mirror illustration of how IT resources were spent in the previous month or quarter. IT organizations are missing a major opportunity by not viewing time accounting as a strategic initiative that gives their managers the ability to get the most business value from their expensive IT resources.

Several important developments affecting the open source business intelligence (BI) market were announced last week at LINUXWORLD, in San Francisco, California, USA. The first was by Adaptive Planning, which introduced what is, to the best of my knowledge, the first open source business performance management offering. The second was by JasperSoft Corporation, which announced a new reporting product.

Ten to fifteen years ago, a lot was being written about the concept of coopetition. This was just at the beginning of the huge growth in technology -- capabilities, products, companies, and, of course, stock value. Well, things have cooled off a bit since then; however, the concept is just as relevant today, if not more so. We just don't hear much about it because most companies have learned how to better manage their relationships with vendor partners.

I recently bought some computers for some family members and while it wasn't horrible to set them up (with color coded cables and all) it reminded me that while we've made tremendous progress over the past twenty years, we're still largely slaves to mechanical devices connected to each other -- though not necessarily the Web -- with cables. We also still use a lot of paper and ink.

In earlier Advisors, I have discussed that over the last four or five years, I've worked with a significant number of product companies in implementing agile development and project management practices (see "Management's Performance Levers, Part 1," 29 June 2006, "Management's Performance Levers, Part 2," 13 July 2006, and "Management's Performance Leve

Every family has one. It's the individual who comes to visit, and as soon as he/she arrives at the door, all are aware it will be a long row to hoe. The conversation will be awkward; the messages will be mixed and the frustration will be palpable. But, as this individual walks out the door, we find ourselves saying those magic words -- "Don't be a stranger!" We could prevent these awkward moments in simple fashion. Banish this individual from our lives forever. Refuse access. Deny admission.

Do you have a formal plan for the business you do with each of your strategic vendors? A plan that not only describes the nature of your joint business relationship but also defines the obligations, commitments, and investments that will be made by both parties? A plan that clearly states the strategic objectives of the partnership and the metrics by which initiatives will be measured? A plan that has been jointly developed by both parties that defines the "skin" that both partners bring to the game?

Perhaps there's still room on your reading list for one more title. Even if there's not, this is one you want to consider for your bookshelf. Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design, by Scott Ambler and Pramod Sadalage, published by Addison-Wesley, is an essential reference for anybody involved in database design.

Over the past few years, I have been working with companies to alleviate the risks they face in creating business-IT alignment. From the plethora of publications available today on this topic, I recognize that most IT organizations are working quite diligently to achieve an optimal business-IT alignment as a measure toward their cost-cutting efforts. In my opinion, these efforts are not being exerted to create mere harmony or coexistence between business and IT organizations.

That apparently innocent question was at the base of some discussion at the 2006 conference of the European Spreadsheet Risk Interest Group (EUSprig) and Excel training classes. Taxonomies (classifications) of spreadsheet errors have been presented in journals and at Eusprig conferences that classify:

The current trend whereby organizations are seeking to extend business intelligence (BI) capabilities to increasing numbers of end users (including those residing beyond the corporate firewall) has placed renewed emphasis on a frequently underestimated but hugely important aspect of the data warehouse lifecycle: managing the data warehouse/BI environment.

Data warehouse/BI administration and management involves a number of tasks, including the following:

I was talking recently with a colleague who is involved in a business performance management initiative. The subject quickly turned to one of the most important challenges associated with such an effort: identifying key performance indicators (KPIs). This Advisor summarizes what we discussed.

Early in my career, I worked for one of the leading authorities in the field of linear programming (LP) [1]. This person had developed one of the earliest LP codes while he was working for an oil company. Oil companies figured out early on how to use LP to optimize their refinery operations, so LP was a big deal for them.

A friend of mine asked me recently whether I knew of any list of rules for project managers that he could review to help him with his next book. I pointed him to the list of 100 rules from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Project Manager Jerry Madden, but it got me thinking about what might be on my own list and why.

As I write this, hurricane experts at Colorado State University have announced a revision to their May 2006 prediction that nine hurricanes could potentially threaten the US to "only" seven, three of which are likely to be severe. This forecast is down from the five severe hurricanes that they had predicted in May. A cooler tropical Atlantic Ocean and a warming eastern Pacific are the reasons they give for this revised forecast.

In the barrage of advice on how to successfully manage a business process offshoring project, a crucial piece of advice can be lost: manage the project as if it were a capital investment requiring a business case, including a comprehensive cost/benefit analysis.

In the field of enterprise architecture, many architects are very critical of John Zachman's well-known framework. A number of extensions have been proposed for the framework (see, for example, the work of Cutter Senior Consultant Ken Orr, including his Executive Report "Business Enterprise Architecture Modeling").