In April 2005, Cutter Consortium surveyed nearly 100 enterprise IT professionals regarding their views on utility computing. When asked how they define utility computing, the majority of all survey participants defined it as "deploying computing power on an as-needed basis."

"How do you define utility computing?"

Information and communications environments have grown in complexity, and single vendors are less likely to be able to provide the complete array of services required. Therefore, businesses are less likely to outsource to a single contractor.

A little over three years ago now, the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) legislation was passed into law. Now is an appropriate time to review the US Security and Exchange Commission's (SEC) estimates of the cost of SOX, especially the compliance with Section 404, which requires companies to implement internal controls on their financial transactions and information.

Last week while playing tennis, my friend Holly sent her forehand sailing high into an adjacent court. "Aargh," she cried. Then, with a casual grin, she said, "That's what I love about this game -- it gives you plenty of chances to practice self-loathing." She reminded me of Lucy from the "Peanuts" comics.

When it comes to protecting my personal data, I feel both organizationally and technologically handicapped. Of course, there is the Data Protection Act (DPA), which applies mostly to countries of the western world, but how would that actually protect my personal data?

In a BI Advisor I wrote back in February 2004, I said that increased use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology would lead to new analytic applications for supply-chain analysis and operational business intelligence (BI). (See, " BI and Radio Frequency Identification," 3 February 2004.)

It's been part of programmers' training since the earliest days:

What does it mean to govern for enterprise security or, stated differently, to govern an organization to achieve and sustain an acceptable or adequate level of security?

Our definition of governing for enterprise security (GES) is

In my previous Advisor (" Align IT Strategies for Delivering Right Business Value: Setting the Ground Rules," 20 July 2005), I discussed setting ground rules to establish and manage IT alignment initiatives and shared my observations from the practice. In this Advisor, I focus on the concepts relevant to developing strategies.