Since 9/11, enormous effort has been devoted to answering one basic question: "Why can't our intelligence agencies share critical information?" Indeed, following the attacks, various commissions and public agencies have devoted a large percentage of their time to solving the information-sharing problem.

Tipping points are hard to recognize until well after the fact. But if you look closely, patterns start to emerge that indicate that the information security tipping point is coming or possibly has been reached already.

Recently, and more often than before, IT executives are asking me whether business and IT alignment must be a strategic initiative across the enterprise or whether it can be treated on a case-by-case basis for individual organizations. Companies are much more open to exploring new avenues for defining their business and IT approach.

For the past several months, I have commented on various open source business intelligence (BI) developments. One open source BI company I have not covered is JasperSoft Corporation.