A new concept has entered the BI space: "enterprise decision management" (EDM). EDM refers to the application of rule-based systems -- in conjunction with analytic models -- to automate, improve, and distribute decision-making capabilities across an organization.

Governance mandates such as Sarbox, the events of 9/11 and their aftermath, along with the continuing uncertainty of the business-economic environment, have made it compulsory for corporations to rethink their approaches to identifying and managing risk. The need for effective enterprise risk management and governance (ERM&G) has never been greater or more urgent.

What trends do we see in the education of next-generation technology professionals? What should we see?

Agile Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) relies on constructing executable models (for more on Agile MDA, see Cutter IT E-Mail Advisor, 31 March 2004). Without execution you cannot be agile, and without models you can hardly claim to be model driven.

Customer demographics and consumer marketing data vendor Acxiom Corporation has expanded its operations into China by acquiring ChinaLOOP -- a Chinese BI, customer relationship management (CRM), and data management firm based in Shanghai, China.

I spent a day this past week at DCI's Enterprise Architecture Conference in San Diego, California, USA. It was a pleasant conference, with a cheerful crowd in spite of an unseasonable light rain in San Diego. I spoke on day three, but was apparently sounding themes that others had already made, since I encountered less resistance than I expected.

When you write about trends in software, you quickly realize that software ideas go through cycles and count their lives in years. They don't necessary die within a few years, but are more likely simply set aside like some senile grandparent that everyone ignores.

The time has come for IT leaders to plan for their next generation of supported remote Internet access, particularly as more mainstream end users are increasingly likely to attempt to use one or more of the various connection options, raising the probability of security lapses, creating new support issues, and increasing the cost of inaction.

I've been hearing more and more about companies forming data integration competency centers (ICCs) in an effort to get a handle on their overall integration needs. What's fueling this trend is an increasingly competitive business environment, a proliferation of data, compliance issues, and an ever-growing demand for data integration capabilities across the enterprise.