Has the push for corporate governance and enterprise risk management gone too far? Some think so, and a small but growing backlash against excessive governance and risk management is starting to build.

I have just finished attending a number of events around the world on software development. Many of these events are organized by tool developers such as Microsoft or IBM. Each vendor is trying to tell us that teams will deliver better software if we use a certain set of tools.

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.