[Excerpted from an article in the September 1992 Cutter IT Journal (formerly American Programmer).]

How do we think about vendors? Let me count the ways....

I've recently read a series of articles on Linux desktop options, on Sun's Java Desktop, and on Apple as an alternative desktop. Most of the articles compared OS functionality and the cost per user. What most of the writers don't seem to understand is that, for most of us, a desktop OS is simply the platform on which we run the Microsoft Office suite.

Managing risk is one of the keys to success in an outsourcing arrangement, and companies use many control mechanisms to manage risk in outsourcing deals. These control mechanisms can range from full-scale contract offices, project management offices, metrics, scorecard reporting, audits, CMMI assessments, and onsite oversight teams, or any combination of these.

Anyone who is around me very long will hear about one of my favorite books: Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn . I reference the book in my design and architecture classes as a way to focus on what people do with the things we build.

There's a lot of interest in business process improvement at the moment, and much of it is focused on the hope that software tools can be used to organize and control the execution of business processes. Products designed to facilitate the analysis and runtime management of processes are typically called business process management (BPM) tools or suites.

Portfolio management is the set of processes and techniques that allow an enterprise to define and manage its portfolio of applications, assets, and projects. Simplifying, the difference between IT portfolio management, EA, and IT management can be characterized as follows:

It is expected that the scope of an outsourcing relationship will evolve over the lifetime of the contract. Good scope management benefits both the buyer and the provider: the buyer receives all the services at the appropriate service level that it contracted for without overpaying, and the service provider performs only the services it has been contracted to do without giving away work.

Have you ever encountered a project failure? Project management research suggests that many projects would qualify as failures. Most statistics clearly imply that things are not getting any better and failures are commonplace.

Offshore IT outsourcing started with Y2K and applications software work and has expanded in the last few years to include business processes like HR and accounting and IT-enabled services, such as contact centers and related customer support services.