Security is a growing requirement facing companies opening their systems to the Internet. Security experts say that companies are just beginning to understand the implications of allowing outside entities past their firewall using broadband and other emerging technologies. The following questions help determine how well your security strategy is aligned with business requirements.

A number of recent academic papers have attempted to apply real options to software design. Real options is the application of mathematical models from the world of financial options to real or non-financial assets. Because software developers lack a correct and intuitively comfortable way to value their projects, academics believe real options can help.

This is the second in a series of three Advisors on software architecture (see " Software Architecture: A Bill of Goods? Part 1," 28 April 2004).

Let's continue with the conversation we began in " Up the Down Leadership Staircase" (Trends E-Mail Advisor, 8 April 2004) about what technology leadership will require in the early 21st century (and perhaps a lot longer).

I remember when the idea of using the Internet and the Web as marketing and sales channels first became popular in 1997. For a couple of years you could hardly read any magazine without wading through stories on how the Internet and the Web were going to remake business. In fact, I wrote some of those articles.