Most non-IT people hate the IT department. With very few exceptions, IT is seen as a selfish and unresponsive organization that is decoupled from the operations of the business and is a significant obstacle to organizational success. At best, IT is seen as a necessary evil. This may seem harsh, but it is the truth!

Regardless of how comprehensive and airtight their contract is or how much due diligence is done upfront, customers and providers in an outsourcing relationship expect problems and issues to arise. Despite attempts to define all conditions and account for all eventualities, outsourcing relationships are open-ended arrangements subject to numerous external forces and catalysts for change.

In my previous Advisor (" Business Intelligence Trends in 2004," 6 January 2004), I commented on some of the more interesting business intelligence (BI) developments and trends I see taking place in 2004. I also asked for your comments and suggestions as to other important trends for the new year.

The Object Management Group (OMG) continues to work on its Model Driven Architecture (MDA) standard. There are a number of ways to describe MDA. From the OMG's perspective, it's a set of specifications. From a vender perspective, those specifications are potential products. And from a user's perspective, some of the MDA products can prove very valuable.

Your business model is the manner in which you charge customers for your products or services -- the way you make money. Associated with every software business model is a license model, which is made up of the terms and conditions (or rights and restrictions) that you grant to a user and/or customer of your software as defined by your business model.

Happy New Year!

The year 2003 is drawing to a close. It hasn't been an exciting year from an economic perspective. Most companies are just beginning to feel some new economic energy and are only starting to plan what they might do if they were to spend some money. On the other hand, standards groups and research efforts have advanced a lot in the past two years and companies have many options.

In a previous Advisor (see " Five Big Questions," 4 December 2003), I suggested that executives and professionals looking at launching big new projects ought to ask themselves five big questions:

[Today's Sourcing and Vendor Relationships E-Mail Advisor excerpts the Cutter Consortium Executive Report " Outsourcing your Business Intelligence: Maximize Impact and Minimize Investment." We chose it because we are sure you'll find this a thought-provoking piece on business intelligence activities as candidates for outsourcing.]