I don't know of many people who really thought 2002 was a great year. Throughout most of the year, those involved in high technology -- including hardware vendors, software vendors, and IT consultants -- struggled to survive. Many didn't. By the same token, the large companies that normally buy high-technology products have largely had a poor year as well. They had tight budgets and, in many cases, layoffs.

Continuing last week's discussion on creating the real-time enterprise (" The Real-Time Enterprise," 17 December 2002), I want to cover a new application that will play a key role in enabling the real-time enterprise: business activity monitoring (BAM).

"Conventional wisdom says to get back to basics. Conventional wisdom says to cut costs. Conventional wisdom is doomed. The winners are the innovators who are making bold thinking an everyday part of doing business."

In early December, IBM announced that it would acquire Rational Software for US $2.1 billion in cash.

There are many things that make projects and teams successful, but capability and commitment are two that I find especially important -- I call them the two Cs of success. For true success, you need both of these from all your team members! Let me explain through an example.

Last week, I attended the "Creating the Real-Time Enterprise" conference in San Francisco, California, USA. This new conference, hosted by DCI, covers a range of issues confronting any organization that is contemplating moving to "real time."

Last week (" AI in Bahrain," 4 December 2002), I talked about the draw achieved by a commercial chess program, Deep Fritz, against world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik in Bahrain and concluded that AI techniques are getting more powerful and easier to deploy. This week, I want to reinforce that point with a concrete business example.

The data from a recent Cutter Consortium study reveals that 55% of companies have modified their security processes since September 11.

Figure 1 -- Has your organization deployed an enterprise-wide security administration application since September 11?

Every so often, I'm reminded that I started writing about computing in the early 1980s and wrote primarily about artificial intelligence through most of that decade. Usually I think of it because I read of some new achievement by an AI system. In this case, I noticed that the current world champion chess master, Vladimir Kramnik, just achieved a draw with Deep Fritz, the current reigning chess program.