"But, Monsieur Jeff," Francois implored. "Surely French wine will not present a problem for you."

I've been involved with a company attempting to straighten out a decision support system it developed to streamline its software sales, marketing, and customer support operations.

Software development is increasingly object-oriented (OO). Java is an OO language. The latest version of Visual Basic and Microsoft's new C# are also OO languages. And components and various component techniques rely on object techniques. Thus, Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) application servers are also OO programming environments. The popular press may prefer to dismiss objects and focus on components, but serious software developers know that object technologies, in one guise or another, now dominate software development and architectural designs.

The goal of gathering data to establish a baseline of IT activities should be to answer some clear-cut questions. These questions should then provide a roadmap for future updates to the baseline. The questions might include:

I continue to come across articles and marketing material pushing the idea that maybe companies don't really need to build and maintain data warehouses anymore due to data brokering products such as those from Enterworks or Metagon.

The recent malaise in the tech sector has numerous causes and consequences, and many of these are not easy to sort out. It is a difficult time for sense making. A metaphor I've used a lot lately is from auto racing.

In the early 1990s it was fashionable to talk about object reuse. In recent years it has been more fashionable to talk of component reuse. In either case, there has been a movement from storing and reusing smaller objects and components to the storage and reuse of large modules -- usually called business objects or components.

Responses to Cutter Consortium's E-Business and Technology survey indicate that the number and size of e-projects are growing rapidly; the average duration was 11 months, and typical staffing levels were 20-40.

Forget most of the hype you've read or heard about intelligent robots and artificial intelligence (AI) since the release of Steven Spielberg's movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence.

There will be a lot written about the fact that the US Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated the decision, made last year by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, to break up Microsoft. Aside from the circuit court being upset with Judge Jackson for talking to the press, in essence telling them how upset he was with Microsoft, the decision focuses on three things:

Many organizations have come to the conclusion that outsourcing can decrease costs and improve internal and external levels of service. They also believe that outsourcing noncore activities enables them to concentrate on what they do best and that outsourcing therefore is a desirable way to encourage organizational success.

The first wave of wireless applications will focus on business intelligence, according to Cutter Consortium.