How do you identify the technologies most likely to keep your company growing and profitable? The explosion in technology has changed the way you buy and apply technology, and has forever changed expectations about how technology can influence your connectivity to customers, suppliers, and employees.

Distributed computing has been a seductive, but mostly elusive, ideal for the computing industry for many decades. Lower costs and reduced dependence on central systems are two reasons why the idea of distributing processing and data out into the field where they are actually used have been attractive to many companies.

How do you educate your workers, managers, and executives? Given the pace of technology change, the assaults on traditional organizational structures (which require all of us to rethink our jobs and what we need to succeed), and the perishability of business models, education is quite a challenge.

Many businesses are offering goods and services on the Internet or are making proprietary information available to others. But not all of these companies realize that offering such services on the Internet or any other large network has massive security implications that can dramatically affect their bottom line.

This area of alignment -- organization -- is about as tricky as they come. In fact, it's probably the most politically charged alignment area we address. Whenever there's even a rumor of organizational change, everyone's radar immediately goes up.

With the enormous interest in e-business, both within the IT industry and on Wall Street, every organization is looking at redefining itself into an e-business, or at least developing an e-business strategy. This report looks at the key ingredients in defining and implementing a successful e-business solution.

Either you've jumped on the outsourcing bandwagon or you haven't -- yet. If you haven't, you're no doubt sweating where you're going to find the right talent, at the right price, and how you're going to leverage IT onto your strategic business objectives.

This is the third report by Michael Guttman and Jason Matthews that is focused on migrating to enterprise component computing. In Vol. 1, No. 1, they began describing the processes and best practices that companies routinely follow to make successful transitions.

Funding strategy is essential to your business-IT alignment success. If you mishandle this element of alignment, you'll have a tough time digging yourself out of chaos. Without a clear, unambiguous funding strategy, you referee more often than you navigate. It's essential that you get a good handle on what you spend, who spends it, who is responsible, and how you pay the IT bills in your organization.

In the Vol. 1, No. 1 and Vol. 2, No. 3 Executive Reports, Senior Consultants Michael Guttman and Jason Matthews discussed a general methodology for transitioning companies from conventional approaches to application development and moving to a distributed, component-based approach.

Everyone hates to measure. Of course, that's an oversimplification of the world's feelings about data collection and analysis, but it does represent how many of us feel about the return on measurement investments.

IT managers know that developing good software is hard. It is even harder to coordinate business requirements and software development. As companies begin to transition from more conventional ways of architecting applications to distributed, component-based designs, this process is likely to become even harder.

On a normal day, you'll hear all sorts of arguments for and against standardization. Some of the "crazies" think that chaos should prevail, that there's no need for desktops to look the same or for everyone to use the same databases. Others think that complete control is necessary, even to the point of removing the A drives from PCs.

This report is the second in a series of four installments that examines how companies should approach their enterprise-wide transition from traditional computing to component computing, a critical transition that most large organizations will make in the coming decade.

Not too long ago, you could relegate your infrastructure design, development, and support to a back-office team that knew how to support the mainframe-based applications residing comfortably in your corporate data center. When you bought computers, it was with confidence -- and probably from the same vendor who sold you the last five machines.

This report provides an overview of some of the issues and options facing managers when they consider how to structure their corporate architectures for distributed component-based computing.

Many companies find that security is one of the areas most difficult to align with business strategy. Why is it so tricky? Because it's new technology applied to new (and therefore not well-understood) requirements that are constantly changing. How many distributed applications did you have five years ago? How many e-commerce applications did you have last year?

This report provides IT managers with a context in which to consider the database options they face when planning to develop a distributed application.

You've spent a fortune on databases, data analyses, and data warehouses -- all that stuff -- and what do you have to show for all that cash? Chances are you've been spending without a clear plan. There are a number of decisions you have to make going forward -- decisions that can cost you a little or a lot.

There's a pretty good chance that your applications portfolio is not what it should be. It's probably got a hodge-podge of applications developed over the past 20 years or so that require some form of life support to exist! You've probably got applications that are host-based, some client-server applications, and some Internet applications that are driving your e-business strategy.

The accompanying report is the first in a series that will examine how companies should approach their enterprise wide transition from "traditional computing" to "component computing." In our view, this is one of the most critical transitions most organizations will make in the next decade.

"Alignment" is the same dream - or should be - of CFOs, CEOs, CIOs, and CTOs. As the cost of computing rises and the volatility of the marketplace grows, everyone is living the pipe dream of cost-effective information technology (IT) perfectly consistent with strategic, tactical, and operational business objectives.