In this Executive Update, Greenwich Associates' Curtis Ehrgott describes the company's move from legacy systems to three-tier architecture and Web-based distributed systems. Greenwich Associates is a privately held financial services consulting firm that conducts proprietary market research and consults to providers of commercial financial services.

In this Executive Update, Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Michael Mah discusses the alignment issues involved with creating and maintaining relationships between corporations and outsourcers. Mah works with clients to help them establish business agreements that lower the risks involved with outsourcing and to help them resolve outsourcing disputes without resorting to litigation.

Very often, I see an overall corporate misalignment. Often, there are really two companies: a senior management company and the rest of the company. The IT people get stuck in the middle.

In this Executive Update, Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Michael Mah discusses the alignment issues involved with creating and maintaining relationships between corporations and outsourcers. Mah works with clients to help them establish business agreements that lower the risks involved with outsourcing and to help them resolve outsourcing disputes without resorting to litigation.

This Executive Update is the second in a two-part series containing excerpts from a panel discussion on business-IT alignment (see Executive Update, July 1999, No. 2).

This is the final Executive Update in a three-part series on customer service management (CSM). In previous updates (April 1999, No. 2 and June 1999, No. 1), we discussed how customers were not recognizing "best efforts" support as satisfactory in terms of quality and cost.

The Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing (RM-ODP) is an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard. It offers precise concepts and constructs useful in defining complementary views of business and information systems issues clearly, concisely, and with no ambiguity.

This Executive Update is the first of a two-part series containing excerpts from a panel discussion on business-IT alignment. The discussion followed a presentation on adaptive software development that took place at Summit '99, Cutter Consortium's annual conference for IT professionals, which was held in April in Boston.

This Executive Update is the first of a two-part series containing excerpts from a panel discussion on business-IT alignment. The discussion followed a presentation on adaptive software development that took place at Summit '99, Cutter Consortium's annual conference for IT professionals, which was held in April in Boston.

In the April 1999, No. 2 Executive Update, which focused on customer service management (CSM), we discussed the increasing pressure on IT distributed support services. Despite the fact that support personnel are working harder and longer, their efforts go largely unnoticed. The solution is to establish service levels and report on them so that customers and IT support can get on the same page.

We are all familiar with stories of companies that introduce breakthrough technologies in anticipation of major performance gains, only to see the new technologies falter almost before they get started. The reason is often a mystery.

A number of studies continue to show that business-IT alignment is a top issue for CIOs. Statistics on alignment indicators from the Cutter Consortium Business-IT Alignment survey suggest that CIOs have good reason to be concerned.

Table 1 summarizes the statistics discussed in this article.

A number of studies continue to show that business-IT alignment is a top issue for CIOs. Statistics on alignment indicators from the Cutter Consortium Business-IT Alignment survey suggest that CIOs have good reason to be concerned.

Table 1 summarizes the statistics discussed in this article.

In this Executive Update, Senior Consultant Stowe Boyd, one of Cutter Consortium's experts on business knowledge and information technology, discusses knowledge management and its potential effect on business-IT alignment.

An interview with Maxwell Hughes, Senior Consultant, Business-IT Alignment Advisory Service

The new baseball season is here, and most of us (even those without much knowledge about the sport) could probably select the teams that will finish at the bottom of the standings. You know the ones -- they have few fans, when they do something right their efforts are usually not appreciated, everyone thinks they cost too much, and there are frequent rumors that the franchise may be moved to another city.

The water is getting muddy -- the application delivery water that is. Actually, the water is more than muddy, it's turbulent. Turbulence, at least in river rafting, makes things exciting.

In this Executive Update, Senior Consultant Chris Pickering, one of the Cutter Consortium's experts on the effective use of information technology, discusses the latest trends in the "culture war" between business and IT and dispels the myth of central planning.

Q. What kind of cultural issues are you seeing lately?