In 1972, Oliver Wight wrote the book The Executive's New Computer: Six Keys to Systems Success. It is literally dedicated to the proposition that "systems are tools for the manager, not toys for the technician ... and it is about time we dispensed with all the pious nonsense about computer systems and got down to business" [2].

A company can grow revenue in three basic ways: (1) by stimulating sales of existing products through improved pricing and promotion; (2) by acquiring new business lines or entire companies; and (3) by increasing overall sales through the introduction of new products.

Two powerful information-processing systems exist in the world: the human mind and the digital computer. The main connection between the two is the display of information, commonly called a user interface (UI).

In this Executive Update, I'd like to take you on a journey into a world where risk and opportunity are synonymous and good project managers (PMs) are routinely asked to believe at least four impossible things before breakfast (to paraphrase the Red Queen from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass).

Editor's note: This Executive Update is excerpted from the Software Engineering Institute's Governing for Enterprise Security (©2005 Carnegie Mellon University). Permission has been granted to Cutter Consortium to reproduce.

With the paramount importance of technology in the postindustrial era, outsourcing inevitably creates a strategic partnering relationship as the organization and its suppliers acknowledge greater levels of interdependence. As running and maintaining the arrangement is an ongoing collaborative process that requires working as a team, the parties need to be acting in concert.

As if our current buzzwords had already run their course, or we didn't have enough to last us, a new buzzword has hit the enterprise architecture and application scene. "Applistructure" describes the latest trend to combine enterprise business applications with enterprise infrastructure.