With the Internet changing how companies interact at every level, establishing an e-business consortium, or e-consortium, is a growing priority for numerous industries. The goal of an e-consortium can vary, but it typically revolves around a group of companies in a given industry that wish to collectively leverage the Internet to improve some aspect of their business.

As companies begin creating and implementing enterprise application integration (EAI) solutions, they are finally realizing the true importance of sound architecture practices. There is no magic recipe for implementing EAI solutions. Rather, EAI requires a successful combination of multiple concurrent technology initiatives, and, like the proverbial chain, it is only as strong as its weakest link.

As companies get swept up in the rush to become an e-business, it's important to remember that distributed computing has been around for a long time. In some cases, a slight change in a technology results in a new name. For example, before 1990, companies selling tools that generated software applications from structured diagrams referred to their products as CASE tools.

Lucky organizations get it right the first time. Wise organizations learn from their experiences and get it right the next time. Really clever organizations learn not only from their own experiences, but from other organizations in similar situations. Organizations responding to the Cutter Consortium Outsourcing Survey provide useful lessons on where to expect the greatest difficulties in an outsourcing arrangement.

The latest statistics from the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) show that the number of Capability Maturity Model (CMM) software assessments is rising and that more software development organizations are attaining higher maturity levels than ever before.

Software metrics is one of those great ideas that just never seems to take hold. It certainly has vociferous advocates, and it is mandatory for Level 2 certification on the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model. Software metrics is available as dashboards, scorecards, and instrument panels. There are plenty of qualified consultants ready to help would-be users, but it just hasn't caught on.

The 1970s and 1980s saw the widespread adoption of database management systems (DBMS). Based on a seemingly simple -- and now obvious -- principle of the separation of creating, retrieving, updating, deleting, and managing data from the various application programs that used the data, at the time, DBMS proved to be a disruptive technology.

Contrasting with the enthusiastic e-business hype found in the popular press, several recent studies have suggested that large companies are moving toward e-business development rather slowly.

When an Olympic diver steps out onto the 10-meter high platform during a competition, she knows the dive she will execute, its degree of difficulty, and the body movements she needs to accomplish to pull it off. The elapsed time from her leap off the diving platform to entry into the water is only a few seconds.

Through the Olympics project in Australia, there have been many opportunities to learn about project management, deliverables, teams, sourcing, and myriad other issues. The project activities and their outcomes will culminate in approximately one million extra people being accommodated in Sydney every day for nearly three weeks.

One of the "megatrends" proposed by the Cutter Technology Council is a manifestation of the "dark side" of IT systems development: projects fail, and the developer and customer sue each other for the costs incurred. Or the key developer quits unexpectedly, taking along large chunks of proprietary code.

Outsourcing customers and providers usually enter into outsourcing relationships with noble intentions and high expectations. The CIO and other customer executives look forward to exemplary service, best-of-breed thinking, extraordinary responsiveness, and a vendor that shows both a partner-like caring about the customer's success and an intuitive understanding of the business.

Whether new to outsourcing or well indoctrinated in working with IT vendors, you may find yourself in a situation where your outsourcing process itself -- planning for, procuring, and implementing vendor services -- needs help. A recent Cutter Consortium Outsourcing Survey indicates that more than one-third of outsourcing organizations surveyed use outside help to support their vendor engagements.

It's hard to pick up a business magazine or IT trade journal without being bombarded by articles on e-business, e-commerce, e-this, and e-that. It's not only the hot new thing, it seems to be the only thing that organizations are focusing on these days.

For at least a decade, surveys have consistently reported that the very top priority for CIOs and senior managers is that of aligning IT with the business.

Technical homogeneity produces a compelling pull on IT. Perhaps it harkens back to our mainframe roots -- the big mainframe, green-screen terminals, and COBOL programs were the essence of homogeneity. When viewed through contemporary glasses, that time seems to epitomize simplicity. There were no questions about which platform to use: COBOL was a given. The crux of the matter was to write programs.

In working with software organizations around the world, perhaps the most common complaint I hear is, "Our software projects take too long!" What they want to know is, "How can we reduce the elapsed time of software development?"; upon further questioning, it quickly becomes clear that what they really want is to reduce the elapsed time of software development projects without:

The economic case for business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce is overwhelming in its potential benefits. But as with every disruptive technology, there will be winners and losers. The early adopters are more likely to be the winners, particularly in those businesses subject to the "winner takes all" effect.

I probably read a half-dozen articles a week with the word middleware in the title or the first paragraph. Everyone who is interested in the technologies underlying the Internet, e-business, and distributed computing is interested in middleware. Middleware is made up of all the various software products and technologies that are used to link objects or modules on clients with objects or modules on servers.

"Companies that don't have an e-business strategy will be out of business in two years." "E-business is changing everything." "If you don't 'get' e-business, e-business will get you." Ad libitum. Ad infinitum. Ad nauseam.

In this Executive Update, I review some recent Cutter Consortium data on the commitment (or lack thereof) that IT organizations have made to component reuse and how they are implementing these commitments. This data is derived from the responses of 50 large organizations that Cutter surveyed during the past six months.

All of the traditional practices of project management, including estimating, scheduling, monitoring, risk analysis, contingency planning, change management, problem solving, and team building, apply to object technology and component-based development projects.

Software development, enhancement, and maintenance outsourcing arrangements are established on the basis of a contractual partnership, with both sides having a vested interest in the success of the business relationship. The measure of that success can be defined as the effective and efficient delivery of services for a fair market price.

They can be a bane or a benefit to outsourcing projects -- those oft-abused internal support functions of procurement, finance, legal, and human resources (HR). To some project managers, these support function groups mean valuable working hours spent for little return; yet those project managers that have experienced the benefits of these groups know that the value of the support is usually worth the investment.

It is hard to overemphasize the importance of communication to business-IT alignment. Without communication -- good communication -- all is lost. Business will follow its path, IT will follow its path, and ne'er the twain shall meet. With communication, the exchange of goals and ideas leads to mutual understanding, which provides the basis for coordinated business-IT plans. Since business-IT alignment can't even get off the ground without this step, there is no question that the importance of communication is of the highest order.