Artificial intelligence (AI) in all its various forms — machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), speech recognition, cognitive systems, intelligent agents, chatbots, and robotics — is generating intense interest across every industry — from consumer electronics, banking, and finance to automotive, insurance, healthcare, government, aerospace, big pharma, retail, and manufacturing.

If electric cars and trucks are the vehicles of the future, then that already suggests a massive change in the industrial infrastructure — new modes of manufacturing, new modes of refueling and repair, and, perhaps, new roads. Given the key role of autos in society, such a transition will be a major story. However, it is really only a small part of the changes facing the automobile industry. As we explore in this Executive Update, other technological changes in the auto industry include: self-driving cars, intelligent auto production processes, and cars as entertainment centers.

Researching and writing about the digital backbone has strengthened my initial thesis of the concept due to an overwhelming response to the research and from opportunities to engage with audiences worldwide on the topic. In this Executive Update, I’d like to share some of my own discoveries and insights from conversations with CEOs, chief architects, CIOs, market and sales leaders, as well as innovation leaders across many industries and geographies — what I refer to as my “digital backbone learning lab.”

This Executive Update proposes a five-layer customer engagement stack — running from customer dissatisfaction through customer satisfaction, customer delight, customer success, and finally partnership. The maturity level of an engagement between a service provider and a customer is a function of the attitude of the people working with the service provider and the perception formed by the customer.

In this Executive Update, we explore how digital technologies will play a pivotal role in driving superior passenger experience as well as operational excellence in the journey toward smarter, safer, greener, more secure, and more sustainable airports of the future.

This Executive Update focuses on surveyed organizations’ use of in-house developers versus outside specialists for blockchain development efforts as well as a general overview of open source and commercial vendor blockchain platforms.

This Executive Update examines the use cases surveyed organizations indicate as being most viable for applying blockchain technology.

This Executive Update highlights several areas where European initiatives are helping to guide, bolster, and reinforce the structure of the cloud market toward one that encourages healthy competition. These are specialist frameworks and services that address very specific market requirements and remove friction in the adoption of cloud services. 

This Executive Update outlines a roadmap for big data adoption based on the Big Data Framework for Agile Business (BDFAB). My last two Updates on big data strategies addressed overcoming the big data strategy lacuna and the importance of extracting the 5th “V” for value from big data. This Update builds on my previous two by demonstrating how organizations can adopt big data.

Customer journeys, value chains, value streams, and business processes are four organiza­tional views that tend to bring about questions and confusion. On the surface, each of these artifacts may appear to have some similar elements, such as the business vocabulary they use or the fact that they represent some concept of “flow.” However, as this Executive Update clarifies, all four views differ in both intention and representation and thus should be clearly differentiated from each other.     

As we discuss in this Executive Update, the risks in the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) market must be mitigated to avoid market failure and deliver a stable cloud computing market.

This Executive Update continues from where I left off in Part V by examining more domains and industries where blockchain technology will have the most significant impact.

In this Executive Update, Cutter Senior Consultant Whynde Kuehn highlights some of her responses to a recent Q&A session from a webinar and expands on some key aspects of successful business architecture practices.

Several kinds of architectural assets help connect the enterprise. In this Executive Update, we focus on the conceptual reference model, which provides the foundation needed for any “connection” architecture, capability, or project.

This Executive Update offers some advice on the scoping, implementation, and scaling of the digital backbone, drawing on the lessons the author has learned from his work with transformational change in technology organizations.

In this Executive Update, we look at the most beloved companies and their best practices. We end with a list of questions you can ask about how to improve your customers’ experiences. We also discuss the role that vertical industry location, profit margins by industry, government regulation, and competition play in the customer experience management process to provide context to the explanation and management of customer experiences.

The emergence of CX design as a key discipline practiced by many organizations has opened up some questions about how it relates to business architecture. This Executive Update provides an overview of the benefits and integration points between CX design and business architecture, two mutually beneficial disciplines, both critical to customer centricity and transformation. 

This Executive Update highlights the importance of V for value in big data strategies. The discussion also explores how the adoption of big data is more than using technologies or undertaking analytics.

Cloud service providers (CSPs) are a new breed of IT service provider, popular around the world and across industries, and so the regulatory spotlight is shining on them more as they acquire larger enterprise customers in regulated industries.

If we believe AI to be a threat to our civilization, it must introduce some substantial risk that is different from the risks that we are already exposed to. Does AI really introduce a new risk? Do machines that incorporate AI pose a threat to human existence? This Executive Update attempts to answer that question.

This Executive Update centers on recent Cutter survey findings pertaining to the domains and industries where blockchain technology will have the most significant impact.

This article continues our focus on the creation of a digital backbone. The existence of a digital backbone in an organization means that anyone aspiring and planning to transform different parts of the enterprise will be able to leverage the digital backbone in a consistent and sustainable way, ensuring that each transformation effort connects and leverages a common platform. Digital transformation leaders are now starting to realize that a strategy for digital talent is a crucial element of the overall plans to digitalize the enterprise.

This final Update in a four-part series on business architecture peers into the future, considering business architecture’s foundational role in establishing the cognitive enterprise.

In this Executive Update, we look at the current innovative champs and their best practices. We end with a list of questions you can ask yourselves about what and how to innovate. While your corporate culture and senior management team may be stuck in the old ways of innovation, at least you’ll know how today’s best innovators do what they do.

Agile battles significant challenges with management. Managers crave and need predictability, but Agile practitioners are adamant that firm predictions are impossible. Recognizing the need and difficulty of resolving this dilemma, we have formed a company that delivers services to facilitate the right conversations and decisions among the Agile team, its manager, and its stakeholders. Our services recognize that the solution entails dealing with probability. This, in turn, requires a combination of fast and slow thinking.