This month's installment of Cutter Benchmark Review is the second in our annual series on trends and technologies for the coming year. But before we move on to talk about this issue and the findings in it, let me take a minute to pat the CBR crew on the back -- after all, what better time than the first issue of the year to do so! I readily admit that I am not very comfortable tooting my own horn: I staunchly subscribe to the notion that you should let others tell you that your work is good, rather than go around proselytizing about it yourself ("proselytizing"... I start self-praising, and I begin to throw out erudite and smart sounding words -- what have we come to!). The truth is that there is a big team behind every issue of CBR, and I am only the frontman of this band. However, since I hold the microphone, it falls on me to thank the many players and sing the praises of the group.

As faithful readers of CBR well know, we strive to pick timely topics, get fresh data on them, and present our readers with actionable guidelines and practical ideas to bring back to their company. In-depth analyses and multiple perspectives are the backbone of every issue.

With that as a goal, I have to say that 2006 was a great year for us! We have been very good at choosing the hot topics to focus on (here comes the unabashedly self-praising bit). As I reviewed the contributions to this issue and the technologies and trends that seem to be either emerging or gaining strength for 2007, I kept grinning profusely and thinking, "Yep, we did an issue on that!" In 2006, we did issues on IS alignment (November), virtual teaming and working across distances (July), the impending skills crises and labor shortage (December), service-oriented architecture (October), and the biggest one these days: IT innovation (May). If our contributors are right as to what the big trends coming up are -- and I think they are -- then get your hands on those back issues! And with issues coming up on Web 2.0 (February), developing IT talent (March), and the potential value of massive multiplayer games for modern organizations (April), I think you'll want to stick with your subscription for 2007!

In fact, the Cutter office recently ran a survey to get your feedback on the value of CBR. The results came back extremely positive (academics would say that we have triangulation of results), and we thank you for the continued support and faith in what we do here. Thus, I am not delusional, like some of those guys that put their cover of popular songs on YouTube -- the fastest way to appreciate a pro is to listen to jamming amateurs! The fact that the pros make something look easy does not mean that it is.

OK, enough violin playing and horn tooting, let's get on with this month's issue already! As stated, this is our second annual issue in which we ask our contributors to look forward to the incoming year and see what technologies and IT trends we can expect to endure, which ones are emerging, and which ones seem to be losing steam. In this issue, for the first time, we have the ability to do some trending and comparisons with last year's survey results. While two data points are not enough for serious trend analyses, comparing this year's and last year's results offered our contributors some interesting food for thought and insight.

In this issue, we drew on one returning contributor and one fresh one. Our academic contributor is Dennis Adams, Professor and Chair of the Decision and Information Sciences Department at the University of Houston (USA). Dennis has been a staple with CBR, being involved in both our yearly IT trends and IT budgeting issues. His counterpart on the practice side this time is Jeroen van Tyn, a Senior Consultant with Cutter Consortium's Enterprise Architecture practice.

Dennis's contribution begins with an introduction about the general trends we have been experiencing since the economic recovery started. He then dives into the survey data, organizing his comments around the major components of the survey: technology, architectures, compliance, staffing and labor trends, innovation, and business intelligence. Based on his reading of the data and his own experience, Dennis points to the renewed importance of alignment -- and its incarnation in enterprise architecture development efforts. He also echoes concerns we pointed to last month about labor issues and looming staffing difficulties for IT shops.

Jeroen dives right into the data in his contribution and adjusts his analysis to limit the impact of respondents in computer consulting and management consulting/accounting consulting. You need to keep in mind that possible discrepancies in the results between the two contributions may depend on the different data sets used -- even though it appears that results hold pretty steady across the two. I found Jeroen's insight and no-nonsense writing style very useful and appealing. I think his conclusions are a must-read for anyone engaging in or preparing for SOA implementations and for those of you who need some ammunition to bring the increasing hype around innovation down a notch -- without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I hope that you will find this issue of Cutter Benchmark Review both useful and invigorating -- a good start to the new year. I also hope that you will agree that we have identified key trends and provided useful fodder for you to evaluate what technologies and IT trends your organization should bet on in 2007.

Best wishes for a productive and rewarding year from all of us at CBR!