"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

Products and processes are probably the most demanding components in enterprise architecture when it comes to involvement of large numbers of decision makers, designers, analysts, and architects who are highly experienced, knowledgeable, and skilled.

Over the past 15-plus years, the Web has proven to be the quintessential delivery vehicle for enterprise applications. Instead of delivering native desktop clients with additional infrastructure to handle updates, versioning, and ensure privacy and security, the Web browser is an IT manager's deployment shell. It's guaranteed to exist on every OS platform and the Web itself is the deployment infrastructure.

Thierry de Baillon, in a challenging blog, talks about "organizational redefinition and the pocket calculator." In this context, unleashing the power of horizontal networking inside and across organizations represents a promising answer to some of the toughest chal

Last month, I said that the biggest challenge facing traditional enterprises seeking to implement Hadoop applications is not a lack of suitable tools, but a shortage of skilled personnel knowledgeable in implementing the technology into corporate IT environments (see "Talent Shor

In olden days, folks made a distinction between labor and work. Men and women did work. Work served both heaven and earth; ennobling workers, carrying on the culture, and pleasing God. Brutes (sometimes human) did labor, which required only force.

Agility is far too precious to be treated only as a software development method. Instead, it plays a significant role in rendering an entire organization agile.

Abstraction is one of the fundamental concepts of architecture. Wikipedia defines abstraction as: “a process or result of generalization, removal of properties, or distancing of ideas from objects.

For the past 20-plus years, the Web has been based on a document-centric model, despite recent workarounds to provide enterprise-quality applications, new types of user experiences, and multimedia and real-time capabilities. With a renewed focus on applications, programming interfaces, enhanced graphics, offline behavior, and modern communications, the Web is entering its next phase of life. Today's Web has become a standardized, programmatic framework for developers to create exciting, active applications.

Mainstream organizations don't want to just use Hadoop in a standalone manner. They want to integrate the insights discovered with Hadoop into their data warehousing and BI environments.

Cutter Business Technology Strategies Director Ron Blitstein, Piet Ribbers, and I are working toward a book on the characteristics of successful and effective relationships between IT and business organizations and their managers.

Business resilience has become increasingly important in the wake of an unusual period of natural disasters around the globe, and new technologies and organizational models have yielded improved capabilities to move forward in the face of any disaster.

In my last Advisor ("Cloud Architecture: Leveraging Strategies, Blueprints, and Roadmaps -- What's Different Today?"), I shared some common chal

[From the Editor: This week's Advisor is from Cutter Senior Consultant Jim Love's introduction to the May 2012 issue of Cutter IT Journal, "The Consumerization of IT: Blessing or Curse?" (Vol

The good news for mainstream organizations that want to conduct Big Data analysis using Hadoop is that a lack of comprehensive, supported environments no longer remains the most significant barrier to adoption.

Information technology in the modern large enterprise is becoming increasingly expensive. With new IT systems going online every week and an ever-increasing range of products and systems flowing into the enterprise, there is a vital need for a governance structure to control the amount and quality of IT systems on which the business is based.

"How agile are we?" is one of the frequent questions we -- and probably most agile consultants -- get asked.

If you recall the tale, our young heroine Goldilocks had to choose from three beds. One was too hard, one was too soft, and the third was just right. I think we can draw an important analogy with architectural governance:

Collaboration, like all human interactions, can indeed be like a game. But this game is played for very high stakes. The future of our companies and our careers -- the standard of living we enjoy -- are all based on our ability to not just play the game, but to change the game. You can build a true culture of collaboration, despite the barriers.

Open source software (as I am sure you know) is software that can be freely copied, modified, and redistributed, either in its original or derived form, for sale or for free. There are many variations in open source licenses defining the conditions for these activities, but those are the core issues.

Do we have a common, coherent view of the distinctive mission and subject matter of the academic and professional "IT" field? Does this make it difficult to effectively communicate our role to the business and to the people who work for us?

When adopting agile, many teams focus on specific agile techniques and methods and lose track of the values that motivate agile software development. These values are described in the Agile Manifesto:

With the explosive growth in mobile payments, security becomes a paramount concern. Increasingly, the security focus is turning to biometrics. Biometrics facilitate the automatic authentication of a living person based on his or her unique physiological or behavioral characteristics. Common physical biometrics include fingerprints; hand or palm geometry; retina, iris, or ear shape; or facial characteristics. Behavioral characteristics include signature, voice, and gait. Of this class of biometrics, technologies for signature and voice are the most developed.

There are those lucky few: the ones who strive, thrive, and succeed in spite of the chaos and confusion in the ever-changing landscape of IT. For the rest of us, senior executives need to be mindful of what environment is best suited in helping emerging leaders grow. It's not complex to create an environment conducive to supporting and developing leadership, but nor is it easy given the unique nature of the IT industry.

Back in October, Oracle acquired Endeca. Last week, IBM announced it is buying Vivisimo.