This week, I spoke with the folks from Composite Software about the latest version of the company's data virtualization1 platform, Composite Enterprise Information Server 6.0. Composite Software's latest version adds new source data integration capabilities to the mix of sources it can access and integrate.

Let's begin with the most basic of questions that senior executives are asking: "Why do we need or want a mobility strategy and, specifically, mobile applications for our existing and new customers and/or clients?" As one IT executive said, his challenge was convincing senior management that smartphones provide real business applications -- not just A

In the early era of Web commerce, the strategic goal for all Web producers was to achieve and maintain "stickiness" -- the ability to attract repeat visitors to the producer's site. The site-centric Web, for all its disruptive impact on industry, still seemed an awful lot like the physical world of commerce.

In the past, teams could tell project stakeholders that software debt existed, but it was difficult to describe where and how much. Teams would increase their estimates for features that used to seem simple because it meant making changes to areas of the code they knew were infested with software debt. In the worst situations, teams would recommend a full rewrite of an application because the software debt was too difficult to work around anymore.

The success of an IS project often depends less on the technical skill of your project team and more on your ability to understand, manage, and gain the support of a bewildering array of stakeholders that impact the project.

If we create a suitably accurate and comprehensive set of tests at the outset of the project -- tests for both performance and business functionality, the two primary reasons for project failure -- and apply those tests continually throughout the project, then the project can never fail on either basis.

Understanding, using, and representing a set of business capabilities for a business is challenging for many management teams. Establishing certain principles ("agreed-upon truths to guide our actions") streamlines efforts to understand, explain, define, map, and use capabilities for planning and executing business/IT transformation efforts. These 10 principles are:

A survey conducted by Cutter Consortium in February/March 2011 offers some insight into corporate spending plans for predictive analytics.1 Specifically, when asked, "Does your organization plan to increase or decrease spending on predictive analytics and data mining this year (i.e., 2011) compared to last year?" participants responded as shown in Figure 1.

Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless.

-- Thomas A. Edison

There was a recent story in USA Today about how venture capitalists have been pouring billions of dollars into startups that are targeting clean or "green" technologies, with billions more in investment on the horizon.1 The story noted that mainstream companies are investing billions in green technologies, too, as a way to save money and lower their social reputati

A colleague and I began talking and writing about energy informatics about three years ago as a result of a request from the Advanced Practices Council (APC) of the Society for Information Management (SIM) to make its members, typically CIOs, aware of developments in green IS.

Green, like greed, is good. With regards to sustainable IT, the two terms are often linked. After all, aren't all these improvements in virtualization and energy-efficient CPUs supposed to help reduce the energy consumption of IT and hence reduce the negative impact IT may have on the environment?

This week, in recognition of International Green IT Awareness Week, Cutter is addressing the topic of green or sustainable IT. The question I'll explore is how to take an architectural approach to going green. First, let me propose the following definitions1:

It's been increasingly evident over the past three to four years that "going green" is a business movement that is here to stay -- partly out of necessity as businesses struggle with increasing costs from fuel and energy. But also partly out of having an environmental conscious. Certainly organizations, publications, activist groups, and news stories are making the masses aware of our duties to help protect and preserve the world we live in.

The outsourcing relationship is an amorphous, ambiguous thing yet crucial to the success of the outsourcing initiative. Relationships must be established within and across the client and supplier organization -- and at every level. This is where middle managers (MMs), with their skills and experience, become key. Individuals can get in the way of outsourcing success.

Going "green" and conducting a well-thought-out sustainability program can affect an organization's operating efficiency and corporate reputation, both of which can positively impact its bottom line. BI has a major role to play in an organization's efforts to improve sustainability and do something positive for the planet.

In a global sense, intellectual property (IP) protection is both a help and a hindrance to innovation, and its role needs to be examined carefully. Protection helps where it provides the creator of a new idea with the means to capitalize upon that idea by the granting of a temporary monopoly.

As I reported in an earlier Advisor (see "An Enthusiastic Update on Kanban Adoption" 31 March 2011), Kanban is being adopted in all regions of the world.

General, that is a computer-enhanced hallucination!

-- Stephen Falken, Wargames (MGM, 1983)

General, that is a computer-enhanced hallucination!

-- Stephen Falken, Wargames (MGM, 1983)

A colleague and I started talking and writing about Energy Informatics about three years ago as a result of a request from the Advanced Practices Council (APC) of the Society for Information Management to make its members, typically CIOs, aware of developments in green IS. Our ideas were well received, and Energy Informatics emerged from the APC-funded research.

A key tenet for modernizing core systems is to assess the current solution and to define the context for the to-be solution. While working with a large customer in Europe, my colleagues and I focused an eight-week effort on assessing the current environment and the readiness to renew core systems. The assessment revealed issues about product currency in operational environments and resulted in our recommendation to correct these infrastructure matters before embarking on a renewal. These tasks are ongoing as part of broader development initiatives.

Over the past few weeks, I have received nearly a half-dozen notifications from companies that I do business with saying that my email address, along with possibly some personal information, has been compromised due to "unauthorized intrusions" at third-party Internet retail marketing provider Epsilon.

"Citrus dreamsicle cake... HEAVEN!!! Why did I only give them four stars as opposed to five?!?!??! the cake was too small. :( sad face... yup.. def. sad face there. My previous cake for the same price was 3 layers and the citrus one was only 2 layers. I should have specified. But it was AWESOMELY! good cake."

Just about every one of my clients wrestles with the problem of governing the software process. As the process often eludes us, the natural tendency is to add more and more performance measures in order to ensure "completeness" of the governance system. More often than not, the end result is a baroque system that is difficult to implement, use, and comprehend.