The revelation of how information about us was sold to and misused by unscrupulous organizations for unethical and possibly criminal purposes has, for many, shaken their confidence in these companies’ integrity — a loss of innocence. A fraction of users has already closed their Facebook accounts; another fraction has tightened their preferences and reduced their usage. But if past behavior is a guide, the majority will mostly shrug and do little or nothing different. That said, a loss of innocence is never good and virtually impossible to recover from fully.

Our latest research indicates that organizations overwhelmingly view customer engagement/customer experience management as the most viable use case for applying AI. This finding comes from an ongoing Cutter Consortium survey covering the adoption and application of AI and machine learning technology, based on the initial responses from 105 participating organizations.

Does culture drive success, or is culture emerging from the implementation of carefully considered strategy, structure, and processes inside the organization? Our view is the latter, and the good news is that culture is something that executives can affect.

This Advisor describes three areas of customer experience that are affected by digital transformation: customer understanding, top-line growth, and customer touchpoints.

We can define the real test of maturity through a key set of characteristics that demonstrate acceptance of, and commitment to, the discipline.

This issue of Cutter Business Technology Journal sheds some light on the status of blockchain technology adoption. With perspectives from eight different authors, the articles detail some of the opportunities, challenges, applications, and use cases, as well as the industry and business implications associated with a blockchain technology initiative.

In this Advisor, we highlight a few AI applications that Indian banks have implemented to enhance customer experience. 

With all the focus on “exciting” AI applications, it’s sometimes hard to get a broader overview of how the market is actually developing.

DevOps practices and cloud platforms can catapult enterprise technology forward, improving consumer responsiveness, time to market, throughput, and resilience, but they depend on continuous improvement to become internalized and self-sustaining.

The ability to link smaller chunks of capabilities and resources together into patterns that generate value may hold the key to a more modern enterprise.

The chief AI officer (or equivalent) in current organizations is very limited. The same can be said of future plans for designating a chief AI officer, with over half of surveyed organizations having no plans in the foreseeable future to appoint a chief AI officer (or equivalent). Instead, organizations are opting to share responsibilities for AI adoption among various technical and business leaders.

The main benefit organizations seek to obtain from adopting AI is the ability to create new ways of automating business processes.

This Advisor examines initial survey findings pertaining to the establishment of dedicated enterprise AI groups and the reason such groups oversee enterprise AI efforts.

In this Advisor, we explore the concept of itamae and the role of leadership on the road to agility.

Future cloud data centers are required to provide cloud services with a minimum carbon footprint and minimum heat release in the form of greenhouse gas emissions. So what are some of the concerning issues?

Clearly, if your bit of code must talk to a database over here and a Web server over there, then a bit of architecture goes a long way.

We have been confronted for nearly two decades with a dual data storage and processing landscape, supported by two very distinct scenes of tool vendors and products. Nowadays, we see a complete convergence of the operational and tactical/strategic data needs of the corresponding data integration tooling. This evolution poses interesting challenges to the landscape of data storage and data integration solutions.

The best teams we have worked with know their strength is not the Agile framework alone, but how the team sources ideas and plans and delivers its backlog. Strong team process requires strong team empathy that allows teams to embrace creative tension to uncover novel ways of producing value.

Technology does not reform or change humans. It accelerates and unleashes more of who we are, both good and bad.

Working with business leaders, we have developed a simple yet powerful framework to help them navigate the digital landscape. It is based on four business-focused questions that are at the core of effective governance of digital and that every business leader should have in his or her head. We call these questions the four “ares.” In this Advisor, we discuss two of the “ares.”

Considering that business architecture is a critical enabler both for enterprise-wide strategy execution and transformation as well as agility, the role is increasingly focused in two areas: strategic advantage and enablers of agility. This Advisor looks at these new areas of focus for next-generation business architects.

In an ongoing Cutter Consortium survey covering the adoption and application of AI technology, we asked organizations about their plans for using AI-as-a-Service platforms and services.

I’ve come to understand that trust is one of the most fundamental ways that leaders can give their teams space within an Agile transformation effort.

Things that are manufactured need to be handled in the supply chain all the way from basic components down to the finished product arriving at the customer’s doorsteps or shop shelves. But as those “things” become smarter, the physical value chains and information processes converge.

Transformation leaders need to balance the pressures of delivering incremental value in short sprints to the customer or consumer to demonstrate value with the need to ensure that they leverage the best possible enterprise resources and align with broader corporate goals and strategies.