The established platforms developed by other industries have laid the foundation upon which the healthcare industry has begun to propel the IT world to new heights for all industries. This foundation also yields an opportunity for the healthcare industry to create a number of new ventures, many of which may ultimately revolutionize the medical community as Facebook did for social networking.

Data integration costs consume so much of computing budgets and resources that there is little left over for taking advantage of new opportunities and proactively managing change. This Executive Update takes a frank look at where the software industry stands in addressing the integration barrier.

This Executive Update discusses how to pragmatically implement semantic metadata techniques to improve data integration.

In this Update, we provide a few tips for making sense of this inferential software and systems environment, track down resources that you may already have in your organization to work in this new environment, and address the challenges entailed of three new dynamic software languages.

The goal of the "create and test" phase of mobile application development is to translate the needs and goals that are driving the desire for a mobile application into a loose plan to produce a "minimum viable product," or MVP. In this Executive Update you'll discover that Lean and Agile methodologies can provide powerful tools to set the stage for the mobile app, and especially for keeping in check the natural inclination to focus on the imagined final product.

Two seemingly unrelated professions, tied together by their passion, creativity, and management skills. Are you looking for a great product manager to join your team? Consider going to the theater tonight. If you like what you see, check that playbill. You might just find the name of a great potential candidate.

This Executive Update uses examples and case studies to show how organizations can employ enterprise patterns as a key EA management tool in five areas of enterprise transformation: 1) deciding direction, 2) evaluating options, 3) choosing priorities, 4) guiding change, and 5) demonstrating value.

In this Executive Update we present a blueprint for leveraging cloud technology to improve patient healthcare management.

This Executive Update, one in a series about software architecture, introduces product line architecture, which addresses problems that often hobble efforts to promote reuse in software systems.

The art of business transformation has a long history of mediocre success as companies have attempted to make great changes for quality and efficiency and to contend with significant movements in the market. As we'll explore in this Executive Update, the same forces pressing companies to react more swiftly fortunately are also providing new ways to support and energize enterprise redirection.

We've observed that architecture in the enterprise is still an evolving discipline. We saw how the reality and the words that purport to be tags for the reality might be two entirely different things. If the word-reality gap is true of architecture in general, is it not reasonable to expect this to be so with "solution architecture" and "solution architect," too?

Your organization has decided that it wants to build a mobile application. Congratulations! Here in Part I of this Executive Update series, we'll start with the very first stages of planning and discovery, while future Updates will address the rest of the project's lifecycle, including Agile development, Lean product design, user interface/user experience (UI/UX), resources and capabilities required, estimation, and major architectural concerns such as scalability and mobile security.

Two trends are driving the need for transparency in enterprise applications:

The painful truth is 75% of enterprise-wide change efforts fail. Failure includes not getting the results expected or wanted. This inability to make effective changes across the organization is defined as "organizational immaturity." In this Executive Update, Martin Klubeck looks at why leaders insist on enterprise-wide change when they continue to fail and some possible reasons for this attitude.

This Executive Update discusses some of the critical skills enterprises are short on and how they should go about meeting the demand.

This Update examines a key reason why the application of these and other architectural patterns is not as widespread as we would like and uses successful examples from industry to discuss how to address the problem.

Enterprise patterns are increasingly being used by EA teams as an essential planning tool, bridging the gaps between strategic thinking and tactical investment priorities, between business capability needs and supporting technology solutions, and between organizational performance and enabling enterprise architecture.

The new buzzword for measures for improvement is "analytics." Unfortunately, there is no new thinking to go along with the new name. Many leaders still go about getting, analyzing, and using measures in the wrong way. Rather than being the "leader," they fall back into the role of doer. It's a fascinating phenomenon.

This Executive Update looks at Agile in the context of infrastructure and maintenance activities in an organization. Since contemporary Agile emerged from and is focused on developing a solution, we must ask questions about its relevance in the postdevelopment phases of that solution. However, Agile is not limited to development.

This Executive Update examines key trends and developments impacting the adoption of mobile collaboration tools and platforms in the enterprise. Specifically, we consider technology trends and market developments as well as corporate implementation trends.

We can have a good deal, a fair contract ... and yet conflict will still arise. This conflict can become quite personal at times. It can even eat into value for money. To explain why some conflict exists and how senior managers might resolve it, this Executive Update discusses the research into the different values and behaviors (called "styles") held and exhibited by the people that develop and manage contracts.

In this Executive Update, we will explore SoC in complex software systems. Some examples (but by no means a complete list) of change vectors include: change in the required business functionality; change of technical platform, such as adopting or replacing an enterprise service bus (ESB); change in end-user device; and change in data management technology.

This Executive Update discusses the opportunities and challenges associated with the IoT and its impact on all areas of business and IT.

As Agile practices move into mainstream development, the need to clarify product ownership has become increasingly acute. Where does the product owner fit in with respect to the project? Where does he or she fit in with respect to the organization? And what are the product owner's responsibilities in large projects, or projects that fall outside the normal territory of Agile development? This Executive Update looks to answer these questions.