The possibility of stepping into a higher plane is quite real for everyone. It requires no force or effort or sacrifice. It involves little more than changing our ideas about what is normal.

-- Deepak Chopra

Machine learning (ML) techniques, often referred to as predictive analytics or marketing analytics, are becoming commonplace in business and research alike. Regardless of name, all refer to the process of collecting and processing data along with the subsequent application of mathematical analysis to gain valuable insights.

One of the more interesting issues of IEEE Software journal has just hit the proverbial newsstands, and it couldn't have come at a more exciting time.

Decomposition is a popular technique for analyzing many aspects of enterprise architecture, such as software applications, processes, or business products.

As the digitization of society continues via the adoption and use of information and communications technology (ICT), the arena where economic, political, and social activities develop will continue to shift toward a low-cost, low-friction digital environment.

Social networking, mobility, and analytics are among the key topics for the enterprise today, as companies attempt to leverage social networks for insights, provide on-the-road access to data, and integrate an increasing realm of data into the diversified range of analytics possibilities provided by Big Data.

In the past few years, business analysis (BA) as a profession has picked up speed. Its popularity has brought about a greater need for training, which occurs in many different formats, suiting varied audiences.

Big Data is inevitable and low latency is the need of the hour. Effectiveness in processing data has never been so relevant. If not engineered well, data processing systems that operate on Big Data are sure to suffer from performance problems. In this Executive Update, we explore an intuitive heuristic that will enable the user to understand the technical tradeoffs and learn how to performance engineer as well as tune a data processing system to effectiveness.

One of the most popular articles ever written for the Harvard Business Review was authored by Frederick Herzberg in 1968. 1 In it, Herzberg proposed a re

In response to economic downturns, it should come as no surprise that many companies turn to short-term cost cutting and/or choose to place big bets on business transformation efforts that may be premature.

In the high-pressure retail environment of the 21st century, industry leaders looking for every competitive advantage are increasingly relying on analytics. This Executive Update explores how to blend analytics with behavioral research for operational success.

When you first started to talk, after "Dada," "Mama," "cat," and "dog," your parents probably taught you the importance of saying, "please" and "thank you." For most toddlers, "please" comes fairly easily. When you say "please" you're more likely to get what you want. The cause and effect is immediate. But "thank you" -- as I'll explain in this Executive Update -- is another story. "Thank you" is about goodwill -- and the future.

Prediction has long been the holy grail of advanced business intelligence.

Put a person in China and he'll know that he can't behave as though he were in Kansas.

Just a couple of years ago, we were witnessing -- and some of us were deploring -- the "irrational exuberance" as well as the uncontrolled fears of many customers and decision makers about cloud computing. But a strange thing has happened since then: the discussion has quickly become much more reasoned, with a surprisingly good balance of proactive concern for the risks and a genuine desire to experiment with new solutions.

Just a couple of years ago, we were witnessing -- and some of us were deploring -- the "irrational exuberance" as well as the uncontrolled fears of many customers and decision makers about cloud computin

When done well, IT's role is easy to explain. IT serves the business by enabling its current goals and strategic ambitions while enlarging its plate of future opportunities. In effect, business and IT are an ecosystem.

In Part I of this Executive Update series, we looked at the barriers to and possible benefits of collaboration. I examined the "four pillars of collaboration," which provide a foundation that supports collaboration and collaborative structures.

The corporate world is littered with the carcasses of enterprises, large and small, wounded -- some mortally -- by failures of the "conjoined twins" of leadership and risk management. Why are these two concepts referred to as "conjoined twins"? Because neither can function without the other.

Virtual communication is similar to face-to-face communication, with the obvious difference that participants are not in the same room at the same time.

We commonly define enterprise architecture as either a discipline, process, or thing. But which is it, and does it matter?

I don't think anyone would refute me if I said that we are living in a rapidly changing environment, that stability and security are nice fantasies, and that moving from industrial work to knowledge work has changed the structure of business organizations.

In Part I of this four-part Executive Update series, I provided an overview of how and why frameworks are so valuable and nec

The enterprise Big Data landscape includes various types of data, including historical, transactional, images, and message-based streams. In turn, this data can be structured or unstructured. Importantly, the treatment and analysis of data is different for different types of data (see Figure 1). For example: