Middleware software adapters used between dissimilar technologies play an important role in data integration. Dissimilar technologies in this context could be ETL, database, an enterprise package solution, such as SAP, or any technology that can consume or source data. These middleware adapters could be developed by participating technology vendors, through a strategic partnership, or by a third-party independent software vendor.

Firms are increasingly moving toward syndicating Web content rather than just publishing it and providing Web services rather than just Web applications. Likewise, contemporary websites typically consume the content and services supplied by other Web providers.

In the IT world of project management, clients are the bread and butter. It's critical, of course, that what we do, the systems we implement, the processes we use, and the technology we employ falls within our organization's current direction and overall mission. That's definitely important. But even more important is our customer. I'm not saying we serve them at all costs. But it is the customer's money, after all, and this contributes to our bottom line. So satisfaction is important.

Everyone is talking about big changes in IT. They are indeed big -- bigger, in fact, than the ones we discussed before the dot-com bubble exploded. What are you going to do about them?

Here are five areas that require your immediate attention:

Devices

Software

Use of public cloud providers has become increasingly common, as companies embrace the considerable cost savings of software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and platform as a service (PaaS).

What are the elements of a typical business technology strategy? The following lists the five key areas:

Business strategy -- overall market, product, production, distribution, service, etc., objectives

One of Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is to "begin with the end in mind."1 When developing software, this is a good rule. Even as teams embrace agile software development and practices that move testing earlier into the development process, the testing of delivery into production is often neglected.

[The e-government] portal represents much more than the development of a mechanism for promoting transparency, accountability and control in regard to the public accounts of the State. This portal represents the true transformation of our State, particularly in Public Administration, which "step by step" has been adopting new efficiencies, innovation and accountability standards.

-- Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão, Timor-Leste prime minister 1

In Part I of this Executive Update series,1 we discussed modernizing core banking systems through the analogy of heart surgery as well as the approaches I have seen as banking IT strategies evolve in this era of change in the financial industry. In particular, we covered "putting shunts" in the "patient" through application transformation and integration.

Server virtualization has become embedded in enterprise data center architecture, providing numerous efficiencies in processing, reducing costs, and adding to flexibility and scalability across the IT environment. Virtualization is at the root of the evolving data center infrastructure and is the foundation of cloud IT. However, even as virtualization becomes embedded in the enterprise, support continues to evolve.

Bringing BI down to the coalface has long been a goal for both vendors and IT managers -- in light of the fact that BI remains largely confined to the 15%-20% of workers in an organization who analyze data.

A great deal of attention has been given to the design, deployment, and management of Web services as part of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) within the enterprise. The attention is well warranted as SOA represents a substantial advance in the architecture of enterprise systems. However, I've seen relatively little discussion related to Web services that face outside of the organization.

In an age when rates of project failure sadly top 50%, having the chance to actually restart a project that has been stalled, cancelled, or put on hold for whatever reason, can be very positive. But it is definitely not without great challenges. Often, the project manager asked to restart the engagement is not the same one who ended its previous iteration. It's worth noting here before we go further that restarts -- like second marriages -- are just as likely, if not more likely, to fail than the original engagement.

With the increasing importance of information systems for business success, the risks associated with the temporary inaccessibility of information due to any unplanned failure of computer systems have significantly increased. Failure of a computer system may be the result of various factors, such as faulty or improper actions of users, or external factors, including man-made or natural disasters.

This Executive Update is mainly targeted for business executives, architects, and program managers. It provides an overview about how the most commonly debated concern about reuse benefits can be planned, measured, and quantified. The Update establishes a vocabulary that can be used by various stakeholders to report/request the reuse benefits for any development initiative or software project. It also helps architects and designers plan up front for components that can be candidates for a particular reuse.

In sailing, you can't head directly into the wind; you have to sail at an angle to it. To travel from point A to point B where the path is directly into the wind, we perform a series of directional changes, each one called a tack (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 -- What tack should your organization take?

The subject of this Executive Update may seem odd. I am borrowing an analogy that one of my banking clients uses to describe the requirements for transforming the company's core banking systems. They are the "cardiovascular" IT system for banks -- providing solutions that drive revenue-generating operations, such as account management, deposits, loans, and credit cards. The current core systems are largely product-oriented applications that are 20-plus years old and mainframe-based.

It's all over but the shouting: social media is now a major driver of decisions that cross-cut corporate awareness, brands, service, product development, and, ultimately, purpose. In a sense, it's amazing it took so long. After all, Facebook has almost 600 million friends and Twitter's approaching 200 million. YouTube has 450 million users.

In today's ever-changing business environment, IT service providers need to implement an effective strategy and business model to tackle the problem of cannibalization within their portfolio of business software. The cloud supply chain illustrates the link between the provisions of business software through the cloud. Game-changing technology, such as cloud computing and resulting portfolio changes within the IT industry, determines daily life within business.

In recent years, demand for new BI technologies has significantly increased amid an expanding desire by business to receive all required information in a timely way without the risk of losing value.

This is the final Executive Update in a series discussing the results from a recent Cutter survey on the adoption of open source software tools and techniques by organizational software development teams.

Whether it is the collapse of a particular bank or the global financial crisis, weakness in critical thinking and inadequate strategic analysis in decision making appear to make significant negative contributions. Business analysis (BA) offers an answer by sharpening the capabilities of critical thinking and analytical decision making.

If you ask a "process owner" without prompting what specific information is required to properly execute the activities of the process for which he or she is responsible, then the process owner will rattle off a slew of items. However, any attempt to assume these items are attributes of the data architecture and assign them to entities will prove frustrating.

Despite the attention now given to innovation and innovation processes, and the importance in which they are viewed for the progress and survival of companies, the means by which good ideas are created continue to elude us. While there are numerous methods for gathering and processing ideas -- from crowdsourcing to innovation labs -- the means by which good ideas can be generated by groups remains poorly understood.

Software estimation is still a gray area despite lots of research material, articles, and books. Some consider estimation an art; some a science. Others consider it both. Agile estimation has been no exception, and there is high level of debate about the ways in which it is done. Questions have been raised about the lack of scientific evidence as well as application in real-life projects and challenging scenarios.