Server virtualization has made considerable headway in the enterprise. But the use of virtualization for desktop (client) computing has been rather limited. This has been primarily attributed to technical issues that have made for a poor end-user experience and difficulties in managing and scaling virtual desktop infrastructure environments.

Agile software development -- developing an application in small increments, where stakeholders can review the results and reevaluate goals after each time-boxed iteration -- is simple and powerful. However, implementing the practices that enable agile software development can be difficult because adopting an agile approach requires change across the organization. This three-part Executive Update series will discuss how best to start the agile adoption process.

The mantra "It's not what you know, but who you know" has uncertain origins. Two early attested references are from 1914 and 1918, in the context of US labor relations. For the following 90 years, the phrase was mostly used in politics and in business -- and in the world of lobbyists, which is the intersection of the two.

A good contract is important to outsourcing; this is an undisputable statement. The contract is the legal basis of the outsourcing agreement and therefore of fundamental importance. However, there are two different research-based views as to just how important the contract is.

Outsourcing firms tend to market themselves as partners in innovation, and firms consider adopting an outsourcing strategy as a way to attain competitive edge. While outsourcing is a promising approach, it can also be a risky endeavor, as it may deter the firm's inherent ability to bring innovative products to market.

User-developed applications (UDAs) are nothing new for the IT environment. They have been an issue for years as undocumented spreadsheets and Microsoft Access databases. They have often presented management challenges due to questions familiar to developers, such as who has ownership, who (if anyone) is responsible for upgrades, and who is responsible for verification of results.

Building trust lies at the heart of success with agile approaches to software development. The agile philosophy depends on people rather than process to maintain order and quality. We lighten up the development process and dispense with many of the artifacts traditionally used to orchestrate project activities. We bridge the gap with increased collaboration and teamwork.

Throughout this Executive Update series, we have been examining a nonprofit association facing serious IT leadership, financial, and support issues.1 Over the course of a year, the association initiated a turnaround effort to resolve crises, restore customer confidence, and allow the association to refocus on its primary business mission and goals.

There is one primary reason that legacy modernization projects fail, and one primary strategy that will guarantee success. Applying that strategy, however, almost always meets strong resistance from the technical staff, which management can overcome only rarely.

In fits and starts, green IT is emerging as a significant issue for the public sector. The driving forces are practical and virtuous. Soaring energy costs, the threat of catastrophic climate change, and the more mundane (but nevertheless very real) risk inherent in fossil fuel-based air pollution have compelled regional and national governments to take remedial action.

This Executive Update series examines how organizations, particularly commercial firms, are beginning to exploit virtual worlds in order to create and capture value. In Part I, 1 I pointed out that virtual worlds have been with us for a long time (they predate the Web by more than a decade).

In February and March 2010, Cutter Consortium conducted a survey that asked 99 end-user organizations about their various data warehousing, BI, and other analytic efforts. One set of questions sought to determine data growth issues that organizations are facing with these efforts. Basically, my goal was to determine data growth trends and how they affect organizations.1

Most senior executives want to know when they will get business value from a project, more than when it will be complete and at what cost. Without completed projects, you can't implement the strategy; yet today a chasm usually exists between business objectives and project management activities. Even when projects are on target with respect to time, cost, and quality, all too often they seem to fail to achieve the anticipated business results.

SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language), a product of the OASIS Security Services Technical Committee, is an XML-based standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between security domains. At a concept level, SAML defines how an opaque structure with no discernible identifiers can be used among providers to represent a security principal.

The Indian IT industry has long been associated with outsourcing. This in turn is frequently referenced in a half-derogatory tone of implying work on the low-end of the value chain, often eating into engineering jobs from client countries. As the Indian IT services industry has grown, especially in the last decade, such characterizations are no longer just offensive, but they are entirely detached from reality.

A firm that manages golf courses in 26 US states wanted to streamline its operational costs in support of its M&A business model. To address that, its CEO envisioned a virtual "library" serving as a data repository with unlimited shelves of business information. How that vision became reality is the subject of this Executive Update.

In an earlier Executive Update entitled "Relating Business Analysis to Enterprise Architecture,"1 I mapped business analysis (BA) activities and enterprise architecture (EA) activities within an organization.

If your organization has a lot of disparate operational systems that require integration for day-to-day tactical reporting, auditing, monitoring, and feeding of other applications, what do you build? An operational data store (ODS).

Have you ever watched the reality TV series Survivor? Many countries around the world have produced variants of it, but essentially they all deal with a small group of mostly young people secluded on an isolated island trying to survive.

The evolution of information and communications technology made the exchange of information between people become more comfortable, simple, and fast. However, there are still traditional services that experience large difficulties in profiting from some of the advantages offered by this evolution, and postal services are a perfect example.

Putting aside rewrites and conversion to a package, there are three primary technical methodologies and technologies for modernizing legacy applications:

Rehosting

Code translation (aka "conversion" and "migration")

Rearchitecting, the newest entry in the field

The rapid growth in data center energy consumption, coupled with the relentless increase in the cost of energy, implies that energy efficiency in the data center is no longer the handmaiden of good IT governance, but a principal spearhead of it. While the construction and certification of a data center as green usually entails substantial up-front expense (estimates run from 5%-40%), the resultant reduction in cost of operations and maintenance can be dramatic.

A potential customer who owns lots of commercial real estate asked me to make an assessment of the operations automation software system it has been developing inhouse to control, administer, and service clients at an upscale, long-stay business hotel it opened not long ago. The hotel offers fabulous accommodations.

Outsourcing has become an integral part of nearly every organization. Whether it is a small business handing over its bookkeeping to a local accountant or the US military outsourcing its security to private companies, it's happening every day around the globe. One area that many organizations largely outsource is IT, an issue that is hardly controversial today. Except for one component -- information security outsourcing (ISO).

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

-- Will Rogers