To fully understand the advantages and challenges in software as a service (SaaS), we must analyze the emerging model thoroughly from the viewpoint of customers and independent software vendors (ISVs). The aim of such scrutiny is to reap the benefits and mitigate possible risks of SaaS.

Portals provide a common user interface (UI) platform for federating varied content and applications. In addition, portal server products offer out-of-the-box features such as personalization, security, and administrative control. The portal server also provides several customization hooks for layout, themes, skins, security, and so forth.

It's not the technology, stupid; it's the processes. Processes are good, bad, ugly, or indifferent depending on how well -- or poorly -- you incentivize their efficacy. Let me repeat: it's not the technology. In fact, among the triumvirate of people, process, and technology, technology is the least likely case of failure. Then comes people.

Traditionally, software has been perceived as a product, requiring possession and ownership in order to receive the desired performance. The transition from software as a product to software as a service (SaaS) is reflected in the distribution of software, where an application is offered as a service to customers through the Internet. The SaaS approach can be viewed as a combination of application service provision and outsourcing. 1

In the world in which we live, a world that changes almost daily, there are truths and untruths. There's hype, and there's reality. There are technologies that work, and there are technologies that stay forever in the trough of disillusionment. There are subtleties and nuances. There are smart people and nasty people.

Your training budget is gone and your staff may be downsized, but promising new technologies keep coming, and the need to innovate is relentless. So how can you improve your software developers, get your team to learn more effectively, and improve creativity in today's challenging business environment?

This is the fourth in a series of Executive Updates in which I analyze the results of a recent Cutter Consortium survey on the subject of open source Java frameworks (OSJFs). Part I1 explored Java EE's perceived strengths and weaknesses, to find out whether there is good reason for developers to look for alternatives.

The Eclipse Process Framework (EPF) is an open source initiative that aims to produce a customizable process engineering framework that supports a broad variety of project types and product development styles and takes open source collaboration to the process-authoring domain. The framework allows collaboration around any process definition, associated practices, and method content.

In Part I of this three-part Executive Update series, 1 I covered why smart business leaders need to provide their personnel with regular training about information security and privacy as well as ongoing awareness communications.

I've been developing software professionally since 1988, long enough to have encountered multiple fads and movements within the software industry. A goal that has endured from my first few months as a developer to the present day: software should be reusable. Object orientation promised it. Component-based software promised it. Now, Web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA) promise that holy grail of substantially reduced costs through the reuse of code.

On more than one occasion in my career, someone has used the metaphor about changing an engine in flight. Yes, it's hard to fix things in motion or to be creative when budgets are tight. But when times are tough, we need to innovate (cheaply and quickly) more than when things are good. But how?

Several years ago, according to BusinessWeek, 1 Victor Tsernialov, a 36-year-old Moscow software consultant, scraped together enough money -- $6,050 -- to buy a new car. He chose a 1999 Russian Lada and has regretted it ever since. He complained of Soviet loutishness, poor-quality spare parts, and high prices.

This is the final Executive Update in a series exploring the idea of "the Web as platform," one of the cornerstone concepts of Web 2.0. 1 In Part I, 2 I discussed what it means to view the Web -- in its entirety -- as a platform.

Editor's note: This Executive Update is an excerpt from Chapter 1 of the author's book Best Practices in Software Engineering (McGraw-Hill, forthcoming 2009); Chapter 1 discusses 50 best practices. Here, we present the first topic: best practices for minimizing harm from layoffs and downsizing. As the recession deepens, layoffs, downsizing, and bankruptcies will increase in number. Past recessions indicate that these activities are often handled so poorly that they result in loss of operational efficiency for a period of years.

After the publication of Part I of my two-part Executive Report series1, 2 on release management, I received some comments. Some of the issues mentioned could be seen as symptomatic of each organization that deals with release management.

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is often approached as very much a technology-centric initiative. However, while SOA infrastructure and technical design both have vital parts to play, they must be judged at the end of the day as enablers of business improvement. A good SOA is only as good as the business knowledge that goes into its construction.

In Part I of this two-part Executive Update series, I presented a variety of issues that arise in large organizations that attempt to deploy agile software development methods across a broad range of such projects.1 I categorized these issues as emphasizing people, culture/politics, or process. Here in Part II, I outline seven guiding principles for successful efforts to adopt agile methodology.

Once a decision has been made to outsource one or more IT services -- to reduce costs, improve service quality, provide adequate technical support, or for other prev

Many client organizations nearing the end of an outsourcing contract start to consider whether they should retender the deal.

Web 2.0 has been one of the leading buzzwords in the IT media and press over the past few years. But the question on everyone's mind is: to what extent are end-user organizations actually adopting Web 2.0 techniques, such as blogs, wikis, social networks, IM, and other technologies?

As the macroeconomic crisis works its way from Wall Street to Main Street, companies large and small face unprecedented change. Well-honed operational paradigms are proving to be inefficient under current circumstances. Existing business designs are losing their effectiveness in jittery markets.

In Part I of this three-part Executive Update series on information security, 1 I discussed the reasons that business leaders would be wise to realize there is not a more effective information security and privacy defense than informed and aware employees.

Application developers are achieving productivity gains by using a wide variety of sometimes eclectic tools, and virtualization and cloud computing are introducing more flexible options for deploying applications. The result: an application delivery environment that is more complex than ever for IT operations. At the same time, corporate resources are under the strain of aggressive cost-cutting mandates. This is forcing IT leadership to rethink today's application delivery models.

Business intelligence optimization can result in considerable savings across the enterprise, as well as yield more efficient operation and stronger analytic capabilities. Current BI infrastructures have been strained by the increasing challenge of managing terabytes of data, which are doubling every year. At the same time, ad hoc queries and scheduled reports are growing increasingly complex.

This is the second Executive Update in a three-part series that explores the idea of "the Web as platform," one of the cornerstone concepts of Web 2.0 popularized by Tim O'Reilly, 1 among others.