Competitive intelligence is nothing new. Whether it's the owner of the shop down the street checking out his competitor's prices, a secret shopper analyzing a company's customer service, or a Fortune 500 company's high-level strategic analysis of the competition, businesses always want to know as much as possible about their competition.

There are several approaches to setting key performance indicator (KPI) incentives in outsourcing arrangements. The term "incentive" 1 is used in this Executive Update to reflect the financial risks and rewards that are allocated to the service provider by the client regarding KPIs.

Although Cutter's Business Technology Trends & Impacts practice seeks to offer insight into upcoming technology trends, I'm sorry to admit that this Executive Update deals with a technological vision that has already grown embarrassingly old.

In 1987, I visited an interesting young company in California's Silicon Valley that was going to revolutionize the way software projects are managed and developed.

The early days of the Internet were characterized by a lot of envelope-pushing. Like the opening day of the Oklahoma land rush in the American West, individuals and companies rushed to claim a chunk of cyberspace without necessarily knowing whether that chunk would yield gold or simply lumps of coal.

Organizational partnering for complementary services is often very beneficial. These arrangements allow organizations to take advantage of another's expertise, while allowing the outsourced organization to reap the benefits of the partner's core competencies. Studies have shown that being all things to all people isn't effective for long-term growth. Partnerships offer a way to gain competitive advantage by utilizing the talents of other organizations.

Web 2.0 is one of the most talked-about emerging technologies today, and it is creating quite a splash as it stretches the boundaries of what the traditional Web can do. In the absence of any industry consensus, Web 2.0 can best be explained as an open, collaborative, and participatory model of the Web for creating an enriched end-user experience and enhanced online social collaboration.

I recently spoke to a Wharton School audience about the management of business technology, and I was asked to summarize some thoughts about how to optimize the business technology relationship. I came up with the following list of 33 recommendations:

Profile your technology spending.

Over the past few years, business rules management systems (BRMS) have generated an increasing amount of attention because of their ability to add automated decision-making capabilities to applications in such domains as personalization, marketing, compliance, fraud, and business process management (BPM), to name a few.

In a previous Executive Update [1], I alluded to the importance of the role of the customer service representative (CSR) in the IT function, attributing to it nothing less than the mythical healing powers of balm from Gideon for the oppressed CIO.

Business intelligence (BI) and analytics technology are continuing to extend into new domains, where the usefulness of developing trends from aggregated data becomes both obvious and possible. At the same time, analysis is increasingly granular, yielding information down to the small group and individual level. As soon as information can be linked at the individual level, some of the many laws regarding information privacy will come into play.

On the road to greater value creation from software projects, the principles of agile project management (APM) would do well to meet up with the intentions behind the idea of the disappearing IT organization. Together they represent a potentially powerful set of conditions for improved business performance through more effective software development.

Think of disputes that occur in outsourcing deals as mushrooms. To grow and spawn, they need an environment that is dark and full of fertilizer. Your goal is to create an environment that is well lit, with little fertilizer for the mushrooms to feed on.

This series of Executive Updates systematically examines the past, present, and future of the global IT outsourcing landscape. In Part I (Vol. 8, No. 5), we analyzed the current status of IT outsourcing using data from a late 2006 Cutter Consortium survey among 95 organizations. In Part II (Vol. 8, No.

Pundits have used a variety of terms to describe the rapid change that results from a sudden shift in underlying principles. But whether it is called a revolution, a new paradigm, or a tectonic shift, the nature and the structure of the Web are changing.

It's safe to say that our invention --> innovation --> commercialization process is far from perfect. In fact, there are too many examples of (1) how the invention --> innovation --> commercialization value chain has betrayed those who have invented new digital technology; and (2) how the values of those inventions were actually diluted across the segments of the value chain. What comes to mind? How about the many technology inventions that came from Xerox PARC that were commercialized by others?

Automated decision support tools in retailing rely on the accuracy of inventory records -- records that track the number of units per item available for customer purchase. If the recorded quantity falls below the reorder point, a replenishment order is placed to restock store shelves. Not only do automated decision support tools determine when to place an order, they also use recorded inventory quantities to recommend how many units to order and to provide forecasts of future demand.

There has been discussion in business communities about how to "manage" innovation. I always laugh. You can't manage innovation; you can only support an environment that encourages it. If you create an open environment in which people feel free to present, question, and discuss ideas; get the right people in the room; let them look at interesting problems; and if you don't muck about as they work (in other words, stand back), then -- if you are lucky -- innovation will happen.

In a world in which there are seemingly more information security risks than money and other resources on hand to mitigate them, organizations are forced to prioritize their risk mitigation efforts. Several techniques exist. Are yours effective?

This Executive Update is the eighth in a series 1 regarding a recent Cutter Consortium global survey on information and communications technology (ICT) outsourcing. 2 The first seven parts examined the key structures, or configuration, of outsourcing deals and which are the most

The way you will thrive in this environment is by innovating -- innovating in technologies, innovating in strategies, innovating in business models.

-- Samuel J. Palmisano,CEO, IBM [1]

David Lineman makes a number of points in his wonderful Cutter IT Journal E-Mail Advisor "Securing the Long Tail." Some of the points, while well known, are still true and important to state. Some of the points are even more important to state, because they are based on popular misconceptions that are newly demonstrably incorrect, for reasons that reflect changes in consumer behavior as well as changes in corporate strategy they have produced.

Many years ago, a man stood on London Bridge with a suitcase full of one pound notes, which he proceeded to offer passersby for 50 pence each. He could find no takers. According to this oft-told story, he was trying to prove the point that people are suspicious and even dismissive of any deal that seems too good.

In today's rapidly changing environment, it is critical to deliver results often and quickly. This requires leading effectively both upward and outward. How can we guide our leaders to provide the support our teams need? What are the tools to embrace change, foster innovation, and collaborate -- no matter where you fit in your organization?

One of the most important developments in business process management (BPM) involves the application of business intelligence (BI) to monitor and analyze the efficiency of distributed processes.