Monthly Archives: February 2009

Gmail Outage: A Reminder to Weigh Pros and Cons of the Cloud

 Curt Hall | Feb 26, 2009  4 Responses
Feb 262009
 
avatar

The recent outage of Google Gmail, which also affected users of Google Apps (word processing, spreadsheet, etc.) is yet one more reminder of how organizations need to carefully weigh the pros and cons of using on-demand or cloud-based applications and services. As I wrote last August, in response to a larger outage in which Gmail and Apps were down for about 15 hours (and have copied below), I don’t believe that Gmail and Google Apps are really up to supporting large, enterprise end-user organizations at this time. I do think they can be considered useful for consumers and for some small companies, as well as for specific departments, groups, and selective applications. In fact, I …

Read more

 News, Outsourcing  Tagged with: , ,

Bob Fischer Joins Our Team

 Anne Mullaney | Feb 24, 2009  No Responses
Feb 242009
 
avatar

Bob Fischer is the newest addition to our Agile Product & Project Management team. Bob is an Agile trainer, coach, facilitator, and change agent. He has amazing expertise in the cultural change required to deploy Agile at an enterprise level. Most recently, Bob was a VP at Fidelity Investments, where he was responsible for deploying Agile to more than 400 people. Bob was an organization-wide catalyst at Fidelity, helping to broaden the deployment of Agile across the large organization. His campaign for cultural change included getting agreement between the business unit president, CIO, CFO, and the head of product development on a common strategy for deploying Agile. (Agile was cited as the key reason why …

Read more

 Agile Project Management, News  Tagged with: , ,

2009 Trends Research: Economy hasn’t taken IT’s eye off the strategy ball

 Kim Leonard | Feb 23, 2009  No Responses
Feb 232009
 
2009 Trends Research: Economy hasn't taken IT's eye off the strategy ball

Every year, the IT trends issue is one of Cutter Benchmark Review’s most popular, probably because of CBR‘s unique approach to looking at the trends. This is the fourth year expert practitioner Jeroen van Tyn and academic Dennis Adams bring their divergent experiences to the table to analyze our trends survey. As always, they’ve delivered some surprises. According to van Tyn, the recent downward economic spiral has predictably put IT in the spotlight as a target for cost reduction, but “Despite the increased pressure to save money, IT organizations are not just running for the tall grass. Combined with rather predictable cost-saving measures, we see solid trends toward maintaining strategic focus over the long haul. …

Read more

 Benchmarking+Surveys, Enterprise Architecture, General, IT Management

Reinventing McDonald’s, Again

 Robert Charette | Feb 18, 2009  No Responses
Feb 182009
 
avatar

I am sitting here, sipping my free cup of coffee at McDonald’s, looking across the parking lot at the huge going-out-of-business banners strung across the entrance to my local Circuit City store. “I wonder,” I joke with the McDonald’s manager, who I know pretty well, “if they had to pay for those banners up front and in cash?” A couple of years ago, I wrote about Circuit City’s inability to manage its enterprise risks: I wouldn’t be surprised to see the company sold in a few years, or at the very least, its top management replaced. At the time I wrote that Circuit City had decided that it would replace its higher-paid employees with lower-paid …

Read more

 Leadership, Risk Management  Tagged with: , , ,

Outsourcing Strategies to Weather a Recession

 Christine Generali | Feb 11, 2009  1 Response
Feb 112009
 
avatar

The May 2009 issue of Cutter IT Journal — with Guest Editor Cutter Senior Consultant Sara Cullen — invites useful debate and analyses on the current state of outsourcing and how a recession may change the landscape in terms of both current and future contracts and the provider market. We will explore the strategies that may help organizations weather the challenges outsourcing presents during these turbulent times. Cutter IT Journal Call for Papers Sara Cullen, Guest Editor Abstract Submission Date: 20 February 2009 Articles Due: 27 March 2009 Guidelines for Contributors

 General, Outsourcing

The Adventures of an IT Leader

 Anne Mullaney | Feb 10, 2009  1 Response
Feb 102009
 
avatar

Cutter Innovation team members Rob Austin, Dick Nolan and Shannon O’Donnell have a new book coming out this spring, The Adventures of an IT Leader. With this novel, you get to be a fly on the wall, accompanying new CIO Jim Barton through his first year on the job. Though The Adventures of an IT Leader is fiction, it’s based on Rob and Dick’s consulting and IT management experiences. You can read excerpts from the book at CIO.com. And Rob will be teaching one of its cases, How to Avoid Getting Flattened by a Runaway Project at our Summit in May.

 Conferences+Events, IT Management  Tagged with: , , , , ,

The King (SOA) Is Dead; Long Live the King

 Paul Allen | Feb 9, 2009  1 Response
Feb 092009
 
avatar

A recent blog post by Anne Thomas Manes on the alleged “Death of SOA” has been causing quite a stir. (In fact, my colleague at Cutter, Doug Barry, wrote (The Acronym) SOA is (Perhaps) Dead (at Some Companies) in reaction.) The contention is that the bad economic situation has finally finished the “SOAsaurus” off and that we must now concentrate on services, along with mashups, cloud computing, and software as a service (SaaS) — and not service-oriented architecture (SOA). Knowing full well that SOA is alive — if not always exactly flourishing — in many organizations, my first reaction was that here were some sexy sound bytes designed merely as a marketing ploy. At the …

Read more

 Enterprise Architecture  Tagged with: , , ,

A little bit about Cutter’s Summit 2009 program

 Anne Mullaney | Feb 3, 2009  No Responses
Feb 032009
 
avatar

Since we started putting out the word on Cutter’s annual Summit before the program was 100% final, I’ve received several emails asking about what else is on tap. We’ve got a packed program already, and we’re still squeezing more in! Again this year, there’s nothing “theoretical” about any of the sessions at the Summit. Every keynote, case study, seminar and roundtable discussion is focused on the reality of dealing with the front-burner issues right now (with right now meaning May 4-6). Here are just a few of the highlights: Steve Andriole’s keynote, The 5 Essential Habits of Appropriately Paranoid Business Technology Strategists is sure to raise some eyebrows. Maybe even tempers. If you’ve read any …

Read more

 Agile Project Management, Business-IT Strategies, Conferences+Events, Enterprise Architecture, News, Security+Privacy  Tagged with: ,

About the Blog

The Cutter Blog is an offshoot of Cutter Consortium, a boutique IT and Business Strategy consulting firm located in Boston, MA. Cutter's worldwide network of consultants offers clients analysis of the lastest industry trends, customized consulting and executive education opportunities.

Offering more than just a quick fix -- our size and focus allows us to "get deep" into the challenges faced by our clients so we can provide real and lasting solutions. Want to know more? Visit www.cutter.com.

Recent Tweets

More from @cuttertweets

In Our Bookstore

NEW REPORT: Assessing and Improving IT Leadership Skills
© 2012 The Cutter Blog