Do you believe IT can affect the financial outcome of a corporate merger and acquisition? Is IT’s role in this scenario tactical or strategic? We will address these varying perspectives in an upcoming issue of Cutter IT Journal. If you would like to weigh in on this contentious issue, please review our complete Call for […]

It is back. And it is angry.
And it is called virtualization. And it has people afraid. But not me.
Think of it. All CPU cycles completely fungible. Imagine the possibilities.
Got 500 idle desktops running Microsoft Vista? Assign the CPU and I/O resources to your core ERP system. Need to bring up seven servers with a full […]

Twenty years ago, Peter Drucker wrote about the coming of the new, information-based organization, which twenty years later we now take nearly for granted as incarnate everywhere. While information-based organizations rely on and have been largely created by advanced IT, Drucker notes that not all such organizations require advanced IT. Advanced IT lets firms eliminating […]

At the Cutter Summit this year, I attended Mike Rosen’s talk on “Ten Things an Architect Does” and thoroughly enjoyed the conversation about the job of an architect. But it got me thinking about the different things architects do and how many kinds of architects it would be nice to have.
My Killer Architecture Team would […]

I finally had the chance to catch up with a long-time colleague of mine for lunch a few months back on a cold, wintry and blustery Chicago day. We sat down, and ordered tea and coffee. Not waiting to order our food, she immediately began to tell me a story about a recently retired CIO […]

We recently published the results of our annual Cutter Benchmark Review survey on trends and technologies for the coming year. This is the third yearly issue of CBR where we ask our contributors to look forward to the coming year and see what technologies and IT trends we can expect to endure, which ones are […]

Recently, I had the chance to talk with two CIOs from large, multi-billion and multi-national businesses with names we all recognize. To protect the identities of those involved, let’s call them Firm A and Firm B.
Firm A is a still rapidly growing consumer electronics manufacturing firm. But over the past ten years, this firm went […]

Beat ‘em up. Knock ‘em down. Slap ‘em around. Keep them on a short leash. Teach them a lesson. Make ‘em behave. Vendors, that is.
This phrase has recently seeped into common IT parlance. I’ve even heard vendors, typically large ones, say that the reason we should buy their wares is that they can then provide […]

I’m a storyteller by heart, which is why I so enjoy the work that I do. Not only my own stories, but exciting stories about what other people have experienced in life and work, which I’ve been privileged to share with them as a consultant.
My last Cutter webinar was about telling stories from 5 companies […]

Please indulge me momentarily and pardon this esoterica. By the time you finish reading this, I hope I will have shown the need for this “scenic detour.”
For a long time thinkers and practitioners in the area of knowledge management have made a distinction between knowledge that is tacit and knowledge that is explicit. Knowledge and […]