Most of the major organizations that I work with have little idea of how fragile their IT architecture is. Most have large numbers of aging core applications that they lack the guts (or resources) to replace. Like the bridges that unexpectedly give way under loads tens of times more than they were designed to carry, […]

I told the story, recently, about a large architecture document I received to review. It’s a story that I think is worth retelling …
After poring through a few hundred pages of text and drawings, I was impressed by how much work and thought had gone into it yet how utterly useless it was. Now, don’t […]

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 […]

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 […]

 
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. […]

As 2009 brings dramatic change to the economy, politics, and IT, some consistency might be in order. So, as I have in past years, I’m making suggestions for New Year’s resolutions for enterprise architects.
Execute on Your Roadmap
Architecture takes a long time to develop and deliver. There’s a bewildering array of models, processes, options, priorities, and […]

How much architecture does an agile team need up front? Most agile methods are surprisingly silent when it comes to this question. Scrum regards architecture as an issue the team has to deal with on its own discretion — and thus does not include any advice. In Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams, […]

On Monday, Anne Thomas Manes published SOA is Dead; Long Live Services on her blog at the Burton Group. My last check using Google showed that at least 50 bloggers have referenced her posting. Some have delighted in Anne’s statement that “It’s time to accept reality. SOA fatigue has turned into SOA disillusionment.” This point-of-view […]

In this age of complex, entrenched IT infrastructure deployments, most organizations require a mapping between the business architecture and the IT architecture to meet business objectives. But is this a realistic goal? The December Cutter IT Journal will explore the challenges of business architecture/IT architecture alignment. We invite anyone who is interested to send us […]

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 […]