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 […]

On December 16, 2007 USA Today published an article on this subject:
“India is the world’s largest democracy, so it seems fitting that the New Delhi-based information technology services giant HCL Technologies is attempting what may be the most ambitious effort yet at installing a workplace democracy. That may sound impossible, but so did running nations […]

While we’d all like to know whether your door is open or closed this holiday season and you’d welcome us for a pop-in visit, what we’re referring to here is architecture. In his recent Advisor, Ken Orr, Fellow, Cutter Business Technology Council, discusses some of the benefits and drawbacks to open and closed approaches to […]

We are not alone.
In the struggle for business strategy alignment, I believe we have a compatriot in, if you can believe it, marketing. After all, we in IT have much in common with marketing.
Certainly longer in the tooth and possessing a meaner kick than the young colt known as the enterprise architect, the brand strategists […]