With the new year upon us, we asked Cutter’s Senior Consultants and Fellows for their business technology predictions. Their perspectives — as always — are quite thoughtful, thought-provoking, and varied. Projections cover the changing role of the CIO, what will happen in enterprise architecture, the increasing adoption of agile, the explosion of cloud computing, the [...]

I’ve got a tune stuck in my head again today. Perhaps this happens to you ocassionally too. It’s triggered subliminally by means totally unrelated to music. Fortunately for me, now that my children have grown into teenagers, the tune is less likely to be The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round or The [...]

As the old joke goes, alpha tests and beta tests are named that way because “alpha” is a Greek word that means “doesn’t work,” and “beta” is another Greek word that means “still doesn’t work.” But seriously, we know that the classical software product lifecycle includes tests performed by the development team (alpha tests) and [...]

Nearly six months ago, the subject for this month’s Cutter IT Journal was conceived, and I was flattered to be invited to serve as the guest editor. Through the collective volunteer efforts (involving thousands of hours) by seven outstanding contributing authors, the set of cutting edge opinion, entitled “The Rise of the Semantic Enterprise”, [...]

Enterprise use of social networks is in on the rise. But how do we know if it’s working? The October issue of Cutter IT Journal seeks to uncover the metrics organizations are using to measure the value of their social networking efforts. Article abstracts are due July 10. For more information, visit here.

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 [...]

In the light of the hype over Web 2.0 this past year, I want to stress that organizations are making use of the techniques to improve the collaboration capabilities of their BI and business performance management initiatives. In fact, according to the results of our recent survey, slightly more than one-quarter of end-user organizations are [...]

Is information technology accelerating the wild swings in the market?
Oil barrel prices, thought to cross over $200 are now around $50. The stock market jitters 5% – 7% in a day looking like warmed-up jello. The talking heads on TV are talking with more emotion and I can see their veins popping on my high definition [...]

For Abraham Lincoln, it was the telegraph. For John F. Kennedy it was the television. For Barak Obama, it is Web 2.0.
Each of these politicians proved adept at adapting new technologies to communicate. Lincoln took to the telegraph and used it for rapid communication. No doubt the advantages of the telegraph were on Lincoln’s mind [...]

As virtual worlds begin to move from the fringe to the mainstream, there is considerable excitement and hype surrounding the movement. But it does beg the question: what real value do virtual worlds present to users and businesses?
An upcoming issue of Cutter IT Journal will address this question. We will examine virtual worlds in terms [...]