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The IT professionals of today and tomorrow are center stage for all of critical changes in organizational, global, and workforce trends. But are they ready? More importantly, are IT organizations in general and CIOs in particular ready?

Much has been written about the role of the 21st-century CIO. In the face of these complex, interconnected trends, the CIO is responsible for ensuring operational excellence, aligning IT with the business, and leading initiatives that transform how the enterprise operates ... all while devoting more personal time to a new role as business strategist. CIOs are being judged by their ability to leverage information technology to drive business strategy and innovation for competitive advantage. However, it is equally important that the CIO lead the development of an IT staff with the skills and experience to deliver all of this.

This issue of Cutter IT Journal examines the tremendous challenges ahead for CIOs as they determining how value is to be manifested in their organizations.

Published: September 2011, 36 pages, PDF format
Authors: Guest Editor, Robert D. Scott, R Dhakshinamoorthy, Charlie Bess, Claudio Bartolini, Raja Bavani, Gabriel Capmany, Jose Pedro Pagano, Jorge V.A. Ronchese, and Vijaykumar N
Online resource center clients: Access the report online.

This report is also available as a PDF.

The report Adopting a Practical Social Media Strategy: An Enterprise Guide provides a common-sense approach to developing your organization's social media strategy. You'll explore the multiple uses and benefits of social media in a business context, the issues that hinder adoption, and how to maximize the benefit/risk ratio. Plus, you'll review the six mistakes organization's make when adopting social media.

The strategies provided in this report will help you:

• Use social media to improve your connection to customers
• Move beyond your fears of confidentiality breaches and productivity losses to develop a successful social media strategy
• Create a vision of what you want your enterprise to look like as a "corporate citizen of the Internet"
• Use social media for technology watch and competitive intelligence -- intelligence that is "hidden in plain sight"
• Leverage conversational marketing to remain closely engaged with your marketplace
• Gingerly handle issues of governance
• Utilize the new product development strategy of "release and listen"

What's more, you'll look at new tools that have emerged to facilitate social search, such as SlideShare, Aardvark, Hunch, and Quora. And you'll receive links to eight online social media compliance policies, including ones at IBM, BT, the Red Cross, and Coca-Cola.

Learn how to create a reasoned social media adoption plan. Order your copy of this report today!

Published: October 2011, 30 pages, delivered in print, by post

Authors: Steve Andriole, Claude Baudoin, Vincent Schiavone

The report Agile Business: The Final Frontier by Cutter Senior Consultant Rob Thomsett explores the positive and negative aspects of agile as an organizational model. In it, you'll discover an integrated model for business agility based on the following key elements: agile sponsorship, agile development, agile project management, the agile program office, agile support, agile finance, and other agile service groups.

Table of Contents:

• Back to the Future I: Business As Usual
• Three Powerful Change Models
• A Brief History of Agile
• Agile and Organizational Culture
• The Agile Business Proposition
• Agile Business Model
• Back to the Future II: The Power of Teams
• Implementing Agile Business: A Case Study
• The Tipping Point Revisited

This report also includes an agile business case study from a major bank in New Zealand that was built around colocated project teams. You'll discover how this agile business implementation has proven to enable faster change and a more creative and collaborative change environment.

Learn how you can adopt the principles, values, and practices of traditional agile development and agile project management as a catalyst for broader organizational change.

Published: July 2010, 21 pages, PDF format

Author: Rob Thomsett

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

The report Becoming an Open Organization: Open Source Software, Open Content, Open Functionality, and Open Innovation explores how various open concepts are being utilized by mature organizations to produce powerful results. You’ll identify the opportunities and pitfalls of numerous open concepts and consider how they may fit into your own company’s business model.

This report will help you:

• Take advantage of new ideas in open source software, open content, and “open” Web services.
• Benefit from a royalty-free software commons that offers less lock in, greater choice, and reduced costs.
• Successfully adopt open source techniques on internal projects.
• Discover how other communities and firms are using open content.
• Identify the compelling value propositions of IP marketplaces and “crowdsourcing”.
• Gain a blueprint for the use of open innovation in your company.

You’ll learn how the following companies are exploiting open concepts:

• Oracle, Philips, and Sun are each using peer production to succeed.
• Six hybrid Web applications (mashups) -- Wii Seeker, Stock Cloud, Open Stock Photography, HousingMaps, BBC News Maps, and Babelplex -- help incubate new venture ideas.
• Three firms are emulating open source methods on internal projects:
  1. Lucent Technologies’ (now Alcatel-Lucent) development of an implementation of the Session Initiation Protocol
  2. IBM’s “Community Source” strategy
  3. HP’s “Progressive Open Source” framework.
• Proctor & Gamble has mastered the art of the inflow for open innovation.
• IBM is allowing other organizations and groups to create value on top of IBM resources.

Plus, you’ll learn three questions your organization should ask itself to help decide between proprietary versus open source software. You’ll review some of the lessons learned from the Linux kernel and other projects, as identified by Eric Raymond, author of the influential essay "The Cathedral and the Bazaar." And, you’ll discover what happened at one organization when a technical thread was moved out of a private e-mail conversation and into a public mailing list.

Table of Contents:

• Leveraging Peer Production: An Open Door?
• Emulating the “Bazaar”: Open Source-Style Development Within the Firm
• Open Innovation: Open for Business Yet?

Published: March 2008, 108 pages, PDF format

Authors: Joseph Feller, Gabriele Piccoli, Ana Paula Valente Pereira

This report is also available in a print edition.

The report Business Architecture: Creating Game-Changing Opportunities for Your Organization by William Ulrich provides a rapid roadmap approach for establishing and socializing business architecture and introduces a deployment technique that your business architecture teams can use as a template for getting started.

This report will help you:

• Communicate the benefits of business architecture in business terms
• Apply business-driven transformation strategies, roadmaps, and funding models
• Leverage value streams in business transformation
• Utilize business capabilities to create a shared vocabulary between business and IT
• Build a successful business architecture team
• Adopt practice-based approaches to delivering innovative and effective business solutions

You'll learn why business executives should embrace the concept of business architecture and discover how value streams and capabilities provide the baseline for crafting common semantics for articulating current challenges and a business vision.

BONUS: This report also includes two case study approaches to using value streams in planning and deploying priority business initiatives. The first focuses on using value streams for rapid situation analysis and resolution, and the second focuses on enhancing the customer experience.

Published: January 2012, 50 pages, PDF format

Author: William Ulrich

This report is also available as a PDF.

The report Business Architecture: Creating Game-Changing Opportunities for Your Organization by William Ulrich provides a rapid roadmap approach for establishing and socializing business architecture and introduces a deployment technique that your business architecture teams can use as a template for getting started.

This report will help you:

• Communicate the benefits of business architecture in business terms
• Apply business-driven transformation strategies, roadmaps, and funding models
• Leverage value streams in business transformation
• Utilize business capabilities to create a shared vocabulary between business and IT
• Build a successful business architecture team
• Adopt practice-based approaches to delivering innovative and effective business solutions

You'll learn why business executives should embrace the concept of business architecture and discover how value streams and capabilities provide the baseline for crafting common semantics for articulating current challenges and a business vision.

BONUS: This report also includes two case study approaches to using value streams in planning and deploying priority business initiatives. The first focuses on using value streams for rapid situation analysis and resolution, and the second focuses on enhancing the customer experience.

Published: January 2012, 50 pages, delivered in print, by post

Author: William Ulrich

The new report Business-Oriented Service Management: A Roadmap for IT Cutter Senior Consultant Bill Keyworth lays out a roadmap that ties various levels of business maturity to prescriptions for IT action. It offers a business-oriented approach to maximizing the perception of IT effectiveness by using "business" language to tie IT deliverables to end-user objectives. This report uses both hypothetical scenarios and a real case study of a midsized energy utility to examine how you can improve business-IT alignment.

Table of Contents:

• Business-Oriented Service Management for IT
• Theory of Constraints Approach
• Using a BSM Maturity Model to Achieve Alignment
• The Acceptable Range of Business-IT Alignment: Scenarios for Success
• Case Study: Next Steps for Business-IT Alignment at a Midsized Utility
• Next Steps for Improving Business-IT Alignment

The report highlights specific recommendations to strengthen initiatives associated with each business maturity level. It provides guidelines for BSM achievement, case studies of BSM success, and recommendations for initiating your own unique path to BSM. Find out how to articulate IT's benefits in terms that are meaningful and measurable to the business executive, and make the next step for IT more intuitive and doable.

Order your copy of Business-Oriented Service Management: A Roadmap for IT today!

Published: August 2011, 16 pages, PDF format (also available in epub format.
Author: Bill Keyworth
Online resource center clients: Access this report online.

The new report Business-Oriented Service Management: A Roadmap for IT Cutter Senior Consultant Bill Keyworth lays out a roadmap that ties various levels of business maturity to prescriptions for IT action. It offers a business-oriented approach to maximizing the perception of IT effectiveness by using "business" language to tie IT deliverables to end-user objectives. This report uses both hypothetical scenarios and a real case study of a midsized energy utility to examine how you can improve business-IT alignment.

Table of Contents:

• Business-Oriented Service Management for IT
• Theory of Constraints Approach
• Using a BSM Maturity Model to Achieve Alignment
• The Acceptable Range of Business-IT Alignment: Scenarios for Success
• Case Study: Next Steps for Business-IT Alignment at a Midsized Utility
• Next Steps for Improving Business-IT Alignment

The report highlights specific recommendations to strengthen initiatives associated with each business maturity level. It provides guidelines for BSM achievement, case studies of BSM success, and recommendations for initiating your own unique path to BSM. Find out how to articulate IT's benefits in terms that are meaningful and measurable to the business executive, and make the next step for IT more intuitive and doable.

Order your copy of Business-Oriented Service Management: A Roadmap for IT today!

Published: August 2011, 16 pages print, epub format (also available as PDF)
Author: Bill Keyworth
Online resource center clients: Access this report online.

In the past few years, the managerial area of demand management, portfolio management, and IT governance have become more and more popular. Organizations are adopting these processes to better manage their expenses, reduce cost, and formalize an often chaotic relationship between IT and the business.

Published: February 2011, 13 pages, PDF format (also available in epub version)

Author: Rachel Mendelovich

Online resource center clients: Access this report online.

In the past few years, the managerial area of demand management, portfolio management, and IT governance have become more and more popular. Organizations are adopting these processes to better manage their expenses, reduce cost, and formalize an often chaotic relationship between IT and the business.

Published: February 2011, 13 pages print, epub format (also available in PDF version)

Author: Rachel Mendelovich

Online resource center clients: Access this report online.

In this edition of CITJ, our contributing authors have done an excellent job of presenting arguments for and examples of these three scenarios. They describe many of the challenges IT executives face in getting a seat at the M&A table, along with the consequences encountered when IT is not involved in M&A considerations from the beginning. They also offer practical suggestions on procedures and frameworks that, in their collective experience, have helped to achieve successful acquisition results and to improve IT's contribution to business value.

Published: October 2008, 33 pages, PDF format
Authors: Guest Editor, David Rasmussen, Ram Reddy, Michael Gentle, Steve Andriole, Pamela Hollington, Mike Sisco
Online resource center clients: Access the report online.

This Council Opinion, prepared by the Cutter Business Technology Council includes the commentary of each Council Fellow and the logic behind his or her concurring or dissenting opinion, as well as the strategic implications of the trend.

Published: July 2010, 16 pages, PDF format

Author: Lou Mazzucchelli, with concurrences and dissents by Lynne Ellyn, Tim Lister, Ron Blitstein, Claude Baudoin

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

Fuzzy boundaries of electronic organizations enable transcendence of competition and engender an era of enhanced customer experience through business collaboration. Electronic communications also enable easy shifting of noncore business processes outside the organization, rendering the business lean and agile. These innovative business approaches are the focus of this Executive Report by Bhuvan Unhelkar.

Published: September 2010, 20 pages, PDF format

Author: Bhuvan Unhelkar

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

The new report Corporate Cyber Attacks, Threats and Security by Arun K. Majumdar -- based on facts, evidence, and real-world cases of cyber crime -- reveals how hackers communicate and do business as well as their methods of developing vulnerabilities and attacks.

This gripping, easy-to-read report will help you achieve clear situational awareness of your organization's security risk and equip you to take the steps required to mitigate those risks. You'll learn a host of critical issues you should be aware of to immediately assess your cyber security status.

This report will help you:

• Get insight into a hacker's most popular styles of attack via a 15-point countermeasures checklist
• Architect hard-to-hack corporate infrastructures and mitigate the risk of social engineering techniques used by hackers
• Understand the 5 critical areas that a chief/cyber security officer needs to set up as a baseline for cyber security operations
• Find out if your corporate culture enables cyber threats
• Mitigate cyber threats via easy-to-use executive checklists

You'll also explore executive liabilities and accountabilities, the top eight cyber security cases, and a multitude of need-to-know issues for immediate practical use.

Published: May 2011, 19 pages, PDF format

Author: Arun K. Majumdar

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

The report Customer Experience: How Technology Can Contribute -- Or Kill It by Cutter Senior Consultant Jim Love examines the negative impact technology can have on customer service and offers advice for how your business can mitigate these negatives and leverage technology's positive potential.

Table of Contents

• The Failure of Technology
• Think Technology has Improved Customer Service? Ask a Customer
• The Battle is Raging: Technology and Customer Behavior
• Failure to Understand the Customer Experience
• What Technology Can't Teach You
• Technology Loses the Human Element ... And the Customer
• The LED at the End of the Tunnel: How to Integrate Technology Into a Positive Customer Experience
• Conclusion: Back to the Future

Find out how you can span the gap that separates the way customers and companies view customer experience, and move toward utilizing technology to engage -- not enrage -- your customers. Order your copy of Customer Experience: How Technology Can Contribute -- Or Kill It today!

Published: July 2010, 15 pages, PDF format

Author: Jim Love

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

In addition to business benefits, a customer-centric approach provides an overall framework for the design, development, operation, and management of IT. This Executive Report by Keith Sherringham and Bhuvan Unhelkar addresses the implementation and operation of a customer-centric business for aligning business and IT.

Published: October 2010, 24 pages, PDF format

Author: Keith Sherringham and Bhuvan Unhelkar

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

We Do the Research for You

CBR provides a high-level analyses of the current trends and hot-button issues you face. You'll discover the strategies and tactics of companies worldwide and, most importantly, where they're succeeding and failing.

Your Access to the Experts

Each quarterly report focuses on a different topic, presenting fresh empirical data describing the current landscape. But beyond the statistics, you'll get insight into what the findings mean. Analysis from two different viewpoints -- that of a distinguished academic and also an expert practitioner -- plus future predictions and their potential impact from editor Joseph Feller, provides you with a framework in which to apply the data to your situation. This is insider information you can't afford to miss.

With a subscription to CBR, your organization benefits from the unique opportunity to glean insight from the cutting-edge ideas being studied in some of the world's leading educational institutions, as well as the perspective that only seasoned experts with hands-on experience solving real problems in real enterprises can provide.

CBR gives you a unique opportunity to:

• Look critically, objectively, and through a variety of lenses at business technology issues impacting your enterprise
• Understand how your organization compares to others in your industry and/or around the world
• Understand the potential impact of today's trends on the future health and direction of your company
• Identify key IT initiatives that are worth pursuing and — just as importantly -- those you should avoid
• Support your IT initiatives with unbiased research and judicious statistical analysis

Nowhere else will you find a marriage of the academic and practitioner perspectives like you get in CBR. Add to this the practical and provocative guidelines from editor Joseph Feller, and you'll find CBR is a resource unlike any other available.

Subscriptions delivered outside of North America include a $100 shipping fee. CBR is published 4 times a year.

For details on digital subscriptions, contact us at sales@cutter.com or call +1 (781) 648-8700.

The Executive Brief Delivering Value with Enterprise Architecture: A Survey of Today's Best Practices and Programs by Cutter EA Practice Director Mike
Rosen provides statistical insight and opinion on the current state of enterprise architecture, its organization and programs, practices used, and the effectiveness of EA, all based on the results of a recent Cutter Consortium survey.

This brief addresses the following questions:

• Is architectural certification important?
• How does the EA work relate to agile methods in today's organizations?
• Who should own/manage business architecture?
• How effective is architectural governance?
• How is the success of EA programs currently being measured?
• What is the relative size of architecture within IT?
• Which of today's hot topics are likely to be part of the target architecture (cloud, SaaS, SOA, BPM, etc.)?

Find out how effective today's EA organizations are in influencing management decisions and identify some of the critical factors for a successful EA effort -- beyond what tools and frameworks you should use.

Order your copy of Delivering Value with Enterprise Architecture: A Survey of Today's Best Practices and Programs delivered in PDF format today!

Published: January 2011, 13 pages, PDF format

Author: Mike Rosen

Achieving balance between supply and consumption requires us to get a better handle on business demand for IT -- especially when demand for resources outstrips available budgets.

Compounding the problem is that too often, projects are greenlighted based on narrow business cases, bypassing the business strategy or the overall project portfolio.

In the report Demand Management: The New Imperative for Business Analysis, Paul Allen considers how business analysis can successfully raise its game to help understand and manage demand -- achieving an ongoing dialogue between IT and its customers at all levels.

In our annual predictions roundup, several Cutter experts foretold a higher profile for business analysis in 2011 and beyond.

• "The professionals who optimize strategic technology will have wide and deep expertise in business process modeling (BPM), business analysis ... among all things business." --Steve Andriole




• "Let's get some business thinking and system thinking into the mix, and stop concentrating on the software alone." --James Robertson




• "... there will be tremendous importance to formalizing the profession of Business Analysis." -- Bhuvan Unhelkar




• "Expect the cultural balance to shift ... toward much more critical, more innovative and collaborative business analysis." --Paul Allen

The trick is less about shiny new methods than about how to apply existing ones innovatively and in fresh combinations to throw light on demand management issues. The report provides astute observations and practical suggestions on how to breathe new life into your analysis techniques. Order your copy of Demand Management: The New Imperative for Business Analysis today!

Published: August 2010, 19 pages, PDF format

Author: Paul Allen

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

When data is properly maintained, cleansed, and stored in an efficient and consistent manner, it can provide key information that will assist in short-term tactical and long-term strategic decisions -- without fear that the underlying information is erroneous.

The report Developing a Master Data Management Strategy helps your organization implement a master data management (MDM) solution that delivers a consistent set of information across all operational and reporting systems in your enterprise. You’ll learn how to make a business case for MDM, what to look for in an MDM solution, and how to better define your MDM requirements.

This report will help you:

• Create an MDM master repository that is clean, labeled, and protected from accidental overwriting
• Reduce duplicate data entry, force commonality of codes, and impose better control of business processes
• Select an MDM tool that imposes the least intrusion on your organizational infrastructure
• Conduct a proof of concept to better determine MDM vendor offerings
• Ensure your MDM solution supports the different data formats required to transport data across your enterprise
• Meet the needs of BI toolkits that require refined data for the complex models in their applications

You’ll learn what enterprise data types are a good fit for an MDM solution,
the profound impact that search technology is having on the MDM world, and what mistakes to avoid when choosing an MDM vendor, such as conducting a proof of concept with a scope that is too large and complex.

You’ll explore the four MDM application layers -- end user application layer, system integration layer, business integration layer, data management layer -- and the specific tasks for each of the five project phases in each layer. And you’ll discuss a number of MDM technology enablers, such as the cost per byte of data storage, the speed of data retrieval, and grid computing.

This report also reviews three case studies detailing how these enterprises use an MDM solution to solve their critical business problems, and offers four recommendations to consider when building a business case for an enterprise MDM solution.

Published: June 2007, 90 pages, PDF format

Authors: Steve Andriole, Greg Mancuso, Al Moreno, Ken Orr

The report Developing Viable ROI Solutions to Justify New IT Infrastructure Projects by Cutter Senior Consultant Dave Higgins provides you with the tools you need to cost-justify large IT infrastructure projects. You'll find ways to discover the business value in a potential project, and learn the methods you can use to convey those value statements to financial decision makers.

The methods described in this report are designed for use by technologists to convey business value to business and financial stakeholders. You won't become a finance guru -- but you will learn to increase your odds of getting the business to approve needed infrastructure improvements.

This report will help you:

• Identify 17 hard-dollar benefits of new projects, and the only right way to present them.

• Develop project justifications that convince stakeholders on multiple dimensions.

• Examine why soft-dollar savings such as productivity gains don't always strengthen your case (and could result in everyone just working harder!)

• Identify the "as is" and "to be" costs to be included in the case.

• Figure out when and why net present value (NPV) matters -- and when it doesn't.

• Understand the three keys to developing "credible" numbers for your case.

Plus, you'll learn why even though it's the least credible benefit, most people lead with increased revenue. And you'll gain practical advice on organizing and presenting the business case, including what you should plan to leave behind when it's done. Finally, you'll determine when it's appropriate to present a benefit study rather than a full-blown ROI study or business case.

Address all the factors that will get your IT infrastructure project approved. Order your copy of Developing Viable ROI Solutions to Justify New IT Infrastructure Projects today!

Published: December 2009, 15 pages, PDF format (989KB)

Author: Dave Higgins

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

The report Enterprise Integration with the Business Architecture by Ralph Whittle discusses enterprise integration with the BA and in the formal context of an engineering discipline. It describes the BA as a reusable asset that can bring about a "new order of things." Several BA models that illustrate the integration of enterprise components -- the manifestation of an engineering discipline -- support the discussion.

Table of Contents:

• The Business Architecture’s Organizing Principle
• The Business Architecture to BPM Relationship
• Business Architecture Leads to Systems Thinking
• The Business Architecture to Business Intelligence Relationships
• The Business Architecture to Strategy Nexus
• The Business Architecture to IT Architecture Nexus

Integrating the BA throughout the enterprise within an EA framework creates an asset that is used over and over again and improved over time. The BA is changing corporate behavior, creating a new unifying structure, delighting customers, integrating the enterprise, and achieving a competitive advantage.

Published: September 2011, 19 pages, PDF format

Author: Ralph Whittle

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

As presented in this Executive Report by Bhuvan Unhelkar, an Environmentally Responsible Business Strategy (ERBS) for green business transformation starts with four drivers -- sociocultural/political, regulatory/legal, enlightened self-interest, and responsible business ecosystem -- and is followed by four dimensions -- economy, technology, process, and people. This report presents the policies, practices, systems, and support of an ERBS architecture.

Published: February 2010, 28 pages, PDF format

Author: Bhuvan Unhelkar

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

Companies dramatically improve service and agility when they focus on the role people, process, organization and culture play in tandem with the technology itself. In fact, according to Cutter Fellow Steve Andriole, "technology and the processes we use to optimize IT are fairly meaningless unless you're surrounded by the right people allowed to do the right things."

In the Executive Brief Finding IT's Strategic Opportunities: What's Next, Dr. Andriole examines the current state of business-technology and brings his expertise (delivered in his inimitable no-holds-barred style) to the concrete steps organizations must take to thrive in the next decade.

In this fast-moving and practical brief, you'll learn:

• The five new risk quotients that you need to manage more aggressively than the ones you're already addressing.
• The best practices truly innovative companies employ, and the questions you need to ask yourself to join their ranks.
• Why business relationship management is a critical skill set for the 21st century, and what it takes to get it right.
• How governance has changed, and what the new requirements mean to you.
• The ten trends that will define IT in 2015, and how they shape technology acquisition, deployment and support processes.

This Brief is designed for those of you who have been in the trenches for a long time, as well as for those who want to jump right into the "advanced course in gonzo technology management".

Find out about the new opportunities you can leverage (as well as the pitfalls to avoid) in setting your IT strategy for the next decade.

Order your copy of Finding IT's Strategic Opportunities: What's Next? delivered in PDF format today!

Published: February 2011, 17 pages, PDF format

Author: Steve Andriole

The IT industry as a whole, and its professionals can improve the lives of billions of people at the bottom of the pyramid and thereby gain significant benefits. The articles presented here help create an awareness of what has been done and what can be, and should be, done. Guest Editor San Murugesan invites you to share your thoughts on and experiences in putting IT to real work in emerging markets for the benefit of one and all.

Published: July 2010, 36 pages, PDF format

Authors: San Murugesan, David Croslin, Radhika Jain, Chaka Chaka, Sherif Kamel, Hao Zhao, Sead Muftic, and Feng Zhang

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

How you manage the change process can determine not only the ultimate success of the change effort, but also the health of your organization during and after the change. Many change efforts fail, especially in the long term, and can exact a heavy toll on the organization. By taking a strategic approach in which you set up for the change, engage stakeholders in initiating the change, and institutionalize the change into the culture, you can dramatically improve the success of your change initiatives.

Published: May 2010, 16 pages, PDF format

Author: Moshe Cohen

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This Executive Report by Moshe Cohen provides the frameworks, tools, and skills you need for effective stakeholder management. This report will help you navigate the multiple and sometimes conflicting interests on projects, understand the balance of forces within your organization, and garner the support you need to ensure project success.

Table of Contents:

Published: July 2011, 13 pages, PDF format

Author: Moshe Cohen

Online resource center clients: Access this report online.

While all the articles take a positive view of the opportunities opened up by mobile technologies, the stories they narrate also show that challenges persist, and that organizations are slowly dealing with them by expanding their strategies, scoping their markets, implementing better security, or piloting enhancements and new business models supported by novel architectures. As you read the articles, we are confident that you will recognize this tension. We hope that they will be a starting point for further reflection on how to join an evolution that will require agility, flexibility, and working at increasing data transfer rates, from anyplace and at anytime.

Published: September 2010, 40 pages, PDF format

Authors: Katia Passerini, Charlie Bess, Jesse Greco, Niel Nickolaise, David Lineman, Phillip Whisenhunt, Ronald Vetter, Edmund Schuster, Hyoung-Gon Lee , and Chaka Chaka

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

As they become customers and employees, they expect to be able to interact with people and organizations using the devices and interfaces with which they are familiar. Meanwhile, executives, managers, operational staff, and customers from earlier generations will expect to keep using older technologies. Enormous challenges to organizations arise from the transition from wired to wireless, the diversity of apparatus and their patterns of use, the ongoing technological change, the rapid adaptation and convergence, and the security risks that accompany the mobile, wireless world. Those challenges are compounded by the need to support older generations of users and their modes of interaction. This Executive Report by Roger Clarke explores these challenges and the implications they have on business processes, security, authentication, and architectures.

Published: March 2010, 20 pages, PDF format

Author: Roger Clarke

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

The Cutter Consortium report Modern IT Leadership: Surviving Chaos and Delivering Value provides effective leadership strategies for all those in charge of the IT function and identifies the unique skills and knowledge that will be required of the future CIO. You'll receive numerous case examples of IT leadership initiatives that succeeded and failed -- and why this happened -- and you'll gain specific advice for managing IT in times of economic uncertainty, rapidly advancing technology, and self-organizing teams.

Table of Contents

Part I: The Great Recession Fallout: Will CIOs Be Elevated or Exterminated?

Introduction: The Role of IT in Shaping and Reshaping Corporate Culture by Vince Kellen.

Chapter 1: Who's IT Gonna Be? CIOs Past, Present, and (Poof!) Future by Steve Andriole. Discover why CIOs may become inevitable "roadkill" somewhere after the year 2015.

Chapter 2: The Future CIO and the Evolving Leadership Landscape by Thornton May. Consider what types of CIOs will have difficulty over the next few years, which will go extinct, and which will thrive.

Chapter 3: The Right Way to Recruit CIOs by Bob Gariano. Compare the attributes companies rank highly when hiring CIOs, and whether the right level of attention is given to each.

Chapter 4: Back to the Future -- The Future Role of the CIO by Robert N. Charette. Explore why the CIO role should not be linked to a misguided conception of automation.

Chapter 5: Yielding to Darwin -- The Evolution of the CIO by Patrick E. Moroney. Uncover some of the characteristics today's CIOs must have to succeed in their evolving role.

Chapter 6: The Futureproof CIO by Eric D. Brown and Gene De Libero. Identify some of the tools that future CIOs will use to create competitive advantage for their organizations, such as commodity platforms, open systems, and cloud computing.

Chapter 7: Taking Action During an Economic Decline -- Strategies for the IT Team with Gabriele Piccoli, Dorothy Leidner, and Thomas H. Murphy. Evaluate the optimal strategies for setting the course for IT in a financial and economic storm.

Chapter 8: The 2010s -- Is Your Staff Ready? with Rob Austin, Ron Blitstein, Christine Davis, Lynne Ellyn, Tim Lister, Ken Orr, Robert Scott, and Borys Stokalski. Gain advice and opinion aimed to help IT management prepare for the future, with a focus on people strategy.

Chapter 9: Leadership During Tough Times by Moshe Cohen. Draw lessons from historical examples, share wisdom from successful leaders, and receive guidance on how to get your firm on track for a prosperous future.

Part II: Cultivating Leadership Throughout the IT Organization

Introduction: Leading Inside an IT Organization -- Putting People First by Bob Furniss.

Chapter 10: If It Weren't for People, Being a Leader Would Be Great! by Pam Hager. Explore a three-part process to help leaders connect with people and create an effective plan and process for change.

Chapter 11: How Culture Affects Leadership by Martin Bauer. Consider how company culture affects leadership and gain strategies for overcoming the challenges that culture presents.

Chapter 12: How to Cultivate Leadership in Yourself and Others by Martha J. Lindeman. Gain a psychological view of effective leadership, including four leader types and the response of followers to each type.

Chapter 13: Agile Managers -- The Essence of Leadership by Johanna Rothman. Discover what it takes to be an agile leader and learn how to make the hard decisions.

Chapter 14: In Search of Complexity -- Why Self-Organization Requires Leadership and Governance by Jurgen Appelo. Take a "systems" view of leadership and learn how to manage complexity through self-organization.

Chapter 15: IT Project Leadership -- Feeling Your Way by Mark Woodman and Jason Bates. Learn how to "feel" leadership as it goes on in projects and how to use stories to become an effective leader.

Authors: Steve Andriole, Jurgen Appelo, Rob Austin, Jason Bates, Martin Bauer, Ron Blitstein, Eric D. Brown, Robert N. Charette, Moshe Cohen, Christine Davis, Gene De Libero, Lynne Ellyn, Bob Furniss, Bob Gariano, Pam Hager, Vince Kellen, Dorothy E. Leidner, Martha J. Lindeman, Tim Lister, Thornton May, Patrick E. Moroney, Thomas H. Murphy, Ken Orr, Gabriele Piccoli, Johanna Rothman, Robert Scott, Boris Stokalski, and Mark Woodman

Published: June 2010, 233 pages, PDF

This report is also available in a print edition.

This in-depth report provides expert, practical advice on how to successfully modernize your legacy applications. You'll expand your knowledge of legacy solutions to include new approaches such as rearchitecting, rewrite methodologies and internal and external rationalization. And you'll benefit from the best practices and lessons learned on real-world modernization projects, helping you develop a "best-fit" modernization strategy for your company.

This report will help you:

• Expand the legacy application modernization discussion beyond choosing between packaged solutions and redesign/rewrite projects
• Grasp new concepts -- semiautomated rearchitecting, agile rewrite with DSL, BRE for packages, and the four types of internal rationalization
• Better understand the underlying problem of project complexity
• Determine the right size team for your project
• Learn why internal rationalization is where some of the most interesting and innovative work is being done
• Avoid the temptation to apply tactical integration approaches with minimal regard for the end-to-end architecture

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Alternative Approaches to Modernizing Legacy Applications by Don Estes.

Chapter 1: Correct and Comprehensive -- Testing Software Rewrites and Redesign/Rewrites by Richard Bender. Explore real-world examples of how to successfully conduct testing in a modernization project.

Chapter 2: Portfolio Management for Legacy Systems by Corby James. Gain a methodology for identifying and prioritizing applications from your portfolio to be modernized -- and determine which applications should be left alone.

Chapter 3: Breaking the Cycle of Failure -- Best Practices to Drive Successful Legacy System Replacement by Lawrence Fitzpatrick. Walk through the ten best practices to drive success in replacing critical legacy systems.

Chapter 4: Agile Legacy Reengineering -- A Repeatable Technique for Managing Modernization Risks by Tom Love and John Wooten. Discover an agile approach to rewriting legacy applications that sharply reduces application complexity and enhances flexibility.

Chapter 5: Contending with Creaky Platforms by Matthew Simons and Jonny LeRoy. Review a number of metrics visualization methods that will help you determine where your problems are, prompt management to take action, and drive your remediation efforts.

Chapter 6: Rewriting and Rearchitecting as Alternatives to Code Translation by Tom Bragg. Compare and contrast the benefits of rearchitecting against code translation or manual rewrites.

Chapter 7: Ontology-Driven Legacy Modernization by Michel Vanden Bossche and Ian MacLarty. Discover a completely different way of conceptualizing applications via the Semantic Web.

Chapter 8: Validating Legacy Code -- Modernizing Strategies Through Technical Debt Assessments by John Heintz. Dive into a case study on the DeLorean project, a project explicitly chartered with cleaning up the architecture of a production system, removing duplication, improving code quality, building in testing, and improving reliability -- in short, to remove technical debt.

Chapter 9: Successful Application Modernization and Rationalization, Part I -- Short-Term Tactical Approaches by Don Estes. Gain a blueprint for successful legacy modernization via an intense program of test-driven modernization.

Chapter 10: Successful Application Modernization and Rationalization, Part II -- Long-Term Strategic Approaches by Don Estes. Examine both the conventional and promising unconventional approaches to legacy application modernization, along with their pros and cons.

Chapter 11: Performing "Heart Surgery During Marathons" -- Core Banking System Modernization by Scott Simmons. Gain recommendations for maintaining and managing current core banking solutions while working to transform the core system functionality.

Chapter 12: Guaranteed Success in Legacy Modernization -- Baby Steps by Don Estes. Examine a project design for a major US federal agency that is undertaking its second attempt to modernize an application.

Published: May 2011, 218 pages, PDF format

Authors: Richard Bender, Tom Bragg, Don Estes, Lawrence Fitzpatrick, John Heintz, Corby James, Jonny LeRoy, Ian MacLarty, Tom Love, Scott Simmons, Matthew Simons, Michel Vanden Bossche, and John Wooten

This report is also available as a PDF.

This in-depth report provides expert, practical advice on how to successfully modernize your legacy applications. You'll expand your knowledge of legacy solutions to include new approaches such as rearchitecting, rewrite methodologies and internal and external rationalization. And you'll benefit from the best practices and lessons learned on real-world modernization projects, helping you develop a "best-fit" modernization strategy for your company.

This report will help you:

• Expand the legacy application modernization discussion beyond choosing between packaged solutions and redesign/rewrite projects
• Grasp new concepts -- semiautomated rearchitecting, agile rewrite with DSL, BRE for packages, and the four types of internal rationalization
• Better understand the underlying problem of project complexity
• Determine the right size team for your project
• Learn why internal rationalization is where some of the most interesting and innovative work is being done
• Avoid the temptation to apply tactical integration approaches with minimal regard for the end-to-end architecture

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Alternative Approaches to Modernizing Legacy Applications by Don Estes.

Chapter 1: Correct and Comprehensive -- Testing Software Rewrites and Redesign/Rewrites by Richard Bender. Explore real-world examples of how to successfully conduct testing in a modernization project.

Chapter 2: Portfolio Management for Legacy Systems by Corby James. Gain a methodology for identifying and prioritizing applications from your portfolio to be modernized -- and determine which applications should be left alone.

Chapter 3: Breaking the Cycle of Failure -- Best Practices to Drive Successful Legacy System Replacement by Lawrence Fitzpatrick. Walk through the ten best practices to drive success in replacing critical legacy systems.

Chapter 4: Agile Legacy Reengineering -- A Repeatable Technique for Managing Modernization Risks by Tom Love and John Wooten. Discover an agile approach to rewriting legacy applications that sharply reduces application complexity and enhances flexibility.

Chapter 5: Contending with Creaky Platforms by Matthew Simons and Jonny LeRoy. Review a number of metrics visualization methods that will help you determine where your problems are, prompt management to take action, and drive your remediation efforts.

Chapter 6: Rewriting and Rearchitecting as Alternatives to Code Translation by Tom Bragg. Compare and contrast the benefits of rearchitecting against code translation or manual rewrites.

Chapter 7: Ontology-Driven Legacy Modernization by Michel Vanden Bossche and Ian MacLarty. Discover a completely different way of conceptualizing applications via the Semantic Web.

Chapter 8: Validating Legacy Code -- Modernizing Strategies Through Technical Debt Assessments by John Heintz. Dive into a case study on the DeLorean project, a project explicitly chartered with cleaning up the architecture of a production system, removing duplication, improving code quality, building in testing, and improving reliability -- in short, to remove technical debt.

Chapter 9: Successful Application Modernization and Rationalization, Part I -- Short-Term Tactical Approaches by Don Estes. Gain a blueprint for successful legacy modernization via an intense program of test-driven modernization.

Chapter 10: Successful Application Modernization and Rationalization, Part II -- Long-Term Strategic Approaches by Don Estes. Examine both the conventional and promising unconventional approaches to legacy application modernization, along with their pros and cons.

Chapter 11: Performing "Heart Surgery During Marathons" -- Core Banking System Modernization by Scott Simmons. Gain recommendations for maintaining and managing current core banking solutions while working to transform the core system functionality.

Chapter 12: Guaranteed Success in Legacy Modernization -- Baby Steps by Don Estes. Examine a project design for a major US federal agency that is undertaking its second attempt to modernize an application.

Published: May 2011, 218 pages delivered in print, by post

Authors: Richard Bender, Tom Bragg, Don Estes, Lawrence Fitzpatrick, John Heintz, Corby James, Jonny LeRoy, Ian MacLarty, Tom Love, Scott Simmons, Matthew Simons, Michel Vanden Bossche, and John Wooten

Published: January 2011, 12 pages, PDF format

Author: Moshe Cohen

Online resource center clients: Access this report online.

While differences in power do exist in negotiations, power is complex, with some factors acting for you and others against you. You need to be able to understand and exploit these dynamics. Even when you don't have much power, there are tools you can use to influence matters in your favor. Your success in a negotiation is therefore largely based on your ability to identify and use every point of power, skill, and influence to your advantage, so you can negotiate as effectively as possible under any set of circumstances.

Published: January 2010, 16 pages, PDF format

Author: Moshe Cohen

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

This Council Opinion, prepared by the Cutter Business Technology Council includes the commentary of each Council Fellow and the logic behind his or her concurring or dissenting opinion, as well as the strategic implications of the trend.

Published: January 2011, 11 pages, PDF format

Author: Robert Scott, with concurrences and dissents by Lynne Ellyn, Tim Lister, Ron Blitstein, Ken Orr, Israel Gat

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

Those communities — through an “amplification effect” — foster innovation and process improvements far more quickly than companies can achieve with traditional improvement mechanisms. Social media appears to be a marketing function but, when used internally, can foster improvement in engineering, R&D, and project management — as discussed in this Executive Report.

Published: June 2010, 16 pages, PDF format

Author: Dann A. Maurno

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

In the specific case of the IS strategy, not only is it already difficult to get clarity about the objectives (the elusive alignment quest), but the interdependence of people (and their varying attitudes and competencies), technologies (with the dizzying pace of their evolution), and existing organizational structures must all be thought about as part of the planning process. That's a lot to consider -- and constantly reconsider as conditions change. Strategic IT planning is hardly an emerging item on the executive's agenda. However, given its important and recurrent appearance on the CIO's top agenda items, it is the kind topic that we at Cutter Benchmark Review believe is important to revisit from time to time. More specifically, in this issue of CBR, we set out to examine the ways in which strategic IT planning influences the value that IT delivers to the organization, as well as the degree to which the planning process is perceived to affect organizational outcomes and results. With this focus, we can both benchmark the planning process itself and, at the same time, tackle the question of its relationship to IT value. Given the current and ongoing economic struggles facing businesses both large and small around the world, this seemed like an excellent time to discuss the value of strategic IT planning.

Published: April 2011, 31 pages, PDF format

Authors: Gabriele Piccoli, Editor; Dorothy Leidner, Bob Benson

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

This report is also available in print format.

The report Strategies and Guidelines for Assessing and Improving IT leadership Skills provides you with expert insight into the characteristics, skills and behaviors that contribute to effective (and ineffectual) IT leadership, viable approaches to selecting and training IT leaders, and recommendations for motivating and empowering your project teams.

Some highlights from this report:

• Learn how to use a methodical approach to select and train IT leaders -- called leadership husbandry -- as well as a leadership model -- to help you motivate and influence your team members to achieve your business objectives.

• Gain insight from 11 UK-based CEOs on what traits were necessary for them to progress through the ranks of IT and beyond to the position of CEO.

• Explore a unique approach to leadership at DTE Energy -- adopting agile best practices as a style of organizational governance -- resulting in a culture of teamwork excellence as well as phenomenal business success.

• Examine the three key ways IT leaders can transform their mindset to develop a true partnership with the business and become an integral part of the leadership team.

• Get real-world confessions from a study of 250 IT executives in corporations worldwide revealing the reasons behind leadership failure, the attributes of effective leaders, why leadership matters, and the differences between leaders across industries and geography.

Improve your IT leadership skills with the timeless insight and recommendations found in this exciting resource. Order your copy today!

Published (Second Edition): January 2012, 85 pages, PDF format

Authors: Christopher Avery, Steven Baker, David Caruso, Robina Chatham, Kerry Gentry, and Richard Hordern

This report is also available as a PDF.

The report Strategies and Guidelines for Assessing and Improving IT leadership Skills provides you with expert insight into the characteristics, skills and behaviors that contribute to effective (and ineffectual) IT leadership, viable approaches to selecting and training IT leaders, and recommendations for motivating and empowering your project teams.

Some highlights from this report:

• Learn how to use a methodical approach to select and train IT leaders -- called leadership husbandry -- as well as a leadership model -- to help you motivate and influence your team members to achieve your business objectives.

• Gain insight from 11 UK-based CEOs on what traits were necessary for them to progress through the ranks of IT and beyond to the position of CEO.

• Explore a unique approach to leadership at DTE Energy -- adopting agile best practices as a style of organizational governance -- resulting in a culture of teamwork excellence as well as phenomenal business success.

• Examine the three key ways IT leaders can transform their mindset to develop a true partnership with the business and become an integral part of the leadership team.

• Get real-world confessions from a study of 250 IT executives in corporations worldwide revealing the reasons behind leadership failure, the attributes of effective leaders, why leadership matters, and the differences between leaders across industries and geography.

Improve your IT leadership skills with the timeless insight and recommendations found in this exciting resource. Order your copy today!

Published (Second Edition): January 2012, 85 pages, delivered in print, by post

Authors: Christopher Avery, Steven Baker, David Caruso, Robina Chatham, Kerry Gentry, and Richard Hordern

This Cutter Consortium Executive Report focuses on the strategies for modernization that deliver the greatest business value by examining both conventional and promising unconventional approaches in depth, along with their respective pros and cons. Since conventionally modernized applications will inevitably become "legacy" again, this report also analyzes how rationalization approaches can avoid this fate. Finally, you'll be introduced to a methodology for selecting an optimal project strategy.

Table of Contents:

• Functionality-Preservation Strategies
• Rationalization
• Other Issues
• How to Decide
• Conclusion

Published: March 2011, 26 pages, PDF format

Author: Don Estes

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

This special issue of Cutter Benchmark Review offers benchmarking data on the state of the adoption and use of tablets in the enterprise, in an attempt to understand whether they have become pervasive and how organizations are approaching their integration in the firm's overall infrastructure.

You'll receive insightful and provocative analysis on the applications of tablets in the enterprise, their use (or nonuse) as workstation replacements, and the possible barriers to adoption, such as concerns over data security.

Table of Contents

• The Tablet: A Solution in Search of a Problem by Joseph Feller
• A Storm Is Coming In by Niel Nickolaisen
• Tablet Excitement Is Here, Uses Still Emerging by Gabriele Piccoli
• Tablets in the Enterprise Survey Data collected by Cutter Consortium

Published: August 2011, 22 pages, PDF format

Authors: Gabriele Piccoli, Joseph Feller, and Niel Nickolaisen

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

Amidst all the turmoil, IT shops within firms and governmental institutions have to keep the operations humming while contributing to the survival of the organization. Setting the course for the IT function in a financial and economic storm is a subject that requires insight from some special contributors. We have assembled one of the best duos of CBR contributors since I took over editing of the publication in 2006. On the academic side we have Dorothy Leidner, the Randall W. and Sandra Ferguson Professor of Information Systems and Director of the Center for Knowledge Management at Baylor University (USA). On the practitioner side, we have one of my favorite IT leaders: Tom Murphy, Senior VP and CIO of AmerisourceBergen, a US $54 billion wholesale distributor of pharmaceuticals and related healthcare products.

Published: February 2010, 32 pages, PDF format

Authors: Gabriele Piccoli, Dorothy E. Leidner, Thomas H. Murphy

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

This report by Cutter's William Ulrich and Michael Rosen reveals how capability mapping enables business analysis and business/IT architecture alignment. You'll gain step-by-step guidance that will help you:

• Define your business capabilities using 10 basic capability principles
• Discover why capability is the missing link in business-IT transformation
• Map business capabilities
• Incorporate capability into business architecture and enterprise architecture
• Conduct capability-based analysis and planning
• Use business capabilities to drive business-IT transformation initiatives.

Among the topics discussed are capability mapping, IT architecture transformation, the use of capabilities to specify service-oriented architecture, the transformation of core IT architectures, and more.

Published: February 2011, 26 pages, PDF format

Authors: William Ulrich and Michael Rosen

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

At one end of the pool, we hear all the paranoid negatives. IT is not strategic, so CIOs will be reduced to technology caretakers and vendor managers, as they should be. CIOs are strategically dim-witted and not as sharp as the business in matters of IT and business value, so good riddance to the role. IT is now a consumer product that business leaders will buy themselves, bypassing a central IT purchasing and EA regime that seemed to exist only to stymie the strategy artisans in the business units. Web and Enterprise 2.0 have freed the business from the clutches of central IT and enabled so many benefits that we can stop thinking about corporate IT in the old way.

Published: January 2010, 32 pages, PDF format

Authors: Vince Kellen, Stephen J. Andriole, Thornton May, Bob Gariano, Robert N. Charette, Pat Moroney, Eric Brown and Gene De Libero

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

This report is also available in print format.

In this report, they flip the equation, and examine the things suppliers wish clients would know or do (as well as the things they'd rather not have them know or do). In this report, Lacity and Willcocks take the top 20 statements suppliers make about outsourcing relationships, then tease out the advice that, if followed, would actually benefit the client.

The authors back their assertions with findings of their own 22-year research program as well as from a recent meta-analysis they conducted on 741 findings from rigorous academic research. In this report, you'll find statements from suppliers about the "ideal" customer, outsourcing strategies, and contract negotiations, as well as a peek inside delivering the outsourced service.

Contents:

• Client Profiles
• Outsourcing Strategy
• Contract Negotiations
• Conclusion
• Recommended Reading

Chapter Two: Delivering the Outsourced Service

• Client Capabilities and Management
• Supplier Capabilities and Management
• Relational Governance
• Outsourcing Outcomes
• Conclusion
• Recommended Reading

Find out if you are the type of client who gets the best outsourcing results; how to win the "innovation debate" in negotiations, and how much of your risk you can expect a supplier to absorb.

In addition, you'll uncover how suppliers identify "faux proposals" (and why creating them is not in your interest); why your RFP is too long and has too tight a deadline to work for either the supplier or you; how to choose an advisor to improve your outsourcing outcome; why there is such a thing as a fixed price when the agreement is structured properly, and what length contract has a higher frequency of success.

Leverage decades of outsourcing research from the client and supplier perspectives, along with a wealth of real-life examples to improve your organization's odds of creating arrangements that work. Order "The Inside Scoop: What Suppliers Wish You Knew About Outsourcing" today.

Publication Date: 27 October 2011, 30 pages, PDF format

Authors: Mary Lacity, Leslie P. Willcocks

This report is also available in pdf format.

In this report, they flip the equation, and examine the things suppliers wish clients would know or do (as well as the things they'd rather not have them know or do). In this report, Lacity and Willcocks take the top 20 statements suppliers make about outsourcing relationships, then tease out the advice that, if followed, would actually benefit the client.

The authors back their assertions with findings of their own 22-year research program as well as from a recent meta-analysis they conducted on 741 findings from rigorous academic research. In this report, you'll find statements from suppliers about the "ideal" customer, outsourcing strategies, and contract negotiations, as well as a peek inside delivering the outsourced service.

Contents:

• Client Profiles
• Outsourcing Strategy
• Contract Negotiations
• Conclusion
• Recommended Reading

Chapter Two: Delivering the Outsourced Service

• Client Capabilities and Management
• Supplier Capabilities and Management
• Relational Governance
• Outsourcing Outcomes
• Conclusion
• Recommended Reading

Find out if you are the type of client who gets the best outsourcing results; how to win the "innovation debate" in negotiations, and how much of your risk you can expect a supplier to absorb.

In addition, you'll uncover how suppliers identify "faux proposals" (and why creating them is not in your interest); why your RFP is too long and has too tight a deadline to work for either the supplier or you; how to choose an advisor to improve your outsourcing outcome; why there is such a thing as a fixed price when the agreement is structured properly, and what length contract has a higher frequency of success.

Leverage decades of outsourcing research from the client and supplier perspectives, along with a wealth of real-life examples to improve your organization's odds of creating arrangements that work. Order "The Inside Scoop: What Suppliers Wish You Knew About Outsourcing" today.

Publication Date: 27 October 2011, 30 pages, PDF format

Authors: Mary Lacity, Leslie P. Willcocks

The Business Technology Trends Council Opinion The Neuroscience of Leadership asserts that with an advanced understanding of neuroscience, smart companies will develop software that capitalizes on the real nature of the brain, leading to greater usability, customer satisfaction, and improved human performance.

This Council Opinion will help you:

• Discover how the use of neuroscience will change the usability game, and smart companies will outcompete the clueless competition.
• Learn why leadership should not be turned over to left-brained people.
• Understand that there are three components of attention: alerting, orienting, and executive.
• Consider how the use of neuroscience applied to user response to computer interfaces impacts design.
• Understand that software development is being driven by gaming and virtual technologies -- technologies that clearly reflect a different way to think, problem solve, create, and learn.

Published: July 2011, 13 pages, PDF format

Authors: Ron Blitstein, Lynne Ellyn, Israel Gat, Lou Mazzucchelli, Ken Orr, and Robert D. Scott

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

This report from Cutter Consortium explores the latest innovations in environmentally sustainable IT and provides expert recommendations that will help your company define its green IT strategy and create realistic guidelines for its implementation.

You'll receive 155 pages chock-full of tips and advice on how your company can decrease its energy consumption and increase its organizational efficiency.

Some actions your organization can take now to decrease its environmental footprint include:

You'll learn of policy modifications you can make immediately to reduce the environmental impact of IT's use in the company, as well as cultural changes that take longer to enact. And you'll learn how you can make the best use of your existing resources and plan for growth accordingly.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Can IT Go Green? by San Murugesan.

Chapter 1: Building Sustainable IT by Emily Jane Ryan. Gain strategies for mobilizing a sustainable IT movement within your organization.

Chapter 2: Understanding the Linkages Between IT, Global Supply Chains, and the Environment by Joseph Sarkis and Jacob Park. Discover the profound -- and often hidden -- environmental impacts of the different stages of a typical IT supply chain.

Chapter 3: The Greening of the IT Sector: Problems and Solutions in Managing Environmental Compliance by Tom Butler and Damien McGovern. Examine the design and features of an ideal environmental compliance management system.

Chapter 4: The Perceived Dichotomy Between Current Green IT Initiatives and Information Security by David Biros, David Sikolia, and Michael Hass. Learn how to meet the seemingly conflicting demands of both energy efficiency and security.

Chapter 5: Lessons in Implementing "Green" Business Strategies with ICT by Bhuvan Unhelkar and Annukka Dickens. Receive advice on how to leverage information and communications technology to minimize the effect of enterprise business activities on the environment.

Chapter 6: Being Green -- A Duty and an Opportunity by Marie-Claude Boudreau, Adela Chen, Gabriele Piccoli, Emily Ryan, and Richard T. Watson. Benchmark current practices in green IT and receive guidelines on what you can do tomorrow in your organization.

Chapter 7: CIO Eyes Only -- One More Case for Green IT by Deborah Grove. Discover a three-week approach for establishing a strategy for solving data center energy emergencies.

Chapter 8: The Green Data Center -- Taking the First Steps Toward Green IT? by Ian Osborne. Explore the developments in grid computing underway in the UK and European Commission.

Chapter 9: Green Requirements for IT and Telecom by Brian J. Dooley. Gain strategies for treating green issues as part of your overall risk management program.

Order your copy of The Organizational Benefits of Green IT today!

Published: September 2008, 155 pages, delivered electronically as a PDF.

Authors: David Biros, Marie-Claude Boudreau, Tom Butler, Adela J.W. Chen, Annukka Dickens, Brian J. Dooley, Deborah Grove, Michael Hass, Damien McGovern, San Murugesan, Ian Osborne, Jacob Park, Gabriele Piccoli, Emily Jane Ryan, Joseph Sarkis, David Sikolia, Bhuvan Unhelkar, and Richard T. Watson

A successful Social CRM implementation can help companies get closer to their current clients and spur their sales efforts -- helping to acquire new customers and hold onto existing ones. But success isn't easy. There have been many analysts and experts who have looked at the reasons why these projects fail. But with all due respect, these analysts are focused on the obvious.

The real question of Social CRM is not what goes wrong, but why -- when we all know the problems -- we continue to repeat them over and over again. The solutions to these issues are complex, deceptive, and often counterintuitive. Join Senior Consultant Jim Love as he walks you through solutions you can put to use in your organization.

Presented by: Jim Love, Business-IT Strategies Senior Consultant
Resource Center clients can Access the webinar here.

The Cutter Consortium report The Truth About Cloud Computing: Adoption Strategies, Security, and Reliability delivers a comprehensive assessment of cloud computing's actual strengths, weaknesses, benefits, and risks. You receive 258 pages packed with balanced insight and opinion, presented by a diverse group of industry experts, real-world practitioners and cutting-edge service providers. You gather the expertise you need to determine where (or if) cloud computing fits in your firm's overall business-technology strategy and how to begin the adoption process.

This report will help you:

• Gain a greater understanding of the cloud computing environment so that you may make more rapid decisions
• Think strategically, not tactically, about how your organization wants to leverage technology
• Launch a traditional due diligence process to determine your cloud computing adoption strategy
• Leverage cloud computing to reduce hardware and application software maintenance and update issues
• Identify opportunities to mix and match services
• Discover why -- contrary to popular belief -- cloud computing's security benefits outweigh its security risks
• Dispel the eight common myths regarding software-as-a-service
• Avoid purchasing servers, software, data center space, or network equipment, instead buying these resources as a lower-cost, fully outsourced service
• Scale on-demand to meet peak and uncertain computing demands

Table of Contents

Introduction: Cloud Computing -- IT's Day in the Sun? by San Murugesan.

Chapter 1: Seeing Through the Fog -- The Language, Claims, Myths, and Realities of Cloud Computing by Jeffrey J. Hardy. Understand what cloud computing is and what it is not. Cast a skeptical eye on some of the claims made for cloud computing.

Chapter 2: Clearing Up the Cloud -- Adoption Strategies for Cloud Computing by Ed Reynolds and Charles E. Bess. Outline a cloud solution and discover four broad strategies your organization can use to embrace cloud computing.

Chapter 3: Making the Cloud Case -- Building the Right IT Infrastructure Services by Beth Cohen. Create a successful infrastructure that integrates all the required services seamlessly to the end user.

Chapter 4: Cloud as a Service Delivery Platform -- The Must-Haves for Getting to Value by Jason Liu. Explore how a leading telecommunications service provider is using a cloud enablement platform to bring a variety of new services to the market.

Chapter 5: Entering the Cloud -- Phased Adoption to Computing Nirvana by Steve Andriole. Rethink core competency, sourcing strategies, technology funding, and the role that technology should play in your company, by adopting a 5-step cloud computing implementation plan.

Chapter 6: Security Dynamics of Cloud Computing by Khaled M. Khan. Analyze the cloud computing security requirements of different types of stakeholders and address the security challenges.

Chapter 7: Managing Compliance and Security for Cloud Computing by Jim Hietala and Mark Willoughby. Gain strategies for managing the various compliance and security requirements that will be impacted by cloud computing.

Chapter 8: Understanding SLAs for Cloud Services by G.R. Gangadharan. Explore real-world instances of cloud service-level agreements, what clauses you should look for, and how to avoid agreements that give your provider most of the rights and hardly any liability.

Chapter 9: Cloud Computing -- A New Paradigm in IT by San Murugesan. Gain an overview of cloud computing and its potential and limitations.

Chapter 10: Cloud Computing and Software as a Service -- The Hyper, the Hype, and the Facts with Gabriele Piccoli, Jeffrey M. Kaplan, Luca Mari, and Aurelio Ravarini. Discover the enablers and drivers behind the software-as-a-service and cloud computing trends, as well as the process by which customer acceptance evolves over time.

Chapter 11: Here Comes Cloud Computing with Rob Austin, Christine Davis, Tom DeMarco, Lynne Ellyn, Tim Lister, Andy Maher, Lou Mazzucchelli, Ken Orr, and Mark Seiden. Review the operational economics of cloud computing, its benefits and drawbacks, and receive food for thought as you consider utilizing cloud applications at your organization.

Chapter 12: A Cloud in the Data Center and Services from the Cloud by Brian J. Dooley. Discover the implication that cloud architectures have for the enterprise, and review some of the cloud services vendor offerings, including offerings from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce.com, AT&T, HP, Sun, and Yahoo!.

Chapter 13: Analytics in the Cloud -- Products, Issues, and Considerations by Curt Hall. Explore some of the issues concerning the use of cloud-based/on-demand data warehousing and analytic applications.

Chapter 14: Up, Up, and Away -- Technology Life in the Clouds by Steve Andriole. Learn to think strategically, not tactically, about how you want to leverage technology.

Authors: Steve Andriole, Rob Austin, Charlie Bess, Beth Cohen, Christine Davis, Tom DeMarco, Brian J. Dooley, Lynne Ellyn, Dr. G.R.Gangadharan, Curt Hall, Jeffrey J. Hardy, Jim Hietala, Jeffrey M. Kaplan, Khaled M. Khan, Tim Lister, Jason Liu, Andy Maher, Luca Mari, Lou Mazzucchelli, San Murugesan, Ken Orr, Gabriele Piccoli, Aurelio Ravarini, Ed Reynolds, Mark Seiden, and Mark Willoughby

Published:

July 2009, 258 pages, PDF

Some of these statements will not shock experienced clients. But what will stimulate the interest of all outsourcing clients, both novice and experienced, is that we compare what suppliers say with best practices from academic research and derive guidelines for managers.

Published: April 2011, 17 pages, PDF format

Author: Mary C. Lacity and Leslie P. Willcocks

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

Is this a breakthrough for CRM? Or is it just another case of overpromise and underdeliver? In this Executive Report by Jim Love, we take you through the practical issues involved in making CRM and social CRM a success.

Published: April 2010, 24 pages, PDF format

Author: Jim Love

Online resource center clients: Access this report online