Products

The report A Structured Approach to IT Cloud Migration looks at not only the technical aspects of migrating to cloud ecosystems, but also at how migration will affect business operations. Taking a structured approach to cloud migration projects bypasses roadblocks and allows for intelligent decisions that will benefit the business.

Table of Contents:

• Enterprise Cloud Definition
• Migration Considerations
• Migration Architectures
• Cloud Migration Methodology
• Migration QA and Validation
• Database Migration Considerations
• Case Study: Migrating a Telecom
  into the Cloud
• Migration Best Practices Overview

The real-world examples and case studies offered in this report demonstrate the value of understanding the complex business factors involved and their relation to enterprise IT portfolios. These lessons will give you the tools you need to successfully navigate cloud migration projects with minimal business and technical risk.

Published: July 2011, 17 pages, PDF format

Author: Beth Cohen

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

The dark matter of the business-driven enterprise architecture BDEA comprises proper identification and clarification of value chains and value streams. As we explore in this Executive Report by Skip Boettger, the lack of proper attention to this dark matter creates a "void," compromising the integrity of the BDEA and making it impossible to achieve true accountable integration in the business-driven enterprise.

Published: July 2010, 24 pages, PDF format

Author: Skip Boettger

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

The need for enterprise agility has never been greater, yet the funds for large-scale projects are hard to find. The agile enterprise requires a software development process and supporting infrastructure that is capable of meeting changes in business and technology conditions. Agile development's ability to increase the flexibility of software delivery and SOA's ability to increase the flexibility and usability of software, together provide the best hybrid of current methods for reaching this goal.

The report Agile SOA by Brian Dooley explores the benefits of an agile/SOA strategy and gives you the tools you need to implement an incremental agile/SOA approach, also known as a "meet in the middle strategy," to help your organization achieve better enterprise agility.

This report will help you:

• Understand the requirements to create a merged agile development/SOA environment.
• Overcome the challenges of existing organizational processes and values to start your agile/SOA initiative.
• Utilize a five-step plan to initiate an incremental agile/SOA implementation.
• Achieve greater modularity, efficiency, and alignment with business needs.
• Initiate projects without extreme initial costs.
• Enable greater responsiveness to changes in the business environment.

You'll also benefit from case studies that demonstrate how agile and SOA were used together succesfully to help four organizations achieve their business goals.

If your organization is seeking more efficient development in a constantly changing business environment, then Agile SOA will help you achieve this goal.

Published: June 2010, 16 pages, PDF format

Author: Brian J. Dooley

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

If this is the case, your organization is likely to be missing out on a wide range of powerful business-IT transformation opportunities. Information systems transformation is delivering more strategic value than ever.

Information Systems Transformation concepts offer organizations the ability to transform complex IT architectures to achieve critical business requirements. As traditional Greenfield, middleware and off-the-shelf solutions hit the wall, information systems transformation concepts have become essential to achieving synchronized and sustainable business-IT alignment. Organizations are using these concepts to enable the move to a customer centric business model, streamlining merger and acquisition deployment, and moving to more streamlined, transparent business deployments. Join us at this important webinar as William Ulrich outlines practical approaches to business-driven, IT architecture transformation using real world case studies and examples.

Resource Center clients can Access the webinar here.

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

The focus of business process management (BPM) has shifted from a documentation activity -- typically driven by IT -- to a business responsibility in which processes are monitored and managed against key process indicators, and capabilities are created to simulate processes directly from models. BPM is finally penetrating the business and IT cultures and is poised to help organizations achieve the elusive goal of the model-driven, real-time enterprise.

The Cutter IT Journal issue Business Process Management: The Missing Link Between Business and IT? offers advice and recommendations on how to employ BPM effectively to maximize business performance and help bridge the divide commonly found between business and IT. You'll receive insightful opinion on the best ways to understand and position BPM, and strategies for exploiting the strengths of this concept without falling prey to the hype.

• BPM: Just Another Buzzword or an Essential Business-IT Link? by Claude R. Baudoin.
• Business Process Management: The New Old Thing? by Paul Clermont. Learn why BPM often failed in the past and discover new requirements for BPM teams to succeed.
• The Business Analyst Skill Gap by Kevin Brennan. Explore the role of the "business analyst" and discover a method to assess and improve the business analyst's skills.
• What BPM Hat Are You Wearing? Perspectives on Business Process Management by Ian Gotts. Identify the four audiences for BPM and discuss the various models of the business and the connections that must exist between them.
• Value Chain Modeling: Linking Customer Value to Business Process Design and Automation by Fred Cummins. Consider business processes in the context of value chain analysis and focus on the delivery of customer value and optimizing processes across multiple lines of business.
• A Quantitative Approach to Process Improvement by Matthew Ganis and Lekha P. Panikulangara. Leverage the popularity of project retrospectives and apply them to measure and improve BPM efforts.
• Runtime Collaboration and Dynamic Modeling in BPM: Allowing the Business to Shape Its Own Processes on the Fly by Sandy Kemsley. Explore dynamic adaptation of processes on the fly and review two examples of products that include such capability.

Published: February 2010, 40 pages, PDF format

Author: Claude Baudoin

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

Table of Contents:

• Opening Statement
• The Town Planners of Enterprise Innovation
• Effective Customer Requirements Definition Using Business Architecture
• The Tale of Two BAs: Why Business Architecture Is the Business Analysis Practice's Best Friend
• A Capability-Based Approach to Strategic Transformational Initiatives
• Creating a New Multidisciplinary Cancer Center Using Business Architecture

Published: November 2011, 34 pages, PDF format

Authors: William Ulrich, Dan McClure, Carlos Villela, Andrew Guitarte, Neal McWhorter, Diana Krohn, Dr. Steven Libutti, Ron Zahavi

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

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

In the near future, thanks to the proliferation of sensor-based information networks, the typical opportunities and challenges linked to knowledge mining will intensify. This Executive Report by Paola Di Maio provides an overview of the essential components and architectural features of future embedded intelligence and their relevance to BI. It recommends steps that CIOs and BI professionals should consider to keep track of the rapid developments in this field.

Published: March2010, 20 pages, PDF format

Author: Paola Di Maio

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

The five articles in this issue of Cutter IT Journal are qualitatively different from the first six in that they provide alternative, or perhaps complementary, views on BPM's place in the enterprise.

Published: May 2010, 40 pages, PDF format

Authors: Claude Baudoin, David Wrigh, Tushar Hazra, Fred Cummins, Mike Gammag, Ricky Cheong and Eric Tsui

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

Existing glossaries are often incomplete (or spill over to cover adjacent concepts), obsolete, biased toward a specific approach, or of limited quality. Therefore, Cutter Consortium has developed a comprehensive, high-quality BPM glossary from a tool- and method-agnostic viewpoint to help clients with their BPM adoption and education efforts. The glossary is presented in this Executive Report by Claude R. Baudoin.

Published: April 2010, 24 pages, PDF format

Author: Claude R. Baudoin

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: 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

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

The report Developing a Practical Enterprise Architecture Curriculum by Cutter Fellow Ken Orr provides a framework for creating a core EA training curriculum that is the basis for building a world-class EA group. You get guidance on creating a down-to-earth training program that results in a team of people with all the requisite skills needed to introduce, manage and operate a state-of-the-art EA program, and provide real value to your enterprise.

This report will help you:

• Move from a general EA framework to a specific EA approach.
• Gain a view of EA that extends beyond the basic Zachman Framework.
• Define what skills you need in an EA group.
• Create a training program with reasonable metrics and performance measures.
• Train 7 major categories of people in EA: user management, users and/or subject matter experts, business analysts, enterprise architects, IT management, developers, and database administrators.
• Build a flexible EA group by defining roles, not jobs.
• Apply metaphors from urban planning for insight on the roles within EA groups.
• Teach basic EA concepts in a predetermined order -- so that you can better prepare employees to tackle complex issues.
• Bring together a team of people who can leverage each other's skills.
• Recruit architects that are able to conceptualize, communicate, design and model, are self-starters, and are persistent.

This report outlines the following 8 EA training classes:

1. An Overview of EA -- gets the basic ideas of your EA program across to the widest possible audience.
2. EA Methods and Approaches -- discusses the major EA frameworks in the marketplace.
3. Being an Enterprise Architect -- reveals the personalities and skills you need to recruit for your EA group.
4. Business Architecture Modeling -- addresses strategic intentions, business context, business value chains and business processes.
5. Data Architecture Modeling -- provides tools and techniques for understanding your enterprise's data at the highest level.
6. Application Architecture Modeling -- develops a long-term "product planning" view of your EA, including all your major applications.
7. Technology Architecture Modeling -- promotes understanding of all the technologies, including hardware, software, and communications components.
8. Managing EA -- helps you build an EA organization, establish relationships with
   the business, and build the actual enterprise architecture -- all at the same time.

This report will help you recognize talent and interest throughout your organization, match them up with your enterprise's needs, and then hire/train employees to fill the gaps. And it will show you how to practice "experimental management" of EA as an emerging discipline, allowing you to move from training, to trying, to learning, and evolving.

Published: February 2006, 25 pages, PDF format

Author: Ken Orr

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

On the academic side is Aurelio Ravarini, Senior Assistant Professor of IS at Università Carlo Cattaneo (LIUC, Italy) and Director with LIUC's CETIC, Research Center on Information Systems. Many of you will recall Aurelio as a past contributor to CBR; he was our academic expert on the issues on content management systems (Vol. 6, No. 4) and software as a service (Vol. 9, No. 4 ). Our practitioner author is Gianni Maria Strada, a former HR executive of several US corporations and current Managing Partner of PeoplePoint, a boutique HR consulting firm focused on major organizational change processes. Both contributors have considerable experience with the organizational implementation of software applications and their consequential organizational change processes.

Published: May 2010, 16 pages, PDF format

Authors: Gabriele Piccoli, Aurelio Ravarini, Gianni Maria Strada

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

The new report EA as an Organizational Capability: Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling by Paul Allen examines the critical success factors required for transition to a new model for EA. You'll learn how to integrate the EA function within the broader picture of demand management, software delivery, IT service management, governance, and external providers; communicate the vision and purpose of EA using accessible graphical techniques such as iconic maps; and avoid the bureaucracy that can sometimes be a part of EA.

You'll explore why so many firms that have embraced EA at an IT level have failed to break through what seems to be an intangible but very real obstacle: the glass ceiling that has proved to be a barrier to the realization of true business benefits. And you'll gain strategies for overcoming four key EA challenges that will help you break through this glass ceiling:

1. Articulating the value proposition

2. Dealing with organizational context

3. Communicating abstract and complex ideas in a simple, effective way

4. Measuring the value of EA as an organizational capability and achieving business outcomes

Ensure your EA program achieves solid business outcomes that cement its place in the business plans.

Published: March 2010, 19 pages, PDF format

Author: Paul Allen

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

In this Executive Report by Claude R. Baudoin, we look at the state of EA today, including the frameworks that have evolved in the last few years, the challenge of business-IT alignment, business process management (BPM) and master data management (MDM), and technologies such as service-oriented architecture (SOA) and cloud computing. We also examine the governance and maturity of an EA program and conclude with new trends and challenges for the next decade and beyond.

Published: January 2010, 28 pages, PDF format

Author: Claude R. Baudoin

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

Creating a new enterprise architecture (EA) is a time-consuming process that will hopefully align your organization's current and future IT systems so they will support its business strategy and goals. But it's easy to overlook one of the most critical success factors for an enterprise architecture -- the development of an EA program that enables the organizational changes required to introduce an architecture, support it, and demonstrate its true value.

But how are you going to gain support for your new EA program from your organization's battle-hardened skeptics of yet another new technology initiative?

The report Enterprise Architecture Rollout and Training written by Mike Rosen provides you with a rollout strategy, architecture program, and training curriculum that will help you overcome the challenges of introducing an enterprise architecture to your enterprise, your business, and your development organizations.

This report will help you:

• Create a successful EA program that supports your new architecture
• Deliver small parts of the architecture over numerous projects
• Bridge the gap between EA and application development
• Debunk the myth that an enterprise architecture doesn't provide value
• Train internal architects
• Collect metrics on the architecture itself, the EA program, and the development process
• Leverage the roles of application architects
• Establish an EA governance organization
• Avoid the common mistake of too much process
• Choose a pilot project that addresses the technical direction and standards layed out by the enterprise architecture
• Include performance measurements as a specific set of requirements when designing your architecture

You'll discover a straightforward formula for a successful enterprise architecture rollout: start small, empower the users, demonstrate value, incorporate lessons learned, roll out to a larger audience, and repeat. And you'll discuss the responsibilities of the three main organizational groups within an EA program, including the architecture development group, the governance group, and the enablement group.

ACT NOW and order your copy of this report today!

Published: July 2005, 26 pages, PDF format

Author: Mike Rosen

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

In a world some people call "hypercompetitive" -- with little time to rest on one's laurels -- it is increasingly difficult to achieve sustainable competitive advantage without world-class, integrated business processes. But getting from today's inefficient and fragmented processes to tomorrow's integrated and well-defined business processes involves a fair amount of chaos and pain.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Business Process Modeling Fundamentals by Ken Orr. Discover the key concepts and strategies involved in business process innovation; explore the major threads of business process thinking and the diagrams/tools used in modeling; and get tips for avoiding business process (re)modeling failure.

Chapter 2: Integrating BPM and SOA: The Emerging Role of OMG and MDA by Michael K. Guttman and John H. Parodi. Leverage the Object Management Group's Model Driven Architecture (MDA) to help unify BPM and SOA. Understand how the BPM, SOA, and MDA paradigms are likely to converge in the near future and where and when to step into that process.

Chapter 3: The Key to SOA Governance: Understanding the Essence of Business by Keith Swenson. Learn how to combine BPM and Enterprise Service Bus to create processes that can easily be deployed by IT while leveraging your existing systems and infrastructure without significant rework.

Chapter 4: Business Process Management: A Broken Promise or the Building Blocks of Modern Enterprise Architecture? Introduction by Bartosz Kiepuszewski

Sections:

• Enterprise Architecture: Business Process Management, SOA and MDSD by Michael Hartges, Dirk Krafzig, Michael Kunz, Florian Mösch, Dirk Slama, and Thomas Stahl. Discover how business process management supports T-Mobile in its efforts to innovate by rethinking and simplifying processes.
• Adaptive Process Management Architecture: Enabling Enterprise Innovation by Borys Stokalski and Marcin Strozanski. Explore the four key capabilities that constitute the adaptive process automation frameworks and how to partner SOA with business rules to enable enterprise innovation.
• Is Business Process Management Ready for Prime Time? Lessons from a Proof of Concept by Olivier Brousseau. Hear how Schlumberger, a multimillion-dollar oilfield services company, put six vendors of business process management suites through their paces -- and found them all wanting.
• Business Process Management: Defining the Basics for Success by Mark Fung-A-Fat. Learn how the Massachusetts Medical Society successfully implemented a business process management strategy to manage processes as diverse as its online e-commerce business flows to its time-off request process.
• All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Selecting the Right Tool for Your Business Process Management Needs by Nick Russell, Wil M.P. van der Aalst, and Arthur H.M. ter Hofstede. Discover how to use workflow patterns to benchmark the capabilities of business process management technology offerings to select the tool that's best for your organization.

Chapter 5: Business Modeling and Analytics by Brian J. Dooley. Sidestep the confusion created by modeling convergence, as process models are merged with models created to chart data for software development and again with analytic models used to predict outcomes of processes under a given set of conditions.

This report will also provide you with six evaluation criteria to assess the strengths and weaknesses of business process management suite vendors, and help you avoid falling into the trap of thinking there is only one right business process solution.

Finally, you'll explore common business process management misconceptions, and get steps that will lead you toward success, including better understanding your business imperatives before choosing a business process management solution, identifying mandatory and desired capabilities, establishing satisfaction criteria, benchmarking potential solutions, and choosing the right tool for your organization.

Authors: Olivier Brousseau, Brian J. Dooley, Mark Fung-A-Fat, Michael K. Guttman, Michael Hartges, Arthur H.M. ter Hofstede, Bartosz Kiepuszewski, Dirk Krafzig, Michael Kunz, Florian Mösch, Ken Orr, John H. Parodi, Nick Russell, Dirk Slama, Thomas Stahl, Borys Stokalski, Marcin Strózanski, Keith Swenson, and Wil M.P. van der Aalst

Published: December 2007, 170 pages, PDF format

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

The Smart Grid is to be borne upon the innovations and technologies of the Internet, melding with traditional electric utility generation, transmission, and distribution protocols of the past century. How will the Smart Grid influence consumers in their use of energy? Who will collectively manage (and secure) the Smart Grid's "digital exhaust"? These, among a host of other compelling questions, are explored within this Executive Report by Mitchell Ummel, Mike Rosen, and Ken Orr.

Published: February 2010, 20 pages, PDF format

Author: Mitchell Ummel, Mike Rosen, Ken Orr

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

The first stage of a project must reproduce the business functionality of the legacy application and pass rigorous acceptance testing validated against the legacy system. Then a second stage can provide enhanced functionality by refactoring the results of the first stage. A variety of conventional and unconventional approaches are discussed in depth with their respective pros and cons.

Published: January 2011, 25 pages, PDF format

Author: Don Estes

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

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

We consider the pressures on organizations to master the art of change and present a fractal metaphor for the tandem role of strategy and architecture. Combining a fractal and emergent approach allows for an organic, dynamic way to express organizational intentionality to orchestrate waves of change, while embracing the need to respond extemporaneously and locally to opportunities and changes that demand surges of responsiveness.

Published: May 2010, 28 pages, PDF format

Author: Ruth Malan and Dana Bredemeyer

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

Government is the largest institution on the face of the Earth. Citizens worldwide now expect more from their governments than ever before. Perennially, we struggle in the pursuit of government efficiency and cost-effectiveness. We find new levels of government accountability, with renewed mandates for government transparency. Unlike the business world, within government, we find programs and services exist in a universe where there are no natural laws of selection. As we examine the "state of the states" in this Executive Report by Mitchell Ummel, we find that the answers exist within a rising movement, one that the author refers to as "Transformative E-Government 3.0."

Published: February 2011, 20 pages, PDF format

Author: Mitchell Ummel

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

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

In this issue of Cutter IT Journal, we aim to shed some light on how value chain relates to both business architecture and enterprise architecture, and as a result, how it can contribute to aligning or integrating business priorities and IT programs. In the following articles, six experts from varied backgrounds will help you understand and explore the contribution of value chain. Their analyses provide guidance to those who are seeking a different way to revive or reinforce the dialogue between the CIO and the rest of the C-suite, or to ensure that the portfolio of business systems, as well as infrastructure projects, uses business imperatives rather than the appeal of new technology as its justification.

Table of Contents:

• Opening Statement
• Value Streams: Business Architecture's Guidepost to Business-IT Transformation
• Building Competitive Advantage Using the Enterprise Business Architecture
• Optimizing Business Architecture with Value Stream Analysis
• Capability Analysis with the Value Delivery Modeling Language

Published: April 2011, 39 pages, PDF format

Authors: Guest Editor Claude R. Baudoin, William Ulrich, Neal McWhorter, Ralph Whittle, Kraig Parkinson, Fred A. Cummins and Henk de Man

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

Published: August 2010, 32 pages, PDF format

Authors: Joseph Feller, Tadgh Nagle, Dave Sammon, Claude Baudoin, Lakshmanan G, Pradeep Kumar M, and Harish K, Simon Woodworth and Rohan Beckles

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

This report by Dana Bredemeyer and Ruth Malan spells out the necessary qualities for great enterprise architects in the context of a historical story. It is the story of James Madison and the creation of the US Constitution. The story is told in narrative form, giving you the opportunity to discover its lessons for yourself as you shape how the architect's role is perceived in your organization.

The key characteristics for success that emerge from the Madison story and resonate with our experience with top architects around the world are:

• Domain expertise
• Political acuity
• Strategic ability
• Leadership skills

Having a clear, articulated strategy, and a way to move from that strategy to activities and decisions that align with it, will help you make a strategic difference in your organization. Order your copy of this report today and find out how!

Published: August 2004, 22 pages, PDF format

Authors: Dana Bredemeyer and Ruth Malan

Online resource center clients: Access this report online

Some think it the cloud means virtualization, others think it means scalable infrastructure, and still others think it means software-as-a-service. Sometimes, the business has a different and dangerous perspective, thinking that the cloud provides a new way to source IT solutions without having to go through the IT department.

This webinar will present an overall enterprise architecture that incorporates the many different perspectives of the cloud, addresses the range of issues, and describes a framework to govern what can be moved to the cloud, what should not be moved, what IT should do proactively, what the business can do on its own, and what it must coordinate with IT.

Presented by: Mike Rosen, Enterprise Architecture Practice Director

Resource Center clients can Access the webinar here.