Archive 2008
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The articles page is updated on a weekly
basis. If you missed one last week, or you simply would like
to read some of the articles we have featured in the past, you can find
them all here in the archives.
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Alternatively click here to return to this week's articles.
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Please be aware that the article links on
this page were correct at the time of original publication.
Unfortunately we are unable to ensure that all past articles remain
accessible and therefore apologise for any broken links that you might
find on this page.
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Monday 8th December
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An interesting
view of how a large logistics firm changed its core IT architecture in
just 72 days to implement a Service Oriented Architecture, rather than
following the trend of applying the SAP templates used by their
European and US offices. Now they claim to be able to plug-and-play
their systems, both internal and with 3rd party suppliers. |
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Monday 1st December
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A review of
Intel's recent demonstration of Social Networking technology for the
workplace at the Web 2.0 Summit. It is no surprise that Intel called
this 'Enterprise 2.0' social networking but the end-user platform for
this demonstration is a prototype mobile device. |
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We see more and
more use of open source technology these days but it is important to be
clear that 'open source' doesn't necessarily mean free. There's open
source and there's open source. It is interesting to find out how Sun -
who have a strong track record with open source and strategy for it
that is growing - see 'commercial' open source. |
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Monday 17th November
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The current
economic turmoil has prompted many watchers to speculate that this is
the beginning of the end of the US as a superpower, as globalisation
finally catches up with the most powerful economy of recent times. If
this is so then leadership in technology may be the last bastion to
crumble. |
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Gartner's view on the strategic technologies
that will be big in 2009. |
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Monday 3rd November
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The term Enterprise Architecture (EA) sometimes
conjures up negative connotations of ivory towers, ineffective
processes, lack of participation and low stakeholder commitment. Some
IT organisations embrace EA and others totally reject its value. But
all EA programmes, even effective ones, can be improved. It is a matter
of avoiding the common traps and becoming focused on getting things
done. |
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An organisation’s culture and attitude are key
to the implementation of a successful SOA, however, this is an area
that is often overlooked. Addressing these issues early can
be the difference between success and failure. |
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Monday 13th October
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Article
describing Butler Group's view that successful EA requires buy-in
across the organisation and a clear responsibility in driving out the
IT strategy. |
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This
survey suggests that only 3% of CIO’s sit in the board and,
whilst they see innovation as key part of their role, they actually
spend considerably more time ’keeping the lights on’. |
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Monday 6th October
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Echoing our own thoughts (seeBringing
Order to Chaos, EAS 2005) on how Enterprise Architecture is
applied to understand and manage the complexity that is present even in
the simplest organisations, this article also explores how this may not
be a simple task but it is possible and there are rewards for the
effort that is put into the intiative. |
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This interview discusses whether SOA really has
moved from a theoretical ideal to actually being used in practice - and
discusses how the changes that are experienced by the IT
department. |
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Monday 29th September
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A look at how organisations have implemented
SOA, focussing on the importance of a robust governance process. |
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We hear from as many organisations who have had
many problems using Agile development as those who have found it
beneficial. This article looks at some of the reasons why projects are
having trouble managing such projects. |
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Monday 22nd September
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This article looks at and compares WOA and SOA,
along with Web Services and discusses the differences, whether there is
any conflict and what CIO’s/CEO’s should concentrate on. |
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Is the cost of software about to rise? As Oracle
and SAP are both preparing to increase their pricing on Enterprise
software, the cost to IT organisations of buying and maintaining
business software could be hit by a steep rise. |
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Interesting article on IT investment and its
link to competitiveness that highlights the importance of the
enterprise-wide view, that the enterprise architects, if doing their
job properly, can provide. |
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Monday 15th September
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As the ‘next big thing in IT’ this article looks
at how you might introduce cloud computing into your organisation. |
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Subscribers to the Google Apps hosted software
suite were among a large number of users who were locked out of their
GMAil accounts for about 15 hours. Although Cloud services are already
delivering great benefits to many users, these recent outages - there
was another in mid-July show how there is still a way to go before
enterprises can reliably use these kind of services to replace systems
that they are currently operating themselves. The expectations of
Google Apps users are clearly already very high judging by some of
their comments in this article. Quality of service has to be right up
there with cost when considering whether Cloud Computing is ready for
your organisation. |
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Monday 8th September
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Interesting article on IT investment and its
link to competitiveness that highlights the importance of the
enterprise-wide view, that the enterprise architects, if doing their
job properly, can provide. |
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Useful checklist on the mistakes that people
make with SOA. |
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The business world should see the current slow
down as an opportunity for leadership and inspiration. |
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Monday 4th August
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A viewpoint on benefits of enterprise
architecture. |
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Is cloud computing really the next big thing –
as big a business change as e-business? Or is it all pie in
the sky? |
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Monday 28th July
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This article identifies that, despite the
current tough economic climate, IT investment is moving away from cost
cutting towards customer focus. |
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Monday 21st July
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This article discusses the buzz words ‘business
agility’ and what they really mean. |
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A look at an approach - Software Cartography -
for gathering and capturing the knowledge of the dependencies in the
enterprise from a wide variety of stakeholders. Building, maintaining
and using such a model is vital in providing the knowledge that is
required to manage enterprise risk. |
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Monday 14th July
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This article discusses the view that CIO’s will
have to choose between whether to focus on innovation or on traditional
IT and offers some opposing views. |
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Monday 7th July
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Interesting blog item on EA and some of the
views that are being raised on its worth. In our view, it all boils
down to whether you are crystal clear on the value the EA is delivering
or is going to deliver for you. We tend to see 'ivory towers'
where the value expected wasn't defined upfront. Have a look
at this article for further views.
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Monday 30th June
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A quick peek at a new technology that claims to
be making a leap in tackling intractable business problems.
SecurityPost's SPAI is an artifical intelligence data analysis tool
that specialises in processing very large and complex data sets. |
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Thinking like a designer can transform the way
you develop products, services, processes—and even strategy. A
discussion on how 'design thinking' in the innovation process can be
used to generate differentiation and competitive advantage. |
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Monday 23rd June
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Trapped inside your company’s processes are
activities that can now be swapped, bought, and sold. If you liberate
them, you can create a radically more efficient plug-and-play business.
SOA plays a vital part in delivering these activities - both automated
and manually performed. The key to SOA is to 'think service oriented'
about how the business operates rather than trying to 'SOA' all the IT
systems. |
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This article suggests that the continued trend
of outsourcing, and the move towards outsourcing business processes
will change the CIO role in the long term to be much more business
focused. |
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A short article describing the results of some
Forrester research into Software-As-A-Service. |
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Monday 16th June
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This article discusses an apparent backlash
against Enterprise Architects. |
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At the Interop 2008 conference, panelists said
that most SOA efforts will fail. However, this rather gloomy
prediction, the problems do not lie with the technology, which can
deliver the platform we need to build our SOA. The issues are with
people and processes. There is also a particulalrly interesting comment
that suggests that SOA requires a "paradigm enforcement, not
paradigm shift". |
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Grady Booch's views on delivering big software
projects. |
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Monday 9th June
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This blog discusses the trend that the CIO
should be in charge of re-architecting the business – and whether this
is, in fact, wise. |
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A fundamental change in the way IT is being
delivered at some companies is leading them to dispense with an entire
layer of IT management. This article looks at the reasons behind this
trend and how it is working. |
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Some brief points on making EA useful from The
Enterprise Architecture Conference and Ex. |
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Monday 2nd June
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This article discusses the challenges that are
facing IT managers and suggests six competencies for delivering IT
value. |
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An interesting analysis of the key factors that
make for good leadership. Sensitivity and self-awareness - strong
emmotional intelligence are very important. As the article says,
leadership cannot, in fact, be taken, it is given by those around you. |
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Forrester’s guide to keep your strategic plan
afloat - in particular here are the top ten mistakes people make when
developing a plan. |
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Monday 19th May
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In this article, DHL's CIO describes the largest
business integration project ever undertaken in the contract logistics
sector. If the business and IT were not lined up, he believes that they
would not have succeeded in bringing this project in significantly
early and under budget. |
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An interesting view on how software development
resources can be pooled to meet the business needs better. However, it
seems that this can be improved further by pooling the development
resource while de-centralising those who work with the business
community to understand and capture the requirements. That is:
centralise the "supply", de-centralise the "demand". |
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This article discusses the Cloud Computing - the
benefits it promises and the risks it poses. |
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Monday 12th May
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Businesses are starting to exploit social
network technology and in the process are revolutionising
collaboration. |
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This article looks at the skills required to
effect business transformation and questions whether CIO’s possess
those skills. |
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Although in just six months it has become a key
industry conversation, it is - as yet - not well enough
defined and the UK lacks the broadband capacity to make it
worth discussing. |
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Monday 5th May
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A view from the former group vice president for
IT at ICI on how cloud computing will change the way that people
approach outsourcing and managed services. |
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This article looks at the skills required to
effect business transformation and questions whether CIO’s possess
those skills. |
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Nicholas Carr, famed for his earlier judgement
that ‘IT doesn’t matter’, explains how IT will transform into utility
services to be consumed by business and, ultimately, a time when the
‘World Wide Computer’ will be indistinguishable from human intelligence. |
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Monday 28th April
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This examines a recent survey that suggests that
business leaders appreciate the role that IT plays in both innovation
and competitive advantage and that IT leadership takes an active role
in strategic business decisions. |
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A list of ten suggestions on what a CIO should
do in troubled economic times. The role for architecture is fairly
clear within this. |
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Monday 21st April
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This article discusses the findings that most
CIO’s place innovation high on their agenda of importance, but low in
their working practices. |
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Monday 14th April
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Two of Gartner's analysts say that 'Windows as
we know it needs to be replaced'. This article claims that these are
words that enterprises dread but will enterprises really be surprised
by this announcement? Although other operating systems are more
consistent across platforms, are out-innovating Microsoft and have
significantly shorter development times, Gartner still suggest that
organisations should not necessarily skip Vista entirely. |
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The Chief Architect for DOD explains why the new
DOD roadmap is built around manageable components of work that deliver
value in their own right rather than a perfection-driven approach. |
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A brief look at the service-oriented application
framework that BT has used as the platform for their field optimisation
solution. |
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Monday 7th April
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This article suggests that, although a high
percentage of companies are in the process of rolling out SOA, many of
them are unaware of the impact that this will have on testing and
security issues for their organisation.
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This
report has found that poor information management is hampering decision
making at many companies. |
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Monday 31st March
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A
nice explanation of what Enterprise Architecture (EA) is. |
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A
look at why IT/business alignment is still an issue despite many years
of various approaches to resolving this. |
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Monday 24th March
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One
view on how an EA framework (Zachman, in this case) maps to a system
development life cycle! |
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Monday 17th March
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This
article discusses the fact that CIOs have been at the forefront of
innovation for a number of years and are well placed to help the CEO
with their strategies. |
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Surprisingly,
the results of this survey show that only 1.5% of respondents
considered their SOA projects a failure, so the answer is a resounding
yes! |
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Monday 10th March
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Aligning
IT to the business is still a major concern for CIOs. This is a new
problem that people have been trying to tackle for around for 30 years
or so. Effective use of Enterprise Architecture can help to alleviate
the underlying problems - the mis-understanding of IT-Business
alignment is and the belief that there is a single 'magic' answer to
solving it. |
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Monday 3rd March
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A
view from Nick Malik in Microsoft’s EA group, who introduces a double
triangle where change to one side means impact on the others.
Interesting read. |
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A
survey suggests that more than 40% of CIOs believe their departments do
not deliver great IT, this article looks at some possible reasons for
this. |
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Monday 25th February
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The
term 'service' is so overused, that it means so many different things.
Even the term SOA means different things depending on who you are
talking to. Certainly, just because you are using Web Service
technology, does not necessarily mean that you are adopting SOA. This
blog looks at suggestions for a new name for SOA that actually conveys
what it's about. |
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Monday 18th February
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All too often BPM systems give you someone
else’s processes and are too rigid and inflexible. This article looks
towards how this will change in the future. |
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This article suggests that business executives
can often feel that that they need enterprise architects to support
business innovation more effectively and that IT doesn't speak English.
Architecture provides the structure to build the bridge between the
business and IT. The enterprise architects must be able to work with
the business to find the right technical solutions to support
innovation and also to communicate the art-of-the-possible from the
technology, which could spark business innovation. |
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Views
from a panel on current application development trends. |
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Monday 11th February
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The following article aims to put straight a
number of myths that are commonly accepted about the importance of
Strategic IT planning. |
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Thoughts from the presenter and feedback from
the audience on a presentation at the conference that explored the
business case for SOA and the lifecycle of an SOA project. |
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Monday 4th February
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This blog discusses the challenges faced when
organisations have a need to integrate multiple SOA implementations
(e.g. for mergers and acquisitions) with further links to useful white
papers, blogs and presentations. |
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A look at the issues that CIOs face in
delivering strategic plans - and some ways around them. |
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Some
interesting views from the CIO Jury on outsourcing. |
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Many
IT organisations are working very hard to close the gap between
themselves and the business. This article has a look at what approaches
work but these focus on organisational change. On its own that won't
make enough of a difference. Where's the reference to the value of
Architecture? All of the organisations mentioned take a serious
approach to Enterprise Architecture. By looking at the enterprise as a
whole, using the architecture as a framework for understanding the
dependencies and links between all aspects of the enterprise from
Business Objectives through to the 'tin' in the Technology
Architecture, the alignment gap can be eliminated. |
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Monday 28th January
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With the wide-spread take-up of Web Services,
many organisations are now in a situation where they have thousands of
such services to manage. While WSDL and UDDI bring standards for
finding and using these services at a technology level, how do we make
sure that we are using the right service? This article looks at some of
the additional information that we need to capture about services if we
are to manage and use them effectively. |
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An interesting interview with Tony Scott, CTO of
General Motors, on how he manages IT within GM. |
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The
following article outlines ten mistakes that organisations commonly
make when an enterprise architecture-driven approach is not taken to
data integration. |
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According
to this article, between virtualisation and SOA, the foundations for a
flexible IT infrastructure are now in place. |
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Monday 21st January
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As space and power become premium resources and
energy costs continue to soar, 'Green IT' is a concept that will gain
more and more coverage throughout 2008. This is not just about taking
account of your carbon footprint but by taking a more strategic and
holistic view of your enterprise's IT infrastructure, e.g. 40% of
servers are using just half of their full capacity. Tackling these
kinds of inefficiency not only reduces the impact on the environment,
but has a very positive effect on the enterprise's bottom line through
a more efficient use of the IT budget. This article explores the
thoughts of leading IT vendors and analysts as to what 2008 holds for
Green IT in 2008? |
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A look at the stories that caused most uproar
and debate among CIOs in 2007. |
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A
discussion of how different commonly used frameworks (such as ITIL,
COBIT and ISO 17799) can be used together to manage IT services in your
enterprise. |
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Article
describing how, in practice, a number of commonly held assumptions
about implementing SOA can hinder an organisation’s ability to yield
short-to-medium term benefits, which in turn can impact continued
business buy-in. |
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Monday 14th January 2008
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Interesting paper on IT governance and discusses
the degree of support for decision making of frameworks. |
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A look at the implications of last years news
and what it means for the future. |
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Microsoft
is trying to encourage users and developers to adopt the 'least
privilege' approach to user accounts to stop malware. Indeed, the Unix
vendors have been trying to do this for at least a decade. However,
having your users logged in through accounts that do not have
super-user, administrator, power-user, etc. privileges will not stop
malware. Such software doesn't need privileged access to threaten the
security of your systems and information. |
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Article
containing a series of quotes from Accenture CTO Donald Rippert where
he outlines the need for CIO’s to work more closely with business teams
if the promised benefits of SOA are to be truly realized. |
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