When you look at the successful technology projects and initiatives you have been involved with, can you identify the common threads?  Innovations, vision, strategy, metrics, have all proven their way onto the map. But what about the people and processes involved on the road to success? So many times, these important elements are overlooked. This is why I found it [...]

This is a true incident which happened a few months ago at an upcoming Bay Area-based wireless device manufacturer. I was there to meet with their IT director to discuss their enterprise integration strategy. They had recently acquired a SaaS CRM to replace their on-premise CRM application. They seemed happy and content about their decision. The IT director could not [...]

This is every IT manager’s worst nightmare. You walk into the office. Everyone in your department looks gloomy. The mood in the air is a bit unsettling. As you work through the various worst case scenarios in your head, you open up your email inbox. And right there, at the top, is an email from the CIO titled “Adopt cloud [...]

I had the opportunity to attend the CITEworld conference on Consumerization of IT here in NYC a few weeks ago. It was a really well run day, and wanted to share a few things I learned. The conference really impacted how I think about the opportunity in the application integration space. Mobile is bigger than I realized. A lot bigger. Yet, [...]

Today’s technology foundation must be built to support and benefit diverse operational efforts across many lines of business. Although organizations recognize the value of a flexible architecture, disconnected silos plague their efforts making it difficult to achieve the full value locked in disparate systems. However, many organizations are reporting compelling results when using a Service-Orientated Architecture (SOA) as a foundation [...]

Years of studies will show you, people are motivated by rewards. But what’s not true is people only do great things to be rewarded. In fact, people do great things every day that change the way we live and do business, not because they want to be rewarded but because they want to make a difference. Here at Software AG, [...]

I’ve seen a few rockstars in my day but none of them quite looked like this. Cox Communications, (yes the cable company) proved to be a real SOA rockstar. I know you’re thinking ‘what about SOA has to do with rockstars’ but after you hear this story, I think you’ll agree, not all rockstars have to wear studded pants and [...]

Yes it’s true, everyone fails from time to time but do IT projects fail more than the average? According to the Standish Group, a technology research group and consultancy, who publishes the ‘Chaos Report’ covering IT project failure rates, reported in 2009 24% of all IT projects ‘failed’. 44% of projects were considered ‘challenged’, making only 32% of projects ‘successful’. [...]