Cutter Consortium News, Press, and Events

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- What are the most important management initiatives taken to reduce IT costs?

13 Dec 2011 15:25:26 GMT

In his analysis of cost-cutting over the past several years, Bob Benson mused, "The 'easy pickings' for strategies such as consolidation and outsourcing have already been implemented (sometimes in several iterations). So how much more can be tolerated, and for how much longer?"

http://www.cutter.com/press/111213.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Organizational size vs. performance after an IT reorganization

29 Nov 2011 11:25:26 GMT

Jerry Grochow concluded from his research on IT reorganization success that "Some part of IT reorganization success is about circumstance (it helps to be in a medium-sized organization, for example). Some part is about having the right goals, such as improving performance. Some part is about having the right champion such as a new IT leader. Put all this together, and there is a very high likelihood that reorganizing will indeed improve IT performance for your organization and, consequently, you will be seen as the thoughtful leader you know you are!"

http://www.cutter.com/press/111129.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Has your organization standardized on any text mining products?

15 Nov 2011 13:10:26 GMT

Curt Hall recommends that organizations that haven't already standardized on a text mining product consider doing so. "Simply put, the benefits gained by standardizing IT product(s) in general can include better leverage over vendor licensing agreements, more streamlined maintenance, and reductions in support costs. Moreover, standardization can also help prevent organizations from ending up with a bunch of different applications built using a bunch of different and/or incompatible tools."

http://www.cutter.com/press/111115.html

Press Release: Cutter Consortium Announces Practice Name Change

3 Nov 2011 12:20:26 GMT

IT consulting and advisory firm Cutter Consortium announced its Data Integration, BI and Collaboration practice will now be known as the Data Insight and Social BI practice. Ken Collier, the recently-appointed director of the practice, said "the revised name better reflects both the trends in the market and the content, from research and webinars to consulting and training, that we provide for our clients." Cutter's Data Insight and Social BI (DBS) practice includes research, consulting, and training services around data-driven decision support topics including the emerging hot buttons -- social BI, social analytics, location-based computing and mobile apps, Big Data, columnar databases, associative databases, in-memory analytics -- as well as the fundamentals of data warehousing, master data management, data integration, data cleansing, enterprise modeling, data governance, analytics, business intelligence, and related topics such as business performance management, critical-event processing, and others.

http://www.cutter.com/press/111103.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- What steps has your organization taken to cope with the current economic climate regarding initiated projects?

1 Nov 2011 18:10:26 GMT

In our sixth annual CBR IT Budgeting issue, Dennis Adams looked at the changes in the initiation of money saving projects. Adams saw the fact that over half of this year's respondents companies had initiated short-term money-saving projects as "the clearest indicator we have seen that the economic climate is still influencing organizational budgets. When compared to last year's survey, 44% of responding companies made this claim. We can expect these projects to keep coming until the economy is healthier. Thus, it would be a good idea for managers to take longer-term projects and break them up into smaller deliverables. Focusing on limited, controlled rollouts of small projects is a risk management strategy for the current economy."

http://www.cutter.com/press/111101.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Organizations with increasing IT budgets: 2006-2011

18 Oct 2011 18:45:26 GMT

In our annual CBR IT Budgeting issue, Bob Benson took a look at the growth (or lack thereof) of the overall IT spend. According to Benson, "This graph basically reflects the path of the current economy: 2009 was the low point of the "first" recession, while 2010 and 2011 showed some recovery. It is entirely imaginable that 2012 will reflect 2009's pattern. The economic uncertainty we're experiencing today will be reflected in overall IT spending and likely show a flat line or decline in ongoing IT investment."

http://www.cutter.com/press/111018.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- How much does your organization spend on education and training per IT employee annually (in US dollars)?

4 Oct 2011 18:38:26 GMT

Two years ago we added this question to our research on IT Trends. Though the data is limited, spending appeared to be growing this year, and is a data point we'll continue to track. According to Mike Sisco, the growth "... could be attributed to developing staff internally to avoid hiring new employees. Last year, I discussed the future challenge we will face in staffing our IT organizations as the demand for qualified resources outpaces the supply due to retiring baby boomers and fewer IT majors graduating from universities. Training and education is a powerful motivator for IT employees and a tool that can help you retain your good employees."

http://www.cutter.com/press/111004.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- What underlying technology best describes your organization's current IT capability to capture customer data updates (i.e., new information about preferences and needs)?

20 Sep 2011 18:34:26 GMT

An encouraging 19% of respondents to our survey on customer-managed data are involving customers directly in their customer updates processes through Web services. Contributor Kathryn Brohman offered this insight for these organizations: "It is clear that co-production is innovative and may represent a whole new frontier for competitive advantage in customer service; however, it is important to note that value co-creation is a double-edged sword. If not managed carefully, customer expectations may become unrealistic and/or value propositions between competitors may become so similar that firms end up competing their value away to their customers."

http://www.cutter.com/press/110920.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Which major issues impede your organization from using predictive analytics?

6 Sep 2011 11:34:26 GMT

Curt Hall was not surprised that "lack of knowledgeable staff" was the #1 obstacle to implementing predictive analytics applications in our survey. He concludes this "indicates that the technology is still not widely understood by corporate business leaders and IT. This is also a strong indicator that vendors and predictive analytics proponents have work to do when it comes to educating organizations on how to go about practically applying the technology. However, the introduction of more predictive analytics offerings and services in the cloud (i.e., SaaS) should help alleviate this problem because they offer organizations more straightforward and affordable access to predictive analytics tools and services without the end-user organization first having to outlay considerable up-front costs."

http://www.cutter.com/press/110906.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- To what extent do you agree with the following statement about tablet device usage?

23 Aug 2011 15:34:26 GMT

The fact that more than half of respondents indicated agreement with this statement foreshadows a sea change in IT's role to CBR contributor Niel Nickolaisen; "Several years ago, the notion of employees selecting and using their own devices to access and use ERP, CRM, logistics, and other business applications would have been heresy. Today, some of us are already doing this with a whole bunch of others planning to do so in the near future. It could be that the storm is already here. If this is indeed our future, one of our traditional IT roles will change: we will get out of the end-user device business. And if this is our future, we will be asked to take on new roles: securely connecting our computing resources to a wide range of devices that support both mobile employees and customers and depend increasingly more on wireless networks."

http://www.cutter.com/press/110823.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- How would you characterize IT service one year after reorganization?

26 Jul 2011 19:34:26 GMT

According to Cutter Senior Consultant Jerrold Grochow, "The encouraging news from this survey is that a high percentage of reorganizations result in improved IT service (60% overall) -- with an even higher percentage for certain types of reorganizations that have been given time to show impact. Based on the survey alone, we can't predict if your next reorganization will be a positive factor in your organization's IT success, but with 80% of respondents recounting reorganizations in the past five years and the majority of those yielding improvements, we can certainly report that reorganizations are a potent tool in the IT management toolbox."

http://www.cutter.com/press/110809.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Does your organization currently use advanced data visualization tools for exploratory data analysis?

26 Jul 2011 19:34:26 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 26 July 2011 | Business Intelligence

Advanced data visualization tools allow users to more easily formulate hypotheses about the data under analysis, which is useful for a variety of BI applications, including exploratory data analysis, visual reporting, and for comparing/assimilating multiple metrics displayed on a single screen or dashboard. Curt Hall was surprised that just over one-fifth of those surveyed were using such tools, predicts increased usage, as the technology is "becoming increasingly embedded to front-end dashboards, scorecards, and other business measurement applications in order to provide less-technical business users with data analysis capabilities."

http://www.cutter.com/press/110726.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Does IT deliver value? (% of managers who agree that it does, 2008-2011)

12 Jul 2011 19:34:26 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 12 July 2011 | Cutter Benchmark Review

Bob Benson happily reports an upwards trend in business management's perception of the value IT's delivers. He states, "In my client and workshop experience, companies whose business management does not believe IT delivers value are much more difficult to work with. That is, when business managers do not see IT delivering value, they are much more resistant to participating in governance, or assisting in planning and prioritization. Most often, IT folks have built few relationships with business managers, which simply adds to the 'value disconnect.' This is unfortunate."

http://www.cutter.com/press/110712.html

Press Release: Cutter Consortium Welcomes New Consultants to its Team

11 Jul 2011 19:34:26 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 11 July 2011 | Agile Project Management, Business Intelligence

Cutter Consortium is pleased to announce that Hubert Smits and Ralph Hughes have joined our team as Senior Consultants. Hubert Smits is an innovative, assertive, and goal-oriented agile consultant, coach, and trainer who has successfully spearheaded enterprise-level agile-lean enablement efforts, including those at Oracle, Avaya, BMC Software, AOL, Fender, GE Energy, Amdocs, MySpace, and Compete. He specializes in working with large product development efforts in organizations that require organization-wide move to Agile practices. Ralph Hughes, author of "Agile Data Warehousing: Delivering World-Class Business Intelligence Systems Using Scrum and XP," has taught or coached over 1,000 BI professionals worldwide in the discipline of incremental and iterative delivery of large data management systems. He created the Agile Data Warehousing(TM) methodology -- a blend of international standards for project management and warehouse designs that dramatically decreases delivery times, costs, and risks for business intelligence projects of all sizes, while simultaneously improving the quality achieved.

http://www.cutter.com/press/110711.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Does/will your organization maintain copies onsite of the data generated or used by the on-demand/cloud-based BI or data warehousing solution for security or other purposes?

28 Jun 2011 19:34:26 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 28 June 2011 | Business Intelligence

Curt Hall believes these numbers are too low, and states, "if you are considering on-demand/cloud-based BI and data warehousing in your organization, you should definitely plan to implement onsite backup procedures. In addition to standard backup requirements (for security, etc.), onsite backups/copies are needed for Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and other regulatory needs. Vendors have moved to meet these needs and now offer on-demand data integration tools designed to enable companies to back up and sync data generated by their on-demand applications (analytical systems and operational applications, such as CRM) with the data maintained on premise."

http://www.cutter.com/press/110628.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- How often do your software development teams use peer review of source code by other team members?

14 Jun 2011 19:34:26 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 14 June 2011 | Agile Project Management

Code review is one of the most fundamental practices within the open source community. While I'm delighted to see any form of peer review taking place, I'd encourage development teams to explore interteam review. An "outsider" is less likely to have the same assumptions (and thus potential errors) as a teammate. In addition, reviewing other teams' code can form the basis of a subtle form of knowledge sharing, raising awareness of how other teams may be solving problems similar to our own.

http://www.cutter.com/press/110614.html

Press Release: Ken Collier's Book Named Top Summer Read by CIO-Insight

10 Jun 2011 19:34:26 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 10 June 2011 | Business Intelligence

Congratulations to Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Ken Collier! His latest book, "Agile Analytics: A Value-Driven Approach to Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing" was named one of the "11 Books to Recharge Your Leadership Skills" by CIO-Insight.

http://www.cutter.com/press/110610.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- To what extent do your organization's green initiatives affect systems purchases or design?

31 May 2011 19:34:26 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 31 May 2011 | Cutter Benchmark Review

Cutter research found that the influence of green initiatives on companies' purchasing decisions was relatively stable with last year. According to Senior Consultant Mike Sisco, "Many CIOs and other executives are beginning to take a hard look at the energy consumption in their companies because of cost. IT can be one of the biggest users of energy. Some may argue that we don't need to call it a 'green strategy' any longer, but the need to focus on energy in our companies should certainly continue to be an important issue if for no other reason than the sheer cost-savings opportunity. In fact, it's one of the reasons to look at outsourcing and cloud computing."

http://www.cutter.com/press/110531.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- How would you rate the success of your organization's predictive analytics efforts to date?

17 May 2011 19:34:26 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 17 May 2011 | Business Intelligence

According to Cutter Senior Consultant Curt Hall, the volume of respondents who felt that it is simply too soon to tell how successful their efforts in predictive analytics have been is important, and understandable, "given our earlier finding that most organizations' experience to date with predictive analytics involves the development of prototype or initial applications that have yet to make it into production." He went on to assert that "demand is beginning to appear this year, and we should expect to see it accelerate over the next two to three years."

http://www.cutter.com/press/110517.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- What tools do you use to monitor social media?

3 May 2011 19:34:26 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 3 May 2011 | Cutter Benchmark Review

Examining what tools companies use to monitor social media gives us clues about company maturity in this area, asserts Senior Consultant Vince Kellen. In a recent Cutter Benchmark Review, he reported that "more than 50% of our respondents indicate some modest to significant usage (responding with 3, 4, or 5 on the five-point scale) of search tools such as Google Search and Google Insight. Just over 40% use blog search tools, while 33% use Twitter-monitoring tools. A smaller cluster of respondents use analysis tools (24%) or aggregator tools (20%). Again, this data is consistent with the view that SMM is moving beyond light experimentation into the early phases of adoption."

http://www.cutter.com/press/110503.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Do IT planning practices improve the value that IT delivers?

19 Apr 2011 19:34:26 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 19 April 2011 | Cutter Benchmark Review

How can firms obtain more value from IS strategic planning? According to Cutter Benchmark Review contributor Dorothy Leidner, " ... they might need to follow the lead of the IS innovators by revisiting their strategies more often and more regularly engaging in strategic planning techniques. Just planning regularly helps but to be an innovator, one must both regularly and frequently revisit plans. Even the best made plans must be revisited to adjust for changes in the environment."

http://www.cutter.com/press/110419.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Who is responsible for managing social media monitoring?

5 Apr 2011 19:34:26 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 5 April 2011 | Business Intelligence

According to Cutter Fellow Vince Kellen, "The proof of maturity in SMM may lie in not much more than who has the responsibility to perform the activity. Our survey suggested that if you believe social media is a bottom-up, emergent phenomenon that is moving rather quickly, you might favor a decentralized approach to monitoring. On the other hand, if you believe in a more top-down, conventional approach, you would probably believe those units responsible for marketing, customer relationship management, and customer support ought to manage SMM. By the way, if you are in any way beyond slight experimentation, then SMM ought not to be done by IT."

http://www.cutter.com/press/110405.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- How would you describe your current IT staffing situation?

22 Mar 2011 19:34:26 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 22 March 2011 | Business-IT Strategies

According to Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant Mike Sisco, "Companies have been running 'lean and mean' for a few years now, and productivity of the workforce is very high because of it. CEOs may be eager to invest in IT to get to some of the efficiencies available to them through technology innovation, while they continue to try and hold the general workforce levels down until more certain times are 'more certain.'" When asked to describe IT staffing plans for next year, 45% of respondents to a Cutter Benchmark Review survey claim their staff is stable and no changes are expected, compared to 40% in 2010 and 44% in 2009. In addition, the same percentage that say they are stable (45%) say they will be hiring next year. This is up from 43% in 2010 and 35% in 2009. As you would expect, the balance of the responses in this question that report companies will be downsizing has dropped from a 2009 high of 21% to last year's 17% to only 10% for 2011.

http://www.cutter.com/press/110322.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Interest in outsourcing: small companies vs. large companies over time

8 Mar 2011 19:34:26 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 8 March 2011 | Sourcing and Vendor Relationships

Over time, interest in outsourcing has grown significantly. Historically, there has been a noticeable difference between large and small company outsourcing incentives. In 2006, 57% of large companies were outsourcing or about to do so. However, only 35% of small companies were looking into it. Each year, more and more respondents told us that they were outsourcing and small companies have been catching up to pace. By 2010, six months after the recession bottomed out, 70% of respondents from both large and small companies indicated that their companies were outsourcing. In the current survey, interest in outsourcing has declined for large and small companies to around 60%. This decline could be associated with the idea that the lessening of the pressures of the recession might have removed the impetus for change.

http://www.cutter.com/press/110308.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Which EA framework does your organization use?

22 Feb 2011 19:34:26 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 22 February 2011 | Cutter Benchmark Review

EA Practice Director Mike Rosen wasn't surprised to see that many organizations use a combination of frameworks for EA. He writes, "As a general characterization of the top three frameworks, TOGAF is strong in architectural process, Zachman is strong in providing a conceptual model for thinking about the enterprise, and DoDAF/MoDAF is strong in the specification of explicit architectural deliverables (models) based on an underlying metamodel. So perhaps it not surprising that 29% of organizations have adopted a hybrid approach that combines the strength of two or three of these frameworks together."

http://www.cutter.com/press/110222.html

Press Release: 70% Report Improved Work Environment for Projects Using Kanban

21 Feb 2011 19:34:26 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 21 February 2011 | Cutter Benchmark Review

According to a recent study by Cutter Consortium, 70% of respondents who have used Kanban on projects report an improvement in the quality of their work environment for those projects. The study results are reported in Cutter Benchmark Review.

http://www.cutter.com/press/110221.html

Press Release: Half of Companies Have Not Connected the Dots between EA and Agile, Cutter Consortium Report Finds

14 Feb 2011 19:34:26 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 14 February 2011 | Enterprise Architecture

When asked how enterprise architecture work relates to agile methods in their organization, half of companies reported they had not yet addressed agile methods or how to make EA meaningful within that context. These results are reported in the new Cutter Consortium Executive Brief, "Delivering Value with Enterprise Architecture: A Survey of Today's Best Practices and Programs" by Mike Rosen. The report examines the current state of enterprise architecture (EA), including its organization and programs, practices used, and the effectiveness of EA, all based on a recent Cutter Consortium survey. The survey results represent responses from 148 companies.

http://www.cutter.com/press/110214.html

Press Release: Cutter Consortium Announces Ron Blitstein as Director of Its CIO Practice

10 Feb 2011 19:34:26 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 10 February 2011 | Business-IT Strategies

IT consulting and advisory firm Cutter Consortium announced today the appointment of Ronald B. Blitstein as the new director of its CIO Practice. Ron Blitstein is a seasoned CIO. His 30-year career includes extensive international operations experience and spans all aspects of information management. This includes technology strategic planning, program management, mergers and acquisitions, IT turnarounds, business process reengineering, software solutions development, ERP deployment, security/risk management, outsourcing negotiation, and network/operations management.

http://www.cutter.com/press/110210.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Has there been an improvement in the quality of the work environment in those projects using Kanban?

8 Feb 2011 19:34:26 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 8 February 2011 | Agile Project Management

The issue of quality of work life is an important one, and one that's explicitly addressed in Kanban, according to Cutter Senior Consultant Masa Maeda. In fact, Maeda noted that of the 30% of respondents who "reported no improvement, there wasn't a single negative comment. What most of them said was that they were too early in the adoption process to report a difference."

http://www.cutter.com/press/110208.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Does your organization include business architects, either in the EA team or in the lines of business?

25 Jan 2011 19:34:26 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 25 January 2011 | Agile Project Management

In his latest survey on the state of Enterprise Architecture, EA Practice Director Mike Rosen tackled the perpetual debate over how business architecture should be organized. Mike wrote, "On the one hand, if BA is managed as part of EA, then we can facilitate better alignment between the business and IT, a perpetual challenge and debate. With this organizational structure, however, sometimes the business architecture will have a more technological or application-centric perspective." In either case, though, "Business architecture represents a growth area for architecture and EA, and an excellent opportunity to bring some abstraction, conceptualization, analysis, and formalism skills to the business and provide value through architecture."

http://www.cutter.com/press/110125.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Has a software development innovation in your organization significantly improved other areas of product software development?

14 Jan 2011 18:14:30 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 11 January 2011 | Agile Project Management

In his third installment of the Innovation in Software Development Executive Update series, Senior Consultant E.M. Bennatan discussed if innovation has spread to other areas of product software development. "An overwhelming 83% of survey respondents report that either their organization has not introduced innovation into 'other' non-key areas of development, or they were unaware whether it had been done. If we speculate that developers are generally aware of significant changes in their organization, particularly in development, then innovation would appear to have been concentrated in key areas and neglected in other areas." With this insight, Bennatan concludes, "This conclusion supports the notion that software organizations should invest effort in the nontraditional areas for innovation, the potentially "neglected areas." This would likely be where opportunities for payback are most commonly missed."

* Excerpted from "Innovation in Software Development: Part III -- How to Build an Innovative Organization" (Login Required) by E.M. Bennatan, Agile Product and Project Management Executive Update, Vol. 11, No. 22

http://www.cutter.com/press/110111.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- On Green Organization Strategy: which one of the following statements best describes your organization?

14 Dec 2010 19:25:38 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 14 December 2010 | Cutter Benchmark Review

Incorporation of green elements within the overall business strategies of organizations are lacking. Notes Bhuvan Unhelkar, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium, "When quizzed about the strategic use of green IT in business, 41% of participants say they have a limited green IT strategy, which is restricted to the IT department. The need to take green IT efforts beyond IT and into the rest of the organization is obvious. This happens much more easily if the accountability of green IT is fully integrated at the senior management level (we found this was not happening anywhere in the surveyed organizations)."

http://www.cutter.com/press/101214.html

Press Release: Cutter Consortium Announces Dr. Israel Gat as New Director of Agile Practice

10 Dec 2010 19:24:33 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 10 December 2010 | Agile Project Management

Boston, MA, 10 December 2010 -- Cutter Consortium announced today the appointment of Dr. Israel Gat as the new director of its Agile Product & Project Management Practice.

http://www.cutter.com/press/101210.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- How often does your organization revisit its IT strategy?

30 Nov 2010 16:42:53 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 30 November 2010 | Enterprise Architecture

In thinking about the events of the last three years, you might perceive your organization's IT strategy very differently based on economic and political circumstances. Thomas H. Murphy, Senior VP and CIO for AmerisourceBergen Corp notes, "I urge you to reflect on how 2007 and early 2008 looked -- how clear was your IT strategy, how effective was your governance, and how trusting were your relationships? Is now the time to make adjustments to these areas to be prepared for the next crisis? Because whether or not there will be another crisis is not the question; the question is when will it come and will you be ready?"

http://www.cutter.com/press/101130.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Kanban Adoption: Which of the following titles best fits your job description?

2 Nov 2010 15:59:51 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 02 November 2010 | Cutter Benchmark Review; Agile Project Management

The success of Kanban is highly influenced by top-down support with existing knowledge of agile/lean methodologies. Masa K. Maeda states, "Kanban is the only software development methodology I know of that promotes the understanding and application of lean and agile values/principles to the practice of the methodology itself. This is a phenomenal characteristic that highly increases the possibility of success. One result from the Cutter survey that supports this is the fact that 55% of respondents hold management or policy-making positions (24% are project managers, 16% are IS/IT managers, 7% are senior managers/policy makers, and 8% are QA managers)"

http://www.cutter.com/press/101102.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- How satisfied are you with your current client-vendor relationship?

19 Oct 2010 20:17:42 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 19 October 2010 | Cutter Benchmark Review

In a business environment where so many resources are dedicated to client-vendor relationships, the level of satisfaction is telling. Rudy Hirschheim, David Murungi, and Santiago Pena of the E.J. Ourso College of Business, Department of IS, Louisiana State University (LSU,USA) explain, "The hazards of not taking the next step in the outsourcing relationship can be seen in the results of this month's CBR survey on the client-vendor relationship. The data shows that the majority of respondents have low levels of satisfaction with their outsourcing arrangement. In fact, only 33% say they are either very satisfied or extremely satisfied. That leaves 67% who range from being somewhat satisfied to extremely dissatisfied. This result is significant enough to the beg the questions: Why do we observe such a low level of satisfaction? What can organizations do to improve the probability of success in their outsourcing arrangements."

http://www.cutter.com/press/101019.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- How would you generally describe your organization (not only in relation to software development)?

6 Oct 2010 03:02:17 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 05 October 2010 | Agile Project Management These numbers are very telling for organizations where innovation is often stated a key objective. E.M. Bennatan explains, "Just over half (53%) of surveyed organizations do not actively encourage innovation. Of them, 39% occasionally permit their staff to evaluate new or unconventional ideas, and 14% permit only proven conventional methods in all company activities. Are these the figures we should expect from an innovative field of technology? Some data is certainly encouraging (almost half of all software organizations urge innovation), but overall the findings are disappointing. More than half of software organizations appear to be unaware of the critical role innovation plays in software development (Favaro labeled it the lifeblood of IT). " http://www.cutter.com/press/101005.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- What is the approximate percentage of your organization's IT budget that supports or will support mobile technologies, including devices, networks, and applications for each of the following years?

28 Sep 2010 14:11:50 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 21 September 2010 | Business-IT Strategies

Investment in mobile technologies continues to grow. Writes Katia Passerini, Associate Professor and Hurlburt Chair, Management Information Systems, New Jersey Institute of Technology, "the percentage of those companies that report spending between 10% and 30% of their IT budget in mobile technologies nearly doubled from last year. These numbers -- collected during the current economic downturn -- show that mobile technology investment (as a percentage of the IT entire spend) may continue to grow in a slower economy given the need to maximize efficiency and employee productivity; these technologies may in fact even be more urgent."

http://www.cutter.com/press/100921.html

Press Release: Why You Want to Pay Per Packet: Rational Economic Behavior and the Internet

9 Sep 2010 21:46:06 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 09 September 2010 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts

Cutter Fellow Lou Mazzucchelli has long asserted that any kind of "all you can eat" pricing model is sub-optimal. He includes in this assessment the increasingly popular flat rate Internet connection pricing based on connection speed, likening his reaction to this model to "my reaction when Pets.com offered free shipping on 50-pound bags of dog food back in the day: buy all you can, 'cause this deal can't last."

http://www.cutter.com/press/100909.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Are IT budgets increasing or decreasing?

24 Aug 2010 20:27:24 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 24 August 2010 | Business-IT Strategies Cutter's 5th annual IT budgeting survey revealed some interesting trends. Writes Cutter Consortium Fellow Bob Benson, "Economically speaking, things have changed dramatically over the five years of this survey. Graph 1 in the Survey Data section illustrates the effect on IT budgets, showing the percentage of organizations reporting increasing, decreasing, or stable IT budgets. Whether IT budgets are expected to increase for 2010 and thereafter is as much a geographic and specific industry consideration as any other factor. Overall, the increase may be reflecting a rise in human costs rather than further organizational commitment to IT. At least this is a question for further discussion and consideration for every IT organization." http://www.cutter.com/press/100824.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Which factor has the most effect on the motivations of software project team members in your organization?

10 Aug 2010 20:08:59 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 10 August 2010 | Agile Project Management

Writes E.M. Bennatan on project team influence, "In this year's survey findings (see Figure 1), peer interaction tops the bill as the highest team motivator (it was fourth in 2004), surpassing technical skills and all levels of management (team, project, and executive). Peer interaction was described as the most effective motivator by 39% of survey respondents (19% in 2004), while 25% indicated technical skills (20% in 2004), 16% team leadership (20% in 2004), and 14% project management (31% in 2004). The Figure 1 findings highlight the growing awareness that team motivation is best achieved through the team members themselves."

http://www.cutter.com/press/100810.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Indicate to what extent, in general, the IT organization is producing work of quality and is efficient in performing its work.

27 Jul 2010 14:46:46 GMT

According to Geneviève Bassellier, Assistant Professor of IS, McGill University (Canada) and Ron Cenfetelli, Assistant Professor of MIS, Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia (Canada)," The challenges of providing outcomes on time and on budget are often more important to the IT group than the quality of the services they deliver. Our data confirms this: 69% of the respondents assess the efficiency of their IT groups as average or less, as compared to 52% who assess the quality of the outputs as average or less. On both dimensions, the respondents are not very positive, but clearly the efficiency seems to bother the business clients more. This might remind some of us of the phenomenon of: 'fast, good, cheap: pick only two.'"

http://www.cutter.com/press/100727.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Which one of the following best describes IT governance in your organization?

19 Jul 2010 19:38:11 GMT

Dennis Adams, Associate Professor, Decision and Information Sciences, C.T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston, discusses how the size of an organization often determines the governance structures in place. "In our survey, we asked respondents to describe IT governance in their organizations. If we look at the data set as a whole, we see that 38% describe it as being "fragmented across the organization," and 24% say that no formal set of processes is in place. However, when we split our data set into large and small companies, a different picture emerges: 43% of small organizations feel that there are no formal IT governance processes in place, while only 15% of large organizations suggest this. This is probably the most salient outcome of this study, namely, that as organizations grow, the need to create a governance structure for IT emerges. This structure, however, is not ideal. For these large organizations, 40% feel that the process is fragmented and only 20% say the processes are based upon best practices."

http://www.cutter.com/press/100713.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- If you received only e-mails that directly related to your core work, would you have enough time most days to resolve the issues contained in those e-mail messages?

29 Jun 2010 20:34:40 GMT

According to Joseph Feller, Senior Lecturer of Business Information Systems, University College Cork, addresses the phenomenon of information overload and email, "the majority of respondents say that if all their e-mail was on topic, they'd have time not just to process the messages but to resolve the issues raised by them We can't control what comes into our inbox. We can control what stays there. For every incoming piece of mail, the most important thing we can do is to make that information actionable and to move it to other places in the system (like the delete folder, an archive, a calendar appointment, or a to-do list.)"

http://www.cutter.com/press/100629.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Do you plan to offer Web-based services leveraging rich Internet applications for customers/external use or employees/internal use?

15 Jun 2010 20:34:40 GMT

"I am struck by the large disparity between the number of people who think that Web 2.0 tools should be deployed in customer-facing applications rather than internally. While customer-facing applications are important, organizations should not neglect the use of these new tools as a way of improving their internal processes," writes Mark Choate in his analysis of a recent study Cutter conducted on Web 2.0*

http://www.cutter.com/press/100615.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Which combination of factors is motivating your company to be involved in environmentally responsible business policies?

7 Jun 2010 22:52:02 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 01 June 2010 | Business-IT Strategies

According to Brian Donnellan, Professor of IS Innovation, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, "Survey respondents assigned roughly equal importance to each of the 'triple bottom line' dimensions; that is, the respondents say they are being motivated almost equally by social responsibility, economic viability, and environmental impact in terms of reduced energy and carbon emissions."

http://www.cutter.com/press/100601.html

Press Release: It's International Green IT Awareness Week!

1 Jun 2010 22:51:08 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 28 May 2010 | Business-IT Strategies ComputersOFF.org has declared 1-7 June 2010 to be Green IT Awareness Week. This is a topic dear to our hearts at Cutter Consortium, and one that we examine frequently (See our Stats of the Week on Green IT, here, here, and here).

http://www.cutter.com/press/100528.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- Has your organization increased or decreased spending on its BI and data warehousing efforts this year (i.e., for 2010)?

18 May 2010 14:24:22 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 18 May 2010 | Business Intelligence

The overwhelming majority (82%) has either increased or maintained their BI and data warehousing spending for 2010. "To me", says Cutter’s Curt Hall, "even more telling is that just 8% said that their organizations have decreased spending. I think that a considerable portion of the increase in BI and data warehousing spending has to do with organizations trying to carry out projects that were put on the back burner in 2009, when economic uncertainty was probably at its peak. Some of this increase also has to do with organizations still trying to do more with less -- an exercise that requires a really good understanding of corporate performance and, hence, more BI and performance management capabilities."

http://www.cutter.com/press/100518.html

Press Release: BI 2.0 Will Enable Wider and Deeper Corporate Performance Management

13 May 2010 17:37:20 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 13 May 2010 | Agile Project Management

Andriole recommends that firms consider solutions that include on-demand/in the cloud BI, commercial/Open Source BI (COBSI), and SOA-compliant platforms. In addition, he asserts, "The clear marching order is to invest in strategy development and business process modeling (BPM). These investments will trigger the greatest return on BI investments. If you haven't invested in BPM, it's time."

http://www.cutter.com/press/100513.html

New Webinar: Business Architecture: Expanding the Value Proposition

10 Jun 2010 15:50:39 GMT

Ulrich, William M. | Events | 10 June 2010 | Enterprise Architecture

Are you leveraging business architecture to facilitate strategic planning, address executive priorities, deliver customer value, leverage investments in major initiatives and deploy horizontal solutions across business units? If not, you may be underutilizing and undervaluing business architecture. When leveraged effectively, business architecture offers the cross-functional, cross-disciplinary transparency required to deliver bottom line business value. Whether you are jumpstarting your business architecture efforts or have deployments in place, this webinar will discuss how to expand the value proposition of this critical business discipline. Join Cutter Senior Consultant William Ulrich as he discusses how business architecture has been used in practice and how it will evolve long-term.

http://www.cutter.com/events/multimedia/business-architecture-value.html

Cutter IT Journal Call for Papers: Business Intelligence 2010: Delivering the Goods or Standing Us Up?

10 May 2010 15:49:20 GMT

Feller, Joseph | 21 May 2010 | Cutter IT Journal

The August 2010 issue of Cutter IT Journal will examine the challenges and opportunities created by the Web as an execution, development and hardware platform. Over the last decade, we have seen the Web evolve into an unprecedentedly large and powerful computing platform in three key ways: as an execution platform, as a development platform and as an interface for virtualized hardware. However, the opportunities created by treating the Web as a platform are accompanied by significant technological and business challenges.

Join the debate in the August 2010 Cutter IT Journal - with Guest Editor Joe Feller - as we examine these challenges and opportunities created by the Web as an execution, development and hardware platform. To share your perspective with us, send us a short article abstract by May 21.

http://www.cutter.com/content-and-analysis/journals-and-reports/cutter-it-journal/callforpapers02.html

Press Release: Dr. Israel Gat 'De-toxifies' Technical Debt

4 May 2010 15:31:49 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 04 May 2010 | Agile Project Management

Under the direction of Dr. Israel Gat, Cutter Consortium has developed an assessment and valuation process that exposes both technical debt and its implications, and reduces a large number of complex technical considerations to a common denominator that is universally understood: dollars.

http://www.cutter.com/press/100504b.html

Pragmatic Scrum

13 Apr 2010 13:15:44 GMT

Broza, Gil | Training/Workshops | Agile Project Management

After this course, your team and management will know exactly what to do and what to avoid. They will understand exactly how to scope out a project, what commitments they can make, and how to execute a project's lifecycle effectively. You will have a consistent, flexible methodology that produces reliable, measurable results.

http://www.cutter.com/workshops/pragmaticscrum.html

Webinar: Improving Productivity and Performance Through BPM Webinar

5 May 2010 20:28:34 GMT

Rosen, Mike | Events | 05 May 2010 | Enterprise Architecture

Mike Rosen will explain the critical links to BPM and their role in delivering on the promises of BPM -- improved flexibility, productivity and performance. And you’ll get a glimpse of future directions that extend these benefits to knowledge workers within the enterprise. Don’t miss your chance to get specific advice from Mike Rosen about fitting BPM into your EA.

http://www.cutter.com/events/multimedia/improvingproductivity.html

Tips, Tricks, and Shortcuts

15 Apr 2010 20:27:52 GMT

Rosania, Mark | Events | 15 April 2010 | Agile Project Management

Please join Cutter Senior Client Research Manager Mark Rosania for tips, tricks, and shortcuts to navigating Cutter’s Resource Centers. Whether you’re a new client or a veteran, you’re sure to gain a better notion of what you’ll find at the Cutter website and discover something new during this interactive demonstration!

http://www.cutter.com/events/multimedia/cutterdemo.html

Summit 2010: Strategies for the Road Forward

26 Mar 2010 21:45:24 GMT

Cutter Consortium | Events | 25 October 2010 |

The annual Cutter Consortium Summit is unlike any other conference you've ever attended. It provides a live venue for IT and business professionals to meet and debate with one another and noted experts in the IT field. The intellectual give-and-take is second to none. Discover why business and technology professionals return each year -- and why you should join them!

http://www.cutter.com/summit/2010.html

Press Release: Stat of the Week -- For which IT skills are you hiring or will you be hiring in 2010?

26 Mar 2010 21:34:21 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 23 March 2010 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts

This year, 44% of respondents say they are looking for application development skill, reports Dennis A. Adams. "In this same survey, 47% of respondents indicated they are planning to outsource application development. On the one hand, we see hiring for a particular skill, but at the same time companies are planning to outsource those same skills. This indicates that companies are in need of application developers and will acquire that skill either by hiring people or by outsourcing that function -- or both." * Excerpted from "Peering Through the Economic Fog: IT Managers Taking Steps Toward Value Creation," Cutter Benchmark Review, Vol. 10, No. 1

http://www.cutter.com/press/100323.html

Predicting the Year Ahead

16 Dec 2009 14:48:00 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 16 December 2009 |

We asked our Cutter experts to give predictions on upcoming trends for 2010 and beyond. Here's what they had to say ...

http://www.cutter.com/predictions.html

Call for Papers: Cultivating Leadership Throughout the IT Organization

18 Dec 2009 16:49:31 GMT

Furniss, Bob | 18 December 2009 | Cutter IT Journal

The March 2010 issue of Cutter IT Journal invites useful and thoughtful analysis and debate on the challenges of leadership within the IT organization and how it can be most effectively achieved at all levels to maximize performance and achieve business goals.

http://www.cutter.com/content-and-analysis/journals-and-reports/cutter-it-journal/callforpapers03.html

Press Release: Vince Kellen Predicts Trends and Anti-trends for 2010

17 Dec 2009 16:45:46 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 17 December 2009 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts

In the first half of 2009 firms cut people and cut costs, and waited to see how the dust would settle. As the year progressed, top firms raised the battle flags, poised to pounce on market opportunities. The laggards are either quixotically attempting to take on the dominant force in their market, or are desperately seeking refuge in the arms of an acquisition partner. Against this backdrop, Cutter Senior Consultant Vince Kellen made his annual prognostications, highlighting what he sees as the top 8 trends and 5 anti-trends for the year ahead.

http://www.cutter.com/press/091217.html

Call for Paper: The Great Recession Fallout: Will CIOs Be Elevated or Exterminated?

26 Oct 2009 22:54:25 GMT

Kellen, Vince | 29 October 2009 | Cutter IT Journal

The January 2010 Cutter IT Journal issue invites thoughtful analysis and debate on how the great recession has reshaped the role of the CIO.

http://www.cutter.com/content-and-analysis/journals-and-reports/cutter-it-journal/callforpapers01.html

Completing the Revolution

13 Oct 2009 22:31:44 GMT

Sims, Oliver | E-Mail Advisors | 13 October 2009 | Cutter Edge

Today's business-IT divide reminds me forcibly of an anecdote about the automobile market at the end of the 19th century. At that time, it was widely held that the total market for automobiles in Europe could only be around 50,000 because that was the probable number of chauffeurs that were going to be available at any one time. Remember that back then chauffeurs had to be not only competent drivers, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of where gasoline could be obtained, but also highly skilled mechanics, capable of doing complex roadside repairs whenever required.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2009/edge091013.html

Blending IT: The Integration of BI and Search

7 Oct 2009 00:46:46 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 06 October 2009 | Cutter Edge

Search is having a major influence on BI and data retrieval and analysis in general. Although the technology is still developing, the combination of BI and search is important because it can provide nontechnical business users and BI consumers with easier access to -- and the ability to analyze -- both structured and unstructured information.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2009/edge091006.html

Netbooks Log In to IT's Future

29 Sep 2009 19:19:38 GMT

Orr, Ken | E-Mail Advisors | 29 September 2009 | Cutter Edge

There was a time in the early 1990s when a good laptop computer cost upwards of US $4,000. This was for a computer with a 10-inch screen, four or eight MB of memory, and a 100-MB disk. Communications for this computer were limited to a slow-speed, dial-up line. A decade later, the price for a 15-inch high-resolution with 100 MB of memory and two to four GB of hard disk and a network adapter was in the neighborhood of $2,500. Good old Moore's Law.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2009/edge090929.html

Keeping a Winning Attitude on a "Losing" IT Project

23 Sep 2009 01:38:08 GMT

Charette, Robert N. | E-Mail Advisors | 22 September 2009 | Cutter Edge

There was an interesting and well-written column in the New York Times editorial section a few weeks ago called "Sleepwalking Through September," by Doug Glanville (20 August 2009). Glanville is a retired American major leaguer who played baseball for the Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs, and the Texas Rangers over his nine-season career. Glanville isn't your typical retired baseball player, either: along with being a regular contributor to the New York Times op ed page, he also has a degree in systems engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2009/edge090922.html

Does Governance Really Matter?

16 Sep 2009 01:23:39 GMT

Benson, Robert J.; Bugnitz, Tom | E-Mail Advisors | 15 September 2009 | Cutter Edge

Cutter is paying attention to IT governance in 2009. The September Cutter Benchmark Review (CBR) reports the results of the recent Cutter IT Governance Survey. The December Cutter IT Journal, which we're editing, is about IT governance. Recent CIO surveys done by others place IT governance in the top echelon of concerns.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2009/edge090915.html

Understanding Cloud Computing

8 Sep 2009 19:43:06 GMT

Andriole, Stephen J. | E-Mail Advisors | 08 September 2009 | Cutter Edge

Different people understand cloud computing in different ways. Some see it as a communications enabler. Some see it as the source of open source and proprietary applications. Some see it as a path to technology independence. Others see it as extreme outsourcing. So what is it? My working definition comes from our colleagues at Wikipedia, who tell us that cloud computing:

http://www.cutter.com/research/2009/edge090908.html

Some Ups and Downs of Virtualizing BI

1 Sep 2009 19:32:29 GMT

Hall, Curt | E-Mail Advisors | 01 September 2009 | Cutter Edge

The recent announcement by BI vendor MicroStrategy, Inc., that its BI toolset (MicroStrategy 9) has been certified to run on the VMware virtualization platform has me thinking more about the possible benefits and issues of operating BI systems in virtualization environments.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2009/edge090901.html

Make Sure Your Organization Has a Backbone

25 Aug 2009 15:18:04 GMT

DeMarco, Tom | E-Mail Advisors | 25 August 2009 | Cutter Edge

Our industry benefited from a surge of IT capital spending in the years leading up to 2000 and has had little since then. That means the average company may now be running on an IT capital base that has been depreciated away to nothing or near nothing. A system that has been depreciated to zero can certainly have greater than zero real remaining value, but you have to wonder how long we can continue to prosper with a zero capital base. None of that, I predict, will matter much to decision makers who are fear-crazed and vision-free. For the foreseeable future, new expenditure in their companies will have to be justified largely on offset maintenance cost. Companies that are the most successful in pursuing this course will be the best takeover targets in the coming years. Companies that are best at resisting this course will be the ones doing the taking over.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2009/edge090825.html

Press Release: Survey Says Agile-Developed Software is Easier to Support

19 Aug 2009 15:10:00 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 19 August 2009 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts

A recent Cutter Consortium survey explored the effect of agile methods on software maintenance. In virtually all product-support categories, agile-developed software products were generally easier to maintain and customer satisfaction was generally higher (compared to traditional development methods). The objective of the survey, developed and analyzed by Cutter Consortium Senior Consultant E.M. Bennatan, was to understand the advantages (or disadvantages) of agile methods after the release of a software product.

http://www.cutter.com/press/090819.html

Five Strategic Opportunities/Risks that Will Define Success

18 Aug 2009 15:07:48 GMT

Andriole, Steve | E-Mail Advisors | 18 August 2009 | Cutter Edge

Companies forgo any number of initiatives for a variety of reasons. Most companies are risk-averse. But what about the initiatives that fall through the cracks of the vetting and due diligence processes, the initiatives that never even result in a business case?

http://www.cutter.com/research/2009/edge090818.html

Learning to Wield the Strategic Sword

11 Aug 2009 14:49:03 GMT

Kellen, Vince | E-Mail Advisors | 11 August 2009 | Cutter Edge Within the world of IT vendors, the gap between rhetoric and reality looms large.

IT vendors create software and hardware that companies clamor to witness and hope to use. At the thousands of Webinars and demos that repeat across the world, corporate staffers, IT or otherwise, gaze and gawk at the shiny new swords that can save us. I can see the wheels inside their heads spinning as they try to figure out which way they can wield the sword to improve things in their realm of the kingdom.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2009/edge090811.html

Love It or Hate It, IT Is Here to Stay

17 Aug 2009 14:37:04 GMT

Piccoli, Gabriele | E-Mail Advisors | 04 August 2009 | Cutter Edge; Business Intelligence

Humans have always had a love-hate relationship with technology in general and IT in particular. A testament to this troubled relationship is the fact that to this day it is seemingly OK to loudly pronounce: "I don't do computers." Imagine the same person saying: "I don't do reading." The truth is that we don't quite know how to relate to IT. We like the potential that it offers in terms of productivity, research, improved quality of life, more responsive service, and its general association with progress. But at the same time we fear the risks of depersonalization, deskilling, and job loss associated with IT, and we react negatively -- just like modern-day Luddites.

http://www.cutter.com/research/2009/edge090804.html

Press Release: Managing Differences: The Critical 21st-Century Management Skill

11 Aug 2009 19:46:22 GMT

Cutter Consortium | 12 August 2009 | Business Technology Trends & Impacts

Creating the conditions in which people of widely varying backgrounds, behaviors, and inclinations can maximize their particular contributions to economic value will inevitably transcend the 20th-century management style of making things and people fit into systems that execute efficiently, states Cutter Fellow Rob Austin.

http://www.cutter.com/press/090812.html