ITM launches integrated suite to manage the business of IT - Computerworld
The ITM Business Suite is a set of five modules designed to help IT executives manage vendor relationships, technology project portfolios and the process of aligning internal IT skills with business needs. Mountain View, Calif.-based ITM began shipping an IT governance and compliance management module, which integrates with other modules that are already shipping, and formally unveiled the entire suite in its announcement.
This dovetails with something I've been thinking about a lot recently: Where are the business / information / application / technical architectural artifacts (models, processes, etc.) for an IT shop? Or, more pointedly for us here, for an Enterprise Architecture Program Office? I'm talking about using the same type of architectural artifacts to describe your IT / EA efforts that you would use when describing other, more business-core value chain processes and the IT that supports them. Having this kind of back-up to explain your EA efforts would have the additional benefit of educating your business process owners and data stewards on EA process and it's utility for them. Selfishly, having EA process models and artifacts would make the process of 'doing' EA a whole lot easier.
I would think that the IT / EA models would need to be available for a company like ITM to build their solution.
Process Wave: Move your mouse over the top ProcessWave graphic on their site. Rad dude!
OK. Back to work.
InfoWorld: IBM opens four SOA design centers: May 18, 2004: By Ed Scannell
"While the design centers will help with the creation of new applications, the preference will be to disassemble existing products "at the user facing environment," and reuse them at a component level, Weisser said.
An profitable sounding approach. It's amazing how much reuse of legacy apps, as opposed to retirement, is in fashion. I just sat in on a portal presentation and the focus for that vendor was doing everything possible to not touch the legacy app in order to implement. I guess it's not that amazing due to the high cost of most software development.
Rich media conferencing end-users from the Fortune 1000 will choose sides, top enterprise IT providers will challenge each others solutions; industry luminaries will provide insights; and everyone will gain a better understanding of where real-time collaboration using audio, video and web conferencing is headed at the fourth annual Wainhouse Research Summit, July 14-16, held at the Colonnade Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts. The theme for this year's conference is "Peering Into the Future."...presentations from large and small end users will highlight the reality of achieving success with rich media communications in business meetings, training, and customer relations applications. End users speaking at the Summit include the World Bank, IBM, Electrolux, LifeCare Hospitals, Countrywide Financial, and SAIC.
Wired 12.05: Want to Piss Off a CEO?
Nicholas Carr, who wrote the much discussed "It Doesn't Matter" last year for the Harvard Business Review, is back again trying to further explain his thesis,
The IT industry is looking more and more like a traditional, mature manufacturing business. Plagued by undifferentiated products, global overcapacity, and falling prices, hardware and software companies are consolidating, shifting production offshore, and making money on maintenance and other fee-based services. They're competing on cost rather than innovation and features.
It's a good read for getting a well-rounded picture of how the focus in business-related hardware and software is shifting from the development of these tools (less innovation and features) to the alignment of the business goals with the IT tools to make those goals a reality (Enterprise Architecture, both the process and artifacts).
To me, IT is so much more than the products we buy and even the protocols and standards developed by some very intelligent people. IT is the actual process of putting the added-value technology in the right place at the right time. It's the implementation of these things and, more importantly, the business and technology savvy people in an organization that put these commodity software and hardware pieces togther to meet the expectations of the folks putting together the business plans and strategy.