IT goes through cycles—fat clients vs thin clients, centralised mainframes vs distributed computing. These tend to be areas where the costs and benefits of either end of the spectrum are difficult to discriminate between the alternatives. It takes time for the industry to settle on an equilibrium position, and quite...

Perhaps the number one problem in enterprise IT is 'change'—how to handle it and how to keep up with a changing world. Gartner says that "IT organizations' application strategies often aren't dynamic enough to handle changes in technology."

We spend a lot of time, effort and money building systems which (if we're...

There are two ways to look at integration:

Integration is a cost: poorly planned system procurement and development means that we carry the technical burden of multiple applications with overlapping concerns. Data must be replicated between systems in order for them to function. The mechanisms we use to perform this...