By Connie Moore

I recently read an article about how journalists are having to change, and change fast.  The gist of the article (sorry but I can't remember where I read it) is that the good old days of writing on deadline and having 24 hours or 12 hours to get your story done are dead and gone. Or as Kathleen Parker recently wrote in The Washington Post "Let me be the first in the new year to declare that the mainstream media are dead" (January 2, 2009).  She added "The mainstream media aren't really dead, of course. The industry has merely transmogrified, splintered into a billion little reflections of its former self. One-fifth of the world's nearly 7 billion people are now Web-capable -- all reporting, opining, interacting, twittering, digging and blogging."

• Synchronized release strategy improves upgrade experience. Product
  families in the Business Suite now use the same "Switch Framework",
  which allows clients to upgrade 4 categories of enhancements that
  include usability, horizontal features, vertical features, and
  composite apps/web services.  This provides one upgrade strategy for
  all products and brings all the releases into synch.  Some clients have
  stated that this helped with reducing the pain of some upgrades.POV: The
  movement to synchronize all releases is a good start.   System
  integrators have traditionally bore the burden of integrating and
  synchronizing the various product families.  Going forward, customers
  will expect usage of a common data model via a revamped MDM approach.

4/5ths of IT execs say they are re-assessing their IT organization with the intent of finding ways to run leaner.  Many of these firms will use a consultancy with a practice in re-engineering IT organizations.  And a number of these firms are asking me what they should look out for when they evaluate these consultancies. Why are they asking me this?  First, these re-engineering projects cost a lot, 2nd, clients aren’t expert in how to evaluate who’s strong and who’s weak, and 3rd, our clients have one shot at getting these re-structure projects right, and don’t want to pick the wrong firm.      

I ask them to drill down three levels into the methodology boxes and arrows charts that they bring to their sales calls.