Stuart Burris

Mainframes were the first computing platform of corporate information technology. As the industry has grown, mainframes have continued to evolve and integrate into the various incarnations of enterprise architecture. In fact, as the first computing system, mainframes enjoy a special role when looking at enterprise architecture, as mainframes have participated in virtually every flavor of architecture, starting with the incarnation of IT, when a mainframe was the architecture. Mainframes were initially deployed as monolithic, standalone systems. The prevailing attitude of the day was that all applications could and would reside on a single large computing platform, the mainframe. Application integration was all nicely handled through mainframe resident data stores, and callable transactions. However, as IT evolved into client/server and other non-mainframe architect... (more)

The Missing 'Discovery' Link to Successful Business Process Management

Every organization is under pressure to deliver tangible business benefit through its IT projects. This point is illustrated by the fact that almost all IT projects are justified based on the ROI they will deliver. However, very few organizations follow up and review all projects based on the ROI they actually provided. While the reasons for this aren't clear, one compelling, well-documented statistic is that on average only one out of three IT projects will be successfully completed and deliver the ROI they promised. If we dig deeper into understanding why two-thirds of project... (more)