Each of these trends described in this issue is powerful on its own and requires devoted study from IT planners and leaders. Taken collectively, they can be a rather large tsunami that engulfs organizations faster than they can adjust. 2012 will likely emerge as a critical transition year in which two well-established trends, social media and consumer technology, meet up with two emerging trends, Big Data and cloud computing, and transform corporate IT from the inside and the outside. There is a lot of promise and peril in these trends. To some, they represent the beginning of the end of the modern IT organization. I -- and I think our authors -- would disagree. This is merely the end of the very early phase of an important transformation that will require all the best and brightest IT leaders across the globe. New tools enable new strategies, and, boy, do we have new tools available to us in 2012! To sort this out, I encourage you to read on and learn how these trends will impact you and your organization.

With the term "devops" picking up steam, vendors are now (re)branding their tools as devops tools. Similar to unit-test tools that supported an agile workflow, the current discussion on deployment automation supports the devops ideas. Even though tools have their merits, after reading the August 2011 issue of Cutter IT Journal -- "Devops: A Software Revolution in the Making" -- it should be clear that tools are merely one aspect of devops and must be complemented with other aspects. The nice thing about tools is that they give you something concrete to discuss, as compared to the more intangible notion of "culture." Within large enterprises, tools are probably the easy part. Therefore, in this issue, we would like to focus on the harder aspects, like "people and processes," or as the Agile Manifesto puts it, "Individuals and interactions."

By allowing an organization to analyze and visualize the entire business and apply business blueprints to both strategic transformation initiatives and ongoing business challenges, business architecture becomes an enabler of critical business strategies. This issue of Cutter IT Journal brings these factors to light through five articles by business architecture practitioners. These articles discuss business architecture in the context of strategic planning, requirements analysis, holistic business analysis, strategic transformation, and organizational transformation.

Borders. Blockbuster. Polaroid. Kodak. Teen magazine. Tower Records. Virgin Megastores. When we think about these names, we recall once major brands that have undergone dramatic shifts that, in some cases, led to their demise. These companies were beset by external changes in their competitive environments brought about at least partly by disruptive technologies. We see these changes happening today as the newspaper and music industries are being transformed by new entrants with new technologies. In some cases the technology is used by existing competitors, but in others the competition can seem to materialize out of thin air. The entrepreneurial innovators are out there; the rest of us need help. And so we find that the debate about disruption isn't about whether it happens or not. The debate is, what should companies do to keep from being disrupted?

It is clear that organizations are setting new expectations for their IT departments. Historically, the mission of IT was to reduce business and technology costs by optimizing existing IT assets and processes. While there is still demand for asset optimization and process efficiencies, organizations expect innovative breakthroughs from their IT departments in such areas as virtualization of work and leveraging the consumerization of technology. In many cases, the CIO is expected to lead these breakthroughs, both from a championing and execution point of view. So information and information technology have been (and will continue to be) drivers for a fundamental shift in business operating models. But will IT as a function be a relevant part of this? And, if so, at what impact to the oft-maligned IT worker? Is there a 21st-century IT professional?

Only by providing positive results to the business and management can IT reverse its bad reputation and become a reliable partner again. In order to do that, we need to break through blockers in our thought process, and devops invites us to challenge traditional organizational barriers. The days of top-down control are over — devops is a grass-roots movement similar to other horizontal revolutions, such as Facebook. The role of management is changing: no longer just directive, it is taking a more supportive role, unleashing the power of the people on the floor to achieve awesome results. And that is the focus of this issue of Cutter IT Journal.

Though the cloud computing model offers the promise of significant cost savings coupled with increased IT agility, it is essential that organizations not only carefully consider how and where to apply this approach, but also understand the implications to the rest of the IT ecosystem. Simply accelerating server provisioning will not deliver improved time to market for IT solutions. The IT system must move in synchrony. And that is the focus of this issue of Cutter IT Journal.

Crowdsourcing would appear to have great potential to revolutionize the ways organizations innovate, produce, and engage with markets. However, as is the case with all promising phenomena, there are multiple challenges that need to be overcome. This issue of Cutter IT Journal draws on different sources from both academic research and industry practice to suggest a variety of techniques and tools -- some technological but many organizational and social -- that can be used to address these challenges.

What is the cyber security threat, and how worried -- if at all -- should we be? That is the question this issue of Cutter IT Journal delves into. We have six articles by leading cyber security experts who provide some needed clarity to the current debates. We think you will agree that the articles in this issue provide a number of fresh and interesting perspectives on the cyber security debate -- without the hyperbole.

In this issue of Cutter IT Journal, we aim to shed some light on how value chain relates to both business architecture and enterprise architecture, and as a result, how it can contribute to aligning or integrating business priorities and IT programs. In the following articles, six experts from varied backgrounds will help you understand and explore the contribution of value chain. Their analyses provide guidance to those who are seeking a different way to revive or reinforce the dialogue between the CIO and the rest of the C-suite, or to ensure that the portfolio of business systems, as well as infrastructure projects, uses business imperatives rather than the appeal of new technology as its justification.

The March issue of Cutter IT Journal invites useful and thoughtful debate and analysis on the opportunities and challenges presented by implementing Kanban methodologies in the enterprise. We invite experts, IT professionals, consultants, customers, and all other Kanban practitioners to share their perspectives -- either positive or negative -- with Kanban implementation. We also encourage authors to go beyond Kanban as a methodology and address other related factors such as communication, collaboration, environment, end-user issues, and how Kanban has been used in conjunction with other methods to reach project success.

The February Cutter IT Journal invites ideas, stories and useful debate and analyses of what has been or should be used by organizations to deliver a new kind of excellence in customer experience.

In the January issue of Cutter IT Journal, we explore various approaches to managing information challenges during crises and the role of IT in facilitating crisis response. Our authors also look at the benefits of crisis preparedness as well as the potential for improvisational structures to meet crisis response needs.

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