One of the more interesting dichotomies that has developed in the technology sector is the divide between the idea of "free" in terms of digital goods. On one side of the divide are the open source/creative commons folks, and on the other side are the old line big content industries (music, TV, hollywood, for profit-software, etc.). The argument by the old line big content people is that digital viral distribution for free is equal to piracy and is ruining their businesses. As a result, there has been the curious phenomenon of providers of said content suing the people who use said content. However, this post is not meant to debate the pros and cons of those tactics. Rather, I want to look at what is happening in the open source area and examine whether the idea of "free" translates into no revenue or a vibrant market.

Open source software is gaining in popularity. Whether it is in the form of applications such as Gimp or operating systems such as Linux, the rise of open source is beginning to take root. According to at least one estimate, the open source market is worth $60 Billion USD.

According to John Powell, CEO of open source content management vendor Alfresco the value of open source is not what it generates, but what it saves, and that's worth billions.

"Open source is now the world's largest software industry," Powell declared during his keynote address as the first Alfresco community conference in Sydney, Australia.

"You measure it in the savings people are making in licence fees," he said. "Licence fees don't add any value to the product and are purely a transfer of wealth from consumers to software vendors."

This is an interesting point. If I had alternatives to say Photoshop/Flash/Dreamweaver/Illustrator, then I would save a few thousand dollars in licenses for software, but I would be able to be just as productive. So it's an interesting idea to measure value in terms of the end user rather than in terms of software revenue.

"In the last couple of years it has moved from being the province of geeky individuals to becoming mainstream," he said. "Sun bought MySQL, Yahoo bought Zimbra, and Citrix bought XenSource for $500 million - a company with less than $1 million in revenues showing open source is about more than the traditional revenues of proprietary software companies."

All true. There does seem to be a trend of established companies buying open source companies. The open question of course, is how the open source companies will benefit the bottom line of a company like Sun or Yahoo. Those questions are still being sorted out.

Powell also digressed into a lengthy discourse as to why classical enterprise content management is the wrong vision that was "artificially constructed by content management vendors in the 90s to sell more product".

"ECM implies silos of information," he said. "People want transparency and trust, and rather than thinking about ECM as a product, think about content services delivered to users on demand in the application of their choice. It should be available to everyone.

"Open source is driving this change and so is the Web 2.0 revolution. The open source model is built on the Internet and collaboration. ECM leaves the boundaries of the enterprise and can be used through Facebook or Google."

This might be the key point. The battle is between a closed proprietary information architecture versus an open information architecture. The latter will still require experts to develop new capabilities, to deploy and integrate and architect, and to maintain. But it doesn't require any business to be locked into a sort of black hole model that has been commonplace until recently. It will be interesting to watch and see how the open model gets monetized (after all providers do need to make money) and how this will affect the proprietary models.





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Gartner is reporting some quite dismal numbers on the failure rate for business projects in virtual worlds, and of course this primarily affects Second Life. On the surface, this sounds like Second Life and the immersive web experience is doomed to failure. But before we begin to write letters of condolences to Second Life, we should remember a few key things.

First, even though virtual reality has been with us a long while, the manifestation of the 3d web is a fairly recent development. Further, the idea of an immersive global micro economy (which is what SL is at its core) is new and is going to go through growing pains.

Second, 10% of the projects are successful. While this number appears to be low, remember, everyone is experimenting with a capability that is at the edge of the internet experience. Instead of focusing on the 90% number, we should focus on the factors and characteristics of the 10% successful projects.

Third, let's revisit my top ten list of attributes of Second Life (originally posted here.

1. Second Life is a platform for micro-commerce

2. Second Life is a platform for incubating new business ideas

3. Second Life provides small businesses instant international reach

4. Second Life is a natural extension of a business web presence

5. Second Life is a platform for real time interaction and customer feedback

6. Second Life is a natural platform for for marketing (however, so far companies have been using the wrong techniques to make this point effective)

7. Second Life is a multimedia experience rather than a game

8. Second Life has potential for solutions in both B2C and B2B

9. Second Life can be shaped by its users

10. Second Life is a low cost method of collaboration and is a social networking platform

These are the things I believe businesses should look to for success in SL. However, let's look at what Gartner has to say:

Nine out of ten business forays into virtual worlds fail within 18 months but their impact on organisations could be as big as that of the internet, according to Gartner, Inc. Analysts said that focusing on the technology rather than understanding user requirements is one of the key reasons for failure.

"Businesses have learned some hard lessons," said Steve Prentice, vice president and fellow at Gartner. "They need to realise that virtual worlds mark the transition from web pages to web places and a successful virtual presence starts with people, not physics. Realistic graphics and physical behaviour count for little unless the presence is valued by and engaging to a large audience."

This is a fair point, and one with which I agree. The 3d web is far more powerful in terms of impact, and once the keys to success are discovered, we will likely see explosive growth in the market area.

A benefit of virtual worlds is the rich collaboration experience they offer by adding a real-time visual dimension via avatars, so interactions can include emotional information in the "conversations" between individuals, setting them apart from simpler networking applications. They also differentiate themselves from web-based interactions (which can be asynchronous) by requiring both parties to be present at the same time.

The cost of implementing a corporate virtual platform is also marginal, typically from around $50k and trials can start from as little as $5k, which can further incentivise companies to experiment with them. It could also save costs from reduced use of expensive videoconferencing facilities and eliminate the need to bring employees from multiple locations and time-zones to a single site, with substantial savings in travel and associated costs and time, thereby also supporting corporate environmental initiatives.

As an additional form of communication, virtual worlds have potential. "Companies need to start thinking what their virtual world strategy is, incorporate it into their internet strategy and merge their two-dimensional web pages to support a "3D web place". Virtual world presence is not to replace the "2D world" but to supplement it," Mr Prentice said

Again, I would agree with this assessment. However, businesses need to be sure to work with integration firms who have a deep understanding of the 3d web. Experts who do web page design are not the same skill set as experts who do 3d design for example.

By 2012, Gartner estimates that 70 per cent of organisations will have established their own private virtual worlds and predicts that these internal worlds will have greater success due to lower expectations, clearer objectives and better constraints.

Some successful virtual worlds are those such as Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin and BarbieGirls which focus on their audience, understand their needs and deliver content which is appropriate to their audience- it's not enough to target 'the whole world'," said Mr Prentice. "The challenge that generic projects inside Second Life face is that they do not know who their audience is and therefore do not know what their needs are. Organisations can not effectively market a product for the whole world. They need to be focused and targeted," he added.

Indeed.

There is meaningful corporate use of virtual world platforms that organisations can embrace. Gartner said that organisations could start using virtual worlds in role-based scenario-driven training exercises or complex situational simulation. They could be used in training emergency services (such as medical, fire and police) and military/law enforcement services to simulate real-world scenarios, including public order control and medical emergencies. The second phase could involve extended virtual-world deployment to support collaboration and employee interaction to provide a secure, persistent and interactive virtual workspace to allow individuals to interact and improve collaboration. It could then progress to enhance socialisation both within and external to the organisation and ultimately extend to a broader community that includes supply chain partners and customers.

There are more scenarios that apply. Keep in mind that the 3d web is also the real time person-to-person interactive web. It is the idea of a chat room on steroids. Those who underestimate the power of this platform will fail. Those who don't utilize the right expertise will fail. However, there will be plenty who succeed.

See you in world.


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There is some interesting research occurring in which is demonstrating that how you present yourself in virtual worlds such as Second Life appears to have a direct affect on your behavior and appearance in real life. While this is not necessarily information that is relevant to business, it's an interesting set of findings.

Bailenson's research suggests that the qualities you acquire online — whether it's confidence or insecurity — can spill over and change your conduct in the real world, often without your awareness. Bailenson has found that even 90 seconds spent chatting it up with avatars is enough to elicit behavioral changes offline — at least in the short term. "When we cloak ourselves in avatars, it subtly alters the manner in which we behave," says Bailenson. "It's about self-perception and self-confidence." But researchers are still trying to figure out the psychological mechanisms at work, and which way the effect flows: "Do you consciously wear your power suit to feel confident, or is it that you're in this suit and you're feeling up, but you're unaware of the reason?" says Bailenson.

Bailenson's findings have a lot more real-world meaning than you'd think, if only because so many people are spending so much time in the unreal world. Some 13 million people have visited Second Life at least once, with about 450,000 residents online in a given week. Even more popular is the online game World of Warcraft, which has 10 million active subscribers who pay to participate. People spend on average about 20 hours a week in alternate worlds like these, and at VHIL, whose high-tech virtual world is entered by way of a $24,000 helmet, Bailenson and his Ph.D. students are trying to figure out how these increasingly common virtual experiences bleed into reality. "I've been doing this for years and people have been laughing at me," says Bailenson. "All of a sudden, I have people calling and asking about what I do."

In one experiment, published in Human Communication Research last year, researchers assessed how an avatar's attractiveness affected human behavior, both online and off. Thirty-two volunteers were randomly assigned an attractive or unattractive avatar (attractiveness was rated by undergrads in a survey beforehand) and instructed to look at them in a virtual mirror for 90 seconds. Then they were asked to interact with other avatars, controlled by the experimenters, in a classroom-like setting. Overall, subjects using good-looking avatars tended to display more confidence, friendliness and extroversion, just as in the real world: they approached avatar strangers within three feet, and in conversations tended to disclose more personal details. Ugly-duckling avatars, meanwhile, stayed five and a half feet away from strangers and were more tight-lipped.

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Andrew McAfee of Harvard University created the term Enterprise 2.0 as a way of describing the effect that Web 2.0 technologies will have on the enterprise. I think it's fair to say that that most people would assume that the adoption of Web 2.0 into the enterprise will simply be a matter of putting up executive blogs and a user forum. But in actuality, there is more to the situation, which is why McAfee's terminology is important. We believe that for the enterprise, the adoption of Web 2.0 capabilities will lead very rapidly to a rollout of Web 3.0, which we believe will start in the enterprise and then trickle out to the entire web (e.g. the reverse of what we have seen with Web 2.0 which started at the end user level and is just recently seen uptake in the business realm).

Gartner is starting to discuss the Enterprise 2.0 trend:

Businesses can leap ahead of their competitors by combining social networking and customer relationship management to help them develop innovative products, research firm Gartner has said.

The opportunity for social software in enterprise or "Enterprise 2.0 technologies" lies in capturing informal customer comments about products, said David Cearley, research fellow at Gartner.

"This includes opinions, comments, descriptions, labels, preferences, observations, likes and dislikes, and predictions as raw material for building valuable information resources," he said.

This is similar to what Forrester is saying regarding the convergence of Search and BI technologies. However, the additional factor in the Gartner analysis is the combination of Social Networking and enterprise apps such as CRM. Keep in mind that as applications such as CRM become more web based, and as we have more convergence with CRM and Social Networking tools, the new model begins to be web based. So we can easily imagine virtual collaborative environments which combine people + data + applications in real time.

Gartner predicts that by 2010 the concepts, language and technologies of consumer social software, such as Facebook and Myspace, will become part of mainstream business software.

Very true, and keep in mind that 2010 is only about 18 months away. So if you are not already in the process of creating an Enterprise 2.0 plan, now would be a good time to start.





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The research firm Forrester is reporting a convergence between search technologies and business intelligence solutions. This really isn't as surprising as some might wish to portray it, even though the context of Search and the context for BI come from very different places. When we think of Search, we think of typing in some keywords and having a list of websites returned which match those keywords. BI on the other hand, has been an analytical solution for enterprises. According to Forrester, neither solution so far has been a panacea for providing the proper level of insight into the state of the business, and it is that reality which makes the convergence of Search and BI interesting. The difference is that Search provides a method for dealing with unstructured data (examples: email, blog posts, text files), while BI provides a method of dealing with structured data (examples: databases, application data, EDI/XML).

The ongoing convergence of BI and search will help "bridge the artificial system boundaries between structured data and unstructured content," Forrester said in "Search + BI = Unified Information Access." "It will not only affect the interfaces we use to search for, discover, analyze, and report on what we need to know, but help us learn more about what we don't know."

To date, businesses have not had insight into the intelligence that may be collectively floating around in unstructured data inside the enterprise. As such, all decisions have been based on what was known by the individuals doing the research plus those facts gleaned from enterprise structured data. But as email and other forms of unstructured data have proliferated in volume, it creates another resource that can be tapped for knowledge. Hence, the importance of enterprise level Search.

Among the changes occurring as a result of the blending of BI and search is easier information access. Semantra, for example, specializes in technology that makes it possible for a sales rep to type into a search text box a question in the form of a statement like "list accounts scheduled to close before July 2008" to get a list of opportunities from a customer-relationship management system, Forrester said. Other software with similar capabilities include Information Builders' Magnify, Oracle's Hyperion Essbase with Secure Enterprise Search, and Polestar from Business Objects, an SAP company.

Enterprise search vendors, on the other hand are using federation approaches based on OpenSearch, Google OneBox and other standards to pass queries to one or more back-end BI systems, Forrester said. "Certain expressions in a search query, such as 'financial report' or 'expense summary,' can trigger a federation of the search query to a BI system."

At the core, what we have is one leg of Web 3.0, namely the semantic web portion. While Forrester does not discuss this as such, ultimately what will become more and more apparent is the convergence of VR web capabilities for collaboration in real time (such as Second Life) and these new Search/BI capabilities which will also operate in real time. The convergence of these will radically alter the way enterprises and their supply chain and channel partners interoperate with each other. The dream of the real time agile enterprise will become truly possible as we transition away from a "batch oriented" method of dealing with information to a real time on-demand mashup method.

This is Web 3.0.

An emerging technology capability called "entity extraction" can pick out from unstructured text names of people, addresses, brand names or just about any text or numeric pattern, Forrester said. "The linguistic algorithms used to detect these patterns become useful when combined with the analytical and reporting capabilities found in BI platforms."

Another technique called sentiment analysis evaluates the overall tone of what a writer is saying. "Combined with traditional BI, sentiment analysis has the potential to drive new levels of insight in voice of the customer applications," Forrester said.

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The LA Times has a story on the "resurgence" of Second Life for real world businesses. We've done several posts on the subject before, on how SL is in Gartner's Trough of Disillusionment, which is the phase that happens after the inflated hype we saw in 2007, and that eventually pragmatic business solutions will come about. The article is quite lengthy, so I'll only quote a couple of choice pieces:

To save money in these tough times, universities, conference planners and global firms have started holding gatherings for far-flung employees and students in the online world known as Second Life.

Sun Microsystems Inc., a Silicon Valley tech company, has only one rule: Employees should show up looking like humans.

Other companies don't seem to mind if their workers take the form of animals and other entities while they're on the clock.

On a recent afternoon in Second Life, about 20 avatars -- the personalized character each inhabitant of the virtual world adopts -- gathered for a lecture on software development sponsored by Intel Corp. The semiconductor giant planned the event to spark conversation about complex technical topics among employees and others across the

Corporate America is still learning to embrace Second Life, where creative self-expression is expected. Since Linden Lab, a San Francisco company, opened the online community to the public in 2003, it's been an eclectic place where strangely appointed avatars meet, build fancy palaces, go sailing, buy virtual goods and have cybersex.

Now, other companies are carving out parts of Second Life as their own. They are creating employee-only islands and office buildings, then encouraging their staff to meet there. Compared with plane tickets and hotel bills, it's pretty cheap: a 16-acre private island in Second Life costs $1,000 plus a $295 monthly maintenance fee.

And instead of staring at white walls during conference calls with strangers, employees can wander a virtual paradise and see representations of the co-workers they have never met.

Sun Microsystems, which makes computer servers and software, owns seven islands in Second Life, two of which are open to the public. The rest are used for training sessions and meetings. During its biggest event, a 12-hour corporate meeting held last month, 14 of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun's top executives hobnobbed with hundreds of employees. Alpine skiing, car racing, live jazz and a sandbox were also part of the event.

At one point, Sun Chairman Scott McNealy, dressed in a San Jose Sharks hockey jersey and holding a golf club, sat in a virtual auditorium next to Chief Gaming Officer Chris Melissinos, who had a mascot for Sun's Java software sitting on his shoulder (the mascot looks a bit like a penguin).

The next boom for Second Life is coming. Remember, you heard it here first: a real world recession will mean a virtual economy boom.

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Echo and the Bunnymen - Lips Like Sugar

Happy Mothers Day

The band name is Rancid. From the CD Out Come the Wolves. The song is Ruby Soho

10 L each new heart-shaped present box! Special sale offer! 10 L each flower! one flower ensemble for free! full permission flowers and flower deco for your gardening fun and to make beautiful presents and Impress your virtual mom! 15 different textured heart-shaped present boxes await you in the Alli&Ali Designs mainstore. Builders versions with full permissions for sale! Scripted box-shaped present boxes are available too! Join the Alli&Ali group for the weekly design news and goodies. If you have any questions, please contact Alice (Alice Klinger in world).


Click here for a link to the in world location.



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Click the SL logo to listen to an audio interview with Philip Linden, aka, Philip Rosedale.







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The latest trend in the problem of the immersive web is to try to make it more immersive. We posted previously about Mitch Kapor's 3d motion camera demo. While the idea is interesting, I am not convinced that this will amount to anything more than a niche solution.

So next up, we have the Motion-Capture Suit by Kevin Alderman. Alderman is more well known in Second Life as the purveyor of scripts and animations oriented for "adults only." So you can guess what Alderman has in mind for how he might market his motion suits. While on the surface this might seem like something that might work, I have my doubts. It's not radically different from Mitch Kapor's notion of the 3d camera, and even if Alderman markets it towards the "adult entertainment" crowd, it's difficult to see this having wide adoption. As the article on this topic states:

Ask hard-core game developers about the limitations of using real-time motion capture devices to control your avatar and they'll remind you that your living room is a finite space. Even if you could strap on the motion sensors and use your body to maneuver your digital alter ego, you can't do much flying, climbing or fighting without hitting a wall.

"You can swing a baseball bat or kick a football, but you can't go dive, can't run, can't explore a cave," Hall says. "We're always going to have this problem. Duplicating the Holodeck on the Enterprise sounds nice, but when they turn the screen off, it's just a big room.... It's not limited by (mocap) technology but by the walls in your house."

Therein lies the problem. Space limitation. I don't know that I would invest in the 3d Camera or the Motion Suit. The truth is that full scale immersion is going to require an entire breakthrough in mind-computer interaction, and that has yet to be seen except in the movies. So these ideas of having more flexible methods of controlling an avatar and interacting with virtual worlds are interesting, but these are not essential "must have" technologies for an individual to enjoy VR in its current state.



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I was reading this interview with Steve Jurvetson of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, one of the premier VC firms in Silicon Valley, thought about what is wrong with some of our current thinking about the marketplace for information technology. As Jurveston says "We want to invest in unique ideas that can change the world. We don't even care what industry they fall into, but ideally they're driven by some major disruptive force, as a different way of looking at the economy and venture opportunities."

It's this idea of market disruption that bothers me most about some of the current trends, because disruption in an existing market means progress. But whenever someone attempts to block that progress, innovation will suffer long term setbacks. A few scant years ago the notion of disruption was fairly limited to enterprise business processes and B2B supply chains. As such, the consumer market was left relatively static, with only a few technologies trickling out such as VCR's in the 1980's.

But the past several years have brought about an onslaught of consumer focused solutions that are causing massive shifts in the way the world operates. Old line business models are being severely disrupted, and the reaction by those entrenched interests is predictable. We are witnessing massive attempts at defensive litigation by old line content industries such as the RIAA, MPAA, IFPI and others as they try to stomp out these new technologies through lawsuits and lobbying for new laws. Then we have politicians who are who are trying to ban technologies because they deem them unsafe for children.

These are clearly examples of technology having a disruptive impact to the status quo. While some of these changes do bring about problems, such as ensuring child safety, I'm not sure that trying to stack more laws onto the pile will help. In fact, these reactive strategies are likely to have exactly the opposite effect of what was intended, because unless computer technology is completely removed from the marketplace, creative people will find a way around any roadblocks that are put up.

When one tries to think about solutions to ensuring child safety, the easy thought is "ban SL" but what happens to the legitimate uses of SL for education and business? Do we just throw all of that out? Further, because Linden Lab intentionally separates the Second Life adult servers from the servers for children, and closely guards access to the latter, even to solution providers, how is it that they are not doing more than MySpace or other networking sites are doing to keep kids safe from predators?

The web is a scary place sometimes, and there are new venues for criminal behavior. But somehow we have to be able to have an honest debate that is removed from the political realm and chart a new course forward to address these issues, which range from spammers to ID theft to copyright issues to child protection and more. But there are no easy solutions and it will require a community effort to address the challenges ahead. As for businesses who are being challenged by these new technologies, the best course forward would be to step back and figure out how to adapt, embrace, adopt, and extend rather than trying to sue everyone in their path.

The current trend of more and more legislation and litigation are likely to only have the result of causing more divisiveness and anger, and will polarize rather than solve problems. I don't claim to have the answers - those are still out there for us to collectively address; but I do know that when extant markets are disrupted by innovation, working to eliminate those forces of innovation will not work. The whole idea of free enterprise is to take advantage of weaknesses in existing business models and to improve quality of life. Everyone needs to join in this discussion because computers and the web are so tightly woven into everyday life.


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The US Congress House of Representatives has passed the Pro-IP act by a wide margin. While we are badly in need of legislation in the areas of copyright (and patents), one can't help but wonder if this is completely the wrong direction to be going. It does absolutely nothing to help small independent content creators, and basically creates a law enforcement branch for the major record labels and the major film studios. Is this really going to foster innovation? Perhaps, but probably not in the way that congress intends. If this does end up becoming law (the Senate has yet to act, so as of now this is something that has yet to even reach the President for signing), then we are looking at a new level of the content wars that have been raging since the days of Napster.

Here are some of the key items in this bill:

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed legislation that would allow law enforcement authorities to seek the forfeiture of property used in copyright infringement.

The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act, or PRO-IP Act, would also create a new Office of Intellectual Property Enforcement representative, often called a copyright czar, in the White House. The bill would also expand a U.S. Department of Justice program that gives local law enforcement agencies grants to fight computer crimes, including grants for copyright infringement enforcement.

The bill allows both civil and criminal forfeitures of property used to commit copyright infringement.

The bill was sponsored by Democratic Representatives John Conyers of Michigan and Howard Berman of California, as well as Republican Lamar Smith of Texas. It passed the House on a 410-11 vote on Thursday.

In March, the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property killed the most controversial section of the bill, which would have increased fines for compilation CDs containing pirated music by 10 times or more.

A bit of analysis begins to show what the problem is here. First, this seems to completely obliterate the concept of Fair Use. Second, how many "false positives" are going to result and end with peoples homes being raided and equipment confiscated? Third, have we crossed the rubicon to a point where TV shows and top 40 songs are now the equivalent of contraband? I mean what happens if they get the wrong IP address, will a SWAT team raid your house all because you are thought to have downloaded the latest episode of Lost? And why is the federal government getting into the business of supporting a single business sector at the expense of the taxpayers?

This law doesn't seem right, and my concern is that the unintended consequences of this are going to so totally damage the idea of innovation in the US, that what will be left are true innovation industries overseas (e.g. information technology) while the US is left with bloated TV and film studios producing programs that no one wants. Yes we need copyright reform, but this is not the way to go about it.

In any event, we do need to reform the IP laws so that they are more up to date with modern technology, but unless we carefully debate this issue, and ensure balance for all parties concerned, the risk is even more instability in an already tumultuous area of business. We shall see what the Senate has to say about this matter, so the debate will continue as this is not yet law.





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Forrester has put together an interesting list of what they call the 10 Mistakes That Will Sink a Strategic Plan. The question with any of these kinds of lists are whether or not they provide any breakthroughs in ideas, or are they simply another revision of what has been stated before. Overall this isn't a bad list, but let's see if there is anything new in the list.

Let's look at the list item by item.

1. The plan does not define decisions that inform the strategy.

"A good strategic plan defines decisions and connects decisions with the factors that will make them successful," Cullen said. For example, if the strategic plan is about making new technology investments, a good plan will spell out the right staffing for that technology decision, the right processes for the technology and other factors crucial to carrying out the plan, Cullen said. Lacking this guidance, the plan becomes just a document -- not a blueprint for action.

Okay, so restated, the strategic plan should be action oriented. I would add that the actions should also define timelines.

2. The plan is written inside out.

The inside-out plan provides a smidgen of business context, then quickly devolves into a list of IT initiatives. Said Cullen: "When CIOs present these plans to their peer business execs ... the response is somewhere between, 'Nice IT plan -- I don't see anything in it for me,' to 'IT is out of touch.' A good plan helps reinforce IT's value. A bad plan undermines it."

Okay, the plan should define business goals, drivers, and timelines. Then leave it to IT to apply the appropriate technology to the goals.

3. The plan doesn't link business needs, IT initiatives and metrics.

Another variation on IT myopia. IT may see the link between its plan and the business, but no one else does. And, because IT initiatives are not linked to metrics, neither IT nor the business knows if the plan is on track or producing the intended results. Cullen says this mistake is an "easy one to solve" but often overlooked because the IT folks are so focused on their initiatives.

This seems to be a reiteration of item #2. It does add the idea of metrics and measurements.

4. It's too focused on the business, not enough on IT.

Putting the cart before the horse. Cullen gave an example of a CIO client whose IT operations were subpar: not enough staff, not enough investment in basic infrastructure, weak governance, etc. "But you would never know this from the strategic plan they brought to us," Cullen said. The plan was chock full of new applications and major business projects. In talking with the client, it was clear that the business was frustrated by IT's performance. "They were the gang that couldn't deliver."

Well yes, but the IT Strategic Plan should derive from the Corporate Strategic Plan. It is at the IT plan level that solutions such as TOGAF are examined and set forth as possible strategic goals.

5. The plan skips over strategic principles.

Cullen said Forrester takes strategic principles very seriously. "We don't them as statements of motherhood -- 'IT is a business asset,'" he said. Principles reflect decisions about how IT will operate and deliver.

Cullen said, "They have statements in there like, 'We will use service-oriented architecture for business solution delivery and development,' or 'For non-core services we will utilize a buy rather than build philosophy.'" Strategic principles set a course of action, so when the strategy is tweaked or new decisions come up, you have framework for making those decisions.

This seems obvious. A Strategic Plan without strategic principles? Hmm.

6. The plan does not build on IT governance.

Governance -- the steering committees, the project portfolio management office -- shapes IT decisions. But Forrester often sees strategic plans that make no mention of governance, Cullen said. The result is that business users become frustrated when things don't go their way: If their project is in the strategic plan, then why is it on hold because of some current demand? Conversely, a business user decides the IT strategic plan is just a big old barrier to his or her pressing need. Good plans connect the dots between strategic initiatives and the IT governance processes.

Governance is becoming the latest trend in IT. TOGAF is the one to look at first since it is based on an open concept.

7. It's too damn long.

A Forrester client wrote a 237-page strategic plan and then wondered why readers were overwhelmed. "This plan covered everything. But because it covered everything about the IT organization, it was not a strategic plan but an encyclopedia article." Focus on business needs and how IT will support them, and what is going to change as a result.

Uff. 237 pages? You must be joking. A strategic plan needs to be clear and concise. 237 pages is anything but clear and concise.

8. It's a laundry list.

This plan is just a mindless list of initiatives that range all over the map, "from major investments into CRM to upgrades of your databases," Cullen said. The rationale for doing these things must take center stage

Okay, agreed there is a big difference between a list of action items and a strategic plan. A plan should have justification for actions. A to-do list has only the actions.

9. It's like a message in a bottle.

Strategic plans with no follow-through are akin to putting a message in a bottle and hoping it washes up somewhere, Cullen said. The plan needs a defined mechanism for reviewing progress against goals and regularly asking the tough questions, including whether the goals are still the right ones for your company. Plus, you'll never be able to build on your strategic plan if you don't know where you ended up.

Again, the concept of governance and action oriented items.

10. It's an inside job.

The plan looks like it's been developed by a handful of people in enterprise architecture, Cullen said. It's not clear who was on the steering committee, or whether the right people were involved. "It feels very much like a side project within