The enterprise architect (EA) is key to aligning business and IT. In tough times, this hard-to-define position is more important than ever. When technology infrastructure lines up with business projects like musicians in a marching band, you know you have a good enterprise architect on staff. But will you keep him when it's time to start handing out pink slips?

Enterprise Architectures Part 3: Enterprises are increasingly designing security into every aspect of their systems from the word-go, rather than retroactively.

Enterprise Architectures Part 2: Enterprises are tailoring their architectures to the key business processes that they must support and comply with.

Enterprise Architectures Part I: Enterprises are increasingly focused on unifying their enterprise-wide data and designing architectures to maximise the usefulness and accessibility of that data.

By splitting off its manufacturing operations into a separate company, Advanced Micro Devices could be on track to become the nimble, innovative company that once had Intel on the run. Although it's not going to be a whole new AMD, the deal will give the industry a company that's a good deal more nimble because they won't be dealing with the same financial burdens or dealing with the fab plants.

It seems that virtualisation is finally taking off, with customers having made the jump from interest in the technology to actual implementation. According to a recent survey, over 38% of respondents have already virtualised their environment, while 52% certainly plan to do so. Recent vendor announcements also confirm the growing interest in this technology.

With VMware?s success, vendors have begun touting virtualization products for every layer of the infrastructure, but management and security lag behind.

When things were running smoothly, we would amuse ourselves with philosophical discussions about just what it meant for data to have integrity. It was almost as if data integrity were an afterthought. That view has changed. Data integrity -- or data quality, as the current parlance goes -- has become a hot topic in many IT departments.

Despite its six syllables, ?virtualisation? is a straight forward concept. It can enable your organisation to get more value not only from computer and storage hardware but also from the labor required to keep your systems up and running.

With continuing threats of terrorist action, natural disasters, and pandemics, as well as the more mundane challenges of stretching budgets, improving operational efficiency, and fulfilling complex missions, countries at regional and local levels continue to struggle with the implementation of large-scale information-sharing programs along with the challenges of executing a wide range of ongoing operations and new initiatives.