Performance OrientationPerformance Orientation

Autumn: Mimicking nature, this is the time of year when destinations are in sight; plans made when there was time to plan are now being executed; and events and their meaning conform rapidly to some sort of conclusion. Birds no longer flit about; they're flying in formation now, headed toward a specific destination. In politics, there's the November election. In baseball, we have the pennant races, playoffs, and soon, the World Series. And in our business, we have our great event of the year: The Intelligent Performance Conference & Expo, November 15th to 18th in La Jolla, California.

We look forward to seeing Intelligent Enterprise subscribers at this event, held in a sunny location that might "turn back the clock" for attendees coming from the seasonal chill of the Midwest, East, and North. La Jolla, the San Diego region's toniest beach town, should be in late-summer California splendor. The November secret about Southern California is that the ocean is as warm as it will get all year, and the sunsets, with higher clouds and less marine fog, are spectacular.

Of course, all of that is merely context for what we anticipate will be a strong educational experience focused on how business and IT can work together to measure, manage, and improve business performance. Put together by contributing editor Mark Smith, head of Ventana Research, and myself, this is the second annual version of this event. Mark and I are in agreement that performance management — depending on the perspective, typically preceded by the words "business," "corporate," or "enterprise" — is an essential objective today. To be competitive, efficient, and effective, all organizations need to leverage information resources to better understand how well they're doing — and what to fix when performance needs tuning. That's what this conference is about.

We hope to bring attendees closer to an objective understanding of what sort of methods, tools, and applications are most applicable to their goals for performance management. Are current business intelligence (BI) tools providing what you need? What about new technology for business activity monitoring (BAM) and real-time, process-oriented intelligence? And is current technology sufficient for the information integration layer, which is essential to gaining the comprehensive, "single view of the truth" needed by decision makers to analyze and act to improve performance? We've assembled a roster of dynamic keynotes and industry experts, including prominent users presenting case studies, to help attendees find answers and focus IT investment on what it takes to act intelligently to improve business performance.

To see the full program, please check out www.IntelligentPerformance.com/events. We hope to see you there!

Loosely Coupled Content

In this issue, our feature focus is on the emerging software infrastructure of applications that will employ a Web services-oriented architecture. Modern enterprise application development and integration are increasingly one thought — rather than one creative activity followed by a painfully expensive, never-ending maintenance effort. The enterprise service bus and the notion of patterns both stand on a long, evolving history of ideas in software development: ideas that seem finally to be coming to fruition for intelligent applications.