AS THE COST OF HARDWARE and software goes down, and as the pressures from our organizations to provide more data, more speed, more flexibility, more applications, more everything(!) goes up, we are faced with two daunting tasks. The first is finding time to stay current with emerging technologies; the second is evaluating alternatives and investments with a variety of unknowns, coupled with large dollar amounts and huge risks. In this issue, we have gathered articles to aid you in those two tasks.

One of the most talked about emerging technologies today is wireless communication. So we begin this issue with "WAP: Transitional Technology for M-Commerce" by Mahesh Raisinghani. Wireless application protocol (WAP) is used to display Web and other data on the small screens of hand-held devices such as cellular telephones. WAP offers a communications protocol as well as an application environment, providing the specifications for Wireless Markup Language, which is similar to HTML. The article reviews what WAP is and how it works. Raisinghani then ties in the use of WAP with mobile commerce (M-commerce), noting that mobile access has the potential to change the way companies do business and the way employees perform their tasks. At present, M-commerce efforts are focused on providing a smart gadget that offers a combination of an electronic organizer, a personal computer, and a mobile telephone. One study predicts that by 2003, an organization that can offer a reliable wireless accessible portal will have a potential user base of nearly 300 million wireless Internet subscribers.

As the Internet continues to cover the IT landscape, organizations are developing ways to provide services and track who uses these services. "Cookies and Web Bugs" by William Harding, Anita Reed, and Robert Gray educates the reader about these electronic tags, which help Web sites track visitors in cyberspace. We've been reading about cookies for some time now -- those text files that are created by a Web site and written to the hard drive. They are used when data are moving around. We have visitor cookies, preference cookies, shopping basket cookies, and tracking cookies. Cookies are used to track our browsing history, to target ads based on earlier actions, and to personalize our site. They do have their downside, however. To some, cookies represent a security risk and an invasion of privacy. The fear is that information captured by a cookie will be accessible to other users.

Web bugs, on the other hand, are graphics on a Web page or E-mail message that monitor who is reading the page or message. A Web bug is about the size of a period and is essentially invisible on the page. When the page or message is viewed, the Web bug sends a ping or callback to the server with information about the viewer. People can't see Web bugs, and anti-cookie filters can't recognize them. Privacy concerns with Web bugs are just as considerable as concerns about cookies. Web bugs and cookies can work together to determine the identity of people and personal information about them, even before these users arrive at a particular site.

Privacy is one of the areas discussed in Brad Oates' article "Cyber Crimes: How Technology Makes It Easy and What to Do About It." Privacy protections that are in place enable thieves to take advantage of the benefits of this anonymity that hampers prevention and investigation efforts. The cost of cyber economic crime is over $500 billion annually. Cyber crimes offer criminals more opportunitites with large payoffs and fewer risks. The amout of credit card fraud is twelve times higher online than in the physical retail world. Consumer victimization usually results in the loss of privacy, good credit status, funds, or assets. Industry and government victimization usually results in the loss of profit, damage to reputation, loss of intellectual property, or loss of continuity of business.

Many corporations used to take the position that fraud was a cost of doing business. The cost of fraud was passed on to the customer via increased prices. In today's competitive market, that is not a feasible option. There needs to be worldwide agreement on the definitions regarding economic crime and computer crime. Investigating and prosecuting economic crimes must become a priority.

Privacy is also one of the trends discussed in Michael Erbschloe's "Forces of Change: Ten Trends That Will Impact the Internet Over the Next Five Years." The right to privacy and the protection of privacy are topics of worldwide debate. Developers are under pressure to create methods of identifying where users originate and how their privacy must be protected. There needs to be international cooperation in developing laws that deal with computer crime and the use of the Internet to support criminal activity, because the global nature of the Internet comes into conflict with local laws governing content and commerce. For their part, Internet companies have to determine which laws impact their business and develop technology to prevent violations. Internet companies also need to deal with the taxation of Internet commerce. Technologies that restrict how and when the Web is used are required by companies, schools, and even entire countries. It is also becoming much more difficult to survive in the crowded Web space, given new sources of competition and new business models. As consumers utilize applications on the platform that is most convenient for them, Web developers have to develop applications that can be deployed on all bandwidths. They also have to develop applications recognizing that the definition of usability changes as the range of users expands to include a wide range of computer skills, economic backgrounds, fluency in English, and physical handicaps.

Nijaz Bajgoric's article, "Internet Technologies for Improving Data Access," introduces us to a new acronym, "InT," which refers to a set of software that improves data communications and data access within enterprise systems. Each layer of the IT architecture (user interface, communications, application, hardware/ operating system) and its requirements for data access are discussed separately. Today's environment requires support for a variety of user computing devices (Palm Pilots, telephones, PCs, hand-held PCs, etc.), each with its own interface strengths and limitations. Web-based interfaces have provided a common interface to a variety of these devices. Web-to-host technology provides access to data stored on legacy hosts just as easily as data stored in a client/server environment. Organizations are now looking at enterprise portals as a means for providing access to all kinds of data -- internal and external.

Organizations are recognizing that they need a fast, reliable, and cost-effective backbone to support data access and communications. We are seeing enhanced capabilities with LAN and WAN structures, remote access, and wireless connections. Video streaming and videoconferencing are becoming commonplace as the prices for the equipment fall. At the application layer, we see Web-to-host connectivity tools, Web-enabled applications, middleware, integration tools, and Application Service Providers. Issues for today's hardware decisions focus on the RAS model (reliability, availability, and scalability). Advances in multiprocessing technologies such as SMP (Symmetric Multiprocessing), parallel processing, and clustering are providing near 100 percent availability. Today it's no longer a question of whether data access will be provided, but of how fast and how reliably.

Data access requires more than the backbone to obtain data, however; organizations also need to look at what is stored and how it is stored. Over the last decade, the use of data warehousing technology has become affordable, and some would argue necessary, for smaller companies. Advances in computer hardware and software have made data warehousing a cost-effective option for companies that wish to capture more data and make it accessible for decision making. In the article "Data Warehousing Stages of Growth," Hugh Watson, Thilini Ariyachandra, and Robert Matyska present the stages of a growth model for the use of a data warehouse within an organization. The initial version of the warehouse would be the "initiation" stage; the expansion of the warehouse is the "growth" stage; and the full integration into the company's operations is the "maturity" stage. The authors use nine variables to describe the different stages. We are reminded that implementing a data warehouse strategy is a journey, not a destination. There are iterations in each of these stages. The Web is beginning to impact which data is captured (click stream data for instance), and how it is analyzed. Closer integration of operational systems and data warehouses can offer huge benefits. However, the authors caution the reader to be aware of potential problems, concluding their article with a discussion of seven major pitfalls that should be understood and avoided as an organization moves along its data warehouse journey.

Wendy Marks and Mark Frolick provide us with one such journey in "Building Customer Data Warehouses for a Marketing and Service Environment: A Case Study." A home service company was acquiring companies (which then became internal brands), and these brands focused on building their own businesses. To meet the company's objective of one-stop shopping for home services, the company needed to leverage all these customer databases and consolidate them into one data warehouse.

The first hurdle was overcoming the silos of information residing on disparate database systems, running on different operating system platforms, and using inconsistent data definitions. Such a project requires a great deal of cooperation among the players. However, for most of the IT organizations involved, the data warehouse project had a very low priority, compared to the other projects the IT groups were assigned to work on. Enter the consultants, who lost credibility as work progressed. So the company decided to refocus its efforts on a smaller goal that all could agree on. By targeting a smaller, more defined goal and bringing in a new, highly visible champion, the second attempt at the data warehouse project is proving successful, with early indications suggesting high payoffs. Reacting to lessons learned, the company now has plans in place to build a corporate data warehouse, the original goal.

John Murray's article, "Adding Value to the Information Technology Function," reminds us that technology should be leveraged to support and add value to a business. Too often new technology is brought in to see what it might provide, or it is based on the interest of the IT staff. While it is imperative that IT be allowed to work with emerging technologies to determine if they have a place in the organization, such endeavors should be viewed as just that -- experiments that may or may not provide benefits. An IT organization also has two sets of customers: (1) internal customers, the members of the various business units served by the IT organization, and (2) external customers, those customers that actually use the goods and services of the business.

IT organizations must balance the needs of both groups of customers and still provide improvements in IT performance. They need to provide tactical as well as strategic value. Happily, opportunities for adding IT value are plentiful. An organization needs to put plans and processes in place to recognize and capitalize on those opportunities.

Joseph Sarkis and R.P. Sundarraj also introduce us to a new acronym, "EIT" (Enterprise Information Technologies), which is broader in scope than an ERP and includes technologies for advanced planning and decision support that are not provided at a high level by conventional ERP products. In their article, "A Decision Model for Strategic Evaluation of Enterprise Information Technologies," the authors present a methodology for evaluating an EIT investment based on its fit with the organization. Strategic investment in an EIT can be expensive and risky. An array of intangible factors must be dealt with, along with the tangible ones.

The methodology, analytical hierarchy process (AHP), has three major steps. An organization begins by identifying the strategic performance metrics -- operational performance -- as well as financial performance that are linked to the organizational strategy. These metrics are then translated into operational factors. Upper management evaluates strategic factors; operational management evaluates EIT operational factors and EIT alternatives. Managers are then asked to evaluate the relative importance of one factor when compared to another factor (a method called pairwise comparisons). This reduces the complexity of the evaluation: rather than be faced with a long list of factors to evaluate, management only considers two at a time. By analyzing the pairwise comparisons, an organization can calculate the relative ranking of all the EIT alternatives and determine the "best" alternative.

Jeff Butterfield and Norman Pendegraft offer an alternative for modeling IT investment decisions. In today's competitive marketplace, IT investment decisions are often made as a reaction to actions taken by competitors. In "Analyzing Information Systems Investments: A Game-Theoretic Approach," the authors introduce us to Game Theory and the Theory of Moves as theories that can be used to better understand investment decisions. To model an investment "game," one must identify the other players, their choices, and the potential payoffs. The decision maker is also a player. The other players might be a customer or customers, a competitor, or a supplier. For each option a player has, a payoff must be determined. It might be difficult to model an opponent's preferences, but the decision maker must predict the opponent's behavior and identify appropriate courses of action. This introspective aspect of the approach is valuable in its own right. The authors illustrate the use of the approach via a series of case studies: "Leading Edge," High-Definition TV, Amazon.com, and MP3.

We then turn to the practical side of IT. As the electric industry is becoming deregulated, its infrastructure has to change in order to support a competitive electricity marketplace. Douglas Howe and James Cuccaro feel that information technology can drive this new marketplace. In the old monopoly model, utilities, operating under a cost-recovery model, tried to minimize their IT investments. As a result, they have homegrown, legacy systems that were built for a vertically integrated utility. Now they need to organize along horizontal lines of business. For many utilities, it's cheaper and easier to throw away their old systems and buy new ones. In contrast, new entrants into the marketplace don't have old infrastructures to deal with and aren't working under a cost-recovery model. Instead, they are looking to create market share and develop competition.

The article "Electricity Deregulation: IT's New Bonanza" discusses three areas where IT can have the most impact in this new marketplace. Balancing and settlement systems determine which power supplier provides power to which customer and how much money each customer should pay to the supplier. If a supplier is not producing enough energy to meet demand, that demand will be met by some other supplier. However, the latter may not be getting fairly compensated for that production. In addition, customer services and marketing efforts change dramatically for the deregulated industry. Traditionally, customer service applications focused on billing. Today they must support the business emphasis of the utility -- retail marketing or distribution -- and they have to manage information about the customer who is connected to and utilizing the network. Automatic meter reading systems are beginning to be implemented in order to provide accurate and timely data.

As promised, there is a mix of review and thought-provoking articles. Let us know your reactions. Our next issue will be devoted to survival in the not-so-new E-business environment.

I would like to welcome a new Auerbach editor to the Information Systems Management journal, Janet Butler. Her 20 years of experience as a writer and an editor specializing in systems management and application development will serve the journal well. I look forward to working with her. Janet can be reached at jbutler@newmex.com.