Application service providers (ASPs) make it easier to acquire systems that directly produce business intelligence (such as e-commerce portals) as well as those that contain latent BI (such as ERP systems). But comparison shopping for hosted apps is difficult because the value propositions of various ASP models are far from standard.

Thanks to "Internet time," many seemingly important applications go into production without adequate load and stress testing. But it's particularly important that business-to business e-commerce and supply-chain integration systems go through analytically rigorous modeling and testing because the consequences of failure can spread across multiple organizations.

Connecting customers with Internet-enabled customer relationship management (CRM) systems is the post-Y2K holy grail, but in many information environments, such systems are not integrated with ERP applications. Enterprise application integration (EAI) is the emerging remedy of choice, but what are the strategic alternatives?.