IT demand will be up 17% over the next two years, while the IT budget will be you-know-what. This can't go on. It's time for some aggressive "demand management," which a new Hackett Group study calls a neglected strategy. Can you say "chargeback"?

Some say cloud computing will become ubiquitous. Others say it's hype. But it's not an all-or-nothing proposition. Here's a scorecard for figuring out "when to cloud" on an application-by-application, project-by-project basis.

Wow. The Hackett Group says the best IT shops will put 60% of their IT investment capital into improvement and innovation projects. Have you re-examined your IT investment portfolio recently?

A new book, "Why New Systems Fail," says there are mild failures, big failures, unmitigated disasters -- and "forthcoming failures" that will come back to haunt you in the future.

U.S. airlines are taking some fledgling steps towards (gasp!) more personalized customer service using CRM systems -- but they're hampered by silos of un-integrated data.

Preserve cash; keep the lights on; and position your company for growth by keeping the pipeline of innovative IT ideas flowing so you can implement them when the economy recovers. That's the prescription of Shvetank Shah, executive director of the IT practice at the Corporate Executive Board.

A study by Careercast.com identifies the best and worst jobs, based on salary and outlook, as well as factors such as working conditions, physical demands and stress. Software engineer and computer systems analyst ranked among the top 10 best jobs.

Once considered "the fertile crescent of Internet innovation," the U.S. is trailing the world in broadband, according to Strategy Analytics. We're nowhere close to President Bush's goal of universal and affordable access by, um, 2007.

Need help sorting through the hype of cloud computing? Here's some IDC research on the benefits, barriers -- and what customers really want.

Shvetank Shah, executive director of the IT practice at the Corporate Executive Board, describes how CIOs are coping with the economic downturn. He says they're "scrambling to figure out where the next generation of cost-cutting will come from" when the CFO asks for another 15% cut. The hard part will be protecting the innovation budget.

Analyst Phil Ferscht wonders whether some supposedly unbiased advisory firms have sweetheart deals with favored outsourcing vendors to get client referrals.

Analysts at Datamonitor say IT budgets are headed south in 2009 -- except in the health care industry (thanks to aging baby boomers).

HP and EDS rank highly in this study by consultancy Brown-Wilson Group. Of course, since the survey was done they've merged -- and now plan an amazingly large number of layoffs. Next year we'll find out whether that was bad news for client satisfaction.

Check out this list of the top 7 outsourcing vendors -- ranked by client satisfaction.

Accenture chief scientist Kishore Swaminathan envisions a new role for CIOs as chief intelligence officers. This new breed of IT executive will develop and oversee how companies collect, store, combine, share, analyze and capitalize on their most valuable corporate asset -- huge volumes of data.

Business process outsourcing, or BPO, is hot, hot, hot, because it saves big bucks in Bangalore. But innovation isn't part of the deal.