First, I acknowledge and thank my wife, Kavita, who seeded an idea of writing a book and kept energizing me with this noble thought. She was my buddy who always listened to my thoughts and gave me her honest and critical feedback on all aspects of this book. I thank my professor and co-author, Dr. Rod Heisterberg, who nurtured my ideas and moderated my plans in the most articulate and structured manner and finally wrote this book together.

I have to thank M. R. Rangaswami, founder of Sandhill group, who agreed to write the Foreword for this book. He brings enormous values to the book with his solid experience in the field of emerging technologies and its relevance to the business. I thank Jnan dash who has been advisors to many organizations such as Sonata Software, Solix Technologies, and now MongoDB, after spending long career with IBM and Oracle as senior executive. I appreciate his insights in the book that would be very relevant. I appreciate and thank Jeetu Patel, CTO and General Manger of EMC and now Syncplicity (subsidiary of EMC), for his thoughts and insights that surely enhances the value of this book. I appreciate Ramasubramanian Vaidyanathaswamy, Senior Practice Director, Business Intelligence and Analytics at Wipro, for his invaluable contribution on Big Data processing and analytics. I thank my old-time friend Kalpesh Desai, who worked as COO at 3i Infotech and successfully founded crossroad, which got acquired by 3i Infotech, and now he established yet another successful venture, Agile Financial Technologies. His insights in the book truly reflect real-life illustrations and experiences. It will not be fair if I do not thank my friends Amit Srivastava, Solution Delivery Manger at NEC, and Devesh Srivastava, Android Architect at TCS, who contributed with their real-life industry experiences. I also thank and admire my friend Pankaj Jha, Architect at Brocade, who has many patents that were awarded with gold medals. We are privileged to have his insights in the book, which will surely add great values. I must thank Avanish Sahai, who is an industry veteran as VP of Salesforce.com for his immaculate thinking toward technology-led industry transformation. I have to also thank my business partners at Oracle, namely, Shashi Upadhyay, Founder and CEO of Lattice Engine, and Harbinder Khera, Founder and CEO of Mind Matrix, who have shared their relevant insights in the book.

I thank my ex-colleague and friend Markus Zirn, VP at Splunk, for his thoughts and insights. Last but not least I have to thank my colleagues at Oracle, who supported me directly by contributing their insights, namely, Javier Cabrerizo, VP, Big Data, Business Development; Christopher Sowa, VP, industry strategy and Insights; and Naeem Zafar, VP Mobility solutions. Their insights would definitely augment the theme and value of the book.

Also, I acknowledge and thank all faculty and staff at Notre Dame de Namur University, who directly and indirectly helped me to accomplish this milestone and I gratefully thank them for their support.

—Alakh Verma

San Jose, California

It takes a global village to write a twenty-first-century business technology book—and Creating Business Agility is no exception.

It all starts with the love of a good woman, my wife, Claire, that keeps me going. Then it builds on a foundation of intellectual curiosity from my father and mother and there is also the strong work ethic from both the Heisterberg and Karnosky clans. I especially want to recognize Denis Karnosky, who was my role model growing up and I find myself still growing with his inspiration. And of all my friends, the guy I go to for encouragement and advice due to his business savvy is my buddy for over fifty years, Dave Kossuth.

Colleagues with whom I have collaborated to develop, test, refine my ideas expressed in this book start with my mentors. First there was Dr. Ruddell Reed, the world-renowned Professor of Industrial Engineering, who served as the chair of my graduate committee for interdisciplinary programs at Purdue University. Next, Robert S. Kidwell, an information management pioneer, taught me how to have my head in the Cloud before the Cloud was cool. Then came Tom Hoobyar, an entrepreneur who challenged me to start sharing my ideas by writing for a business management audience. And most recently Dean Lane, who was my boss at Gartner, where I learned the principles and practices of information technology management consulting. He is also a contributor providing his CIO insights.

Correspondingly, in order to reinforce our strategic theme of CMO-CIO alignment, CMO insights are contributed by my longtime friend Ross Halleck, who is highly regarded in the world of digital marketing and is also founder of Halleck Vineyard, making the best Pinot Noir in Sonoma County and maybe the world. My new friends are also seasoned tech-savvy marketers, Blake Yeaman shows why he is regarded as a top marketing technology management consultant, and Ryan Bifulco, founder of Sensei Project, with his team of Sherry Heyl, Christopher Curley, and Lucie Hys demonstrate their expertise as a leader in social media marketing for travel and lifestyle brands.

Digital Business insights are contributed by Jon Stevenson, CEO of Mobotory, to provide an illustrative example of how mobility drives agility for competitive advantage in the global event management marketplace. The book features the “Selling Sonoma County Wine Country” story contributed by Ken Fischang, CEO of SCT, and his marketing team, led by CMO Tim Zahner and Jill Vanden Heuvel with Ariane Hiltebrand and Beth Snow, and was coordinated by Nicole Bradin. This case study provides insights as to how a digital business can make the Business Agility Readiness Roadmap work at the virtual enterprise level for the Sneakaway scenario within the SCT business ecosystem. Ryan George, CEO of Simpleview, contributes SCT Ecosystem Hub story elements that demonstrate best practices for how to build a Social CRM Partner Extranet for the Sneakaway campaign as an integrated system of customer engagement that delivers a sustainable competitive advantage. Business Ecosystem insights are contributed by Brad Snyder, General Manager, Kauai Marriott Resort and Beach Club, and coordinated by Sherri Holcomb, who highlight how they built their business ecosystem strategy based on a customer-centric business model.

I want to acknowledge all of the wonderful faculty and staff at Notre Dame de Namur University and particularly in the School of Business and Management that have made my teaching and research so enjoyable. It is important to note the generous intellectual support and encouragement that I have received from Dr. Barbara Caulley, former Dean, and Dr. Craig Brewer, current Dean, over the past several years while researching and writing this book. I especially recognize my colleague working in the Master of Science in Systems Management (MSSM) program: Dr. James Fogal is a brilliant professor who is also an outstanding teacher. I learn new things from him all the time. Also I would be remiss not to give a big thanks to Michele Yoskovich and Anne Gillan, our graduate student advisors, for the assistance they have provided in putting this book together.

I have been fortunate to have taught many wonderful students in the Master of Business Administration and MSSM programs, and I delight in learning something new from them. Several of my students have truly been exceptional. Jon Stevenson was one of the first students to receive a Master of e-Business Management and turned his thesis into a business plan to launch his start-up with venture capital funding. Of course by now you are familiar with Alakh Verma, a MSSM graduate. I am proud to count him as a colleague, as well as co-author. The third remarkable student is Delbar Yousefi, who demonstrated such an incredible thirst for knowledge that her lifelong learning initiatives have become the target of our digital publishing project—to develop a Cloud-based product for a Creating Business Agility personal learning environment.

There are two other colleagues who deserve recognition for their contributions to the ideas in this book. Jamshid Lal was a consultant whom I mentored during my time at Gartner and I learned much from him concerning the use of the Balanced Scorecard of business case analysis of IT strategies. Likewise, Eric Lacy was instrumental in helping me develop the Business Agility Readiness Roadmap gap analysis models.

Finally, I want to acknowledge our John Wiley & Sons team for their patience and support in the publication of this book. We gratefully thank Jesse Wiley as our Executive Sponsor for green lighting this book project, and Sheck Cho, our Executive Editor, who deftly guided us along the path for this arduous yet exciting journey. We greatly appreciate the diligent and thoughtful collaboration with Jennifer MacDonald and Helen Cho as developmental editors and Chris Gage as our production editor. And now we are looking forward to working with Andrew Wheeler as Marketing Manager for Professional Development to spread the word about Creating Business Agility—Full Speed Ahead!!!

—Rodney Heisterberg

Mountain View, California