Project Catalyst

Project Catalyst was announced by IBM boss Sam Palmisano in a speech to the IBM Business Leadership Forum in San Francisco, November 12, 2003. He made the following key points.

Provides a method for identifying the key components of a business.

Provides a three-dimensional view - strategic, financial, transformational.

Provides a way to highlight those areas of the business that are differentiating.

Other components that are not differentiating can be evaluated on a cost basis.

The point of the exercise is to show where to start an on-demand transformation.

At Veryard Projects, in collaboration with the CBDi Forum and others, we have been championing the component-based business for many years. We naturally welcome the high profile that IBM is now giving this important topic.

Update March 2005

I was misled by Sam's speech. I have now been briefed about IBM's Component Business Modeling approach, and I now understand that this was an entirely separate initiative and not part of Project Catalysis. See new blog postings on Component-Based Business, Component Business Modeling.