SOA Consortium Insights

David Linthicum’s Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise: A Step-by-Step Guide

Since our founding, the SOA Consortium has been exploring the relationship between SOA and other “hot” business and technology topics.  Over the last 2.5 years, we have looked into SOA & BPM, SOA & Event Processing, SOA & BPM & Green, and most recently, SOA & Cloud Computing. 

To begin our SOA and Cloud Computing exploration, we invited David Linthicum, SOA expert, blogger and founder of Blue Mountain Labs, to speak at our March meeting.  The distinctions and connections, according to Dave, are simple. SOA is something you do, an architectural pattern. Cloud computing is an architectural option.

Ever practical, Dave emphasized that cloud computing provides a way to leverage ‘other people’s work’ in your SOA.  This shortens the start-up time of SOA, which creates business value quicker.  The trick is to determine which services, information, and processes are good candidates to reside in, come from, the clouds.  And the place to start, is your architecture.  Understand your business drivers, information under management, existing services under management and core business processes.

In addition to understanding your issues, understand the early state of cloud computing, the portability and interoperability issues, and beware of the hidden costs, such as integration.

When we first published the podcast of Dave’s talk, I mentioned Dave had a SOA & Cloud Computing book coming out this summer, well that book, Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise: A Step-by-Step Guide, is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

If you are a SOA practitioner considering Cloud Computing, or a Cloud Computing practitioner considering SOA, check out Dave’s latest book.  He’s a welcome voice of reason in a sea of hype.

If you haven’t already, listen to the audio recording of Dave’s talk from our March meeting.

Are you a SOA Zombie? Celebrate the Night of Living SOA Dead, July 23 in Boston

Despite the continued reports of SOA’s death, do you find yourself with SOA based solutions in production, delivering business value?  Or, on the way to production?  Both?  Well, according to our friends at ZapThink, that makes you a member of the fast-growing SOA Zombie tribe.  What to do about it?  Connect with fellow zombies and celebrate the “Night of the Living SOA Dead”, at ZapThink’s Boston ZapForum.

“On July 23, 2009 dozens of experts, pundits, and influential guests will gather in Boston, MA for an evening of networking and discussion on the topics of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Enterprise Architecture (EA). Open to public enrollment and attendance, the topic of discussion for the panel will be the recent news and discussion about the "Death of SOA." Is SOA really dead? Is it dying? Or is it changing? And what about those that are currently doing something with SOA or even just interested in the topic? Are we the "living dead"?

As a way of encouraging dialogue, networking, and communication within the SOA and EA, ZapThink is hosts its evening ZapForum networking events throughout the world. At this upcoming event on July 23, 2009 in Boston, MA, guest experts expecting to attend include Anne Thomas Manes (Burton Group), Dana Gardner (Interarbor Solutions), Jason Bloomberg (ZapThink), Brenda Michelson (Elemental Links), Sandy Rogers, and Ronald Schmelzer (ZapThink).”

The gathering is Thursday, July 23, 2009, 5:30PM-8PM ET @ M.J. O'Connor's Irish Pub, 27 Columbus Avenue, Boston, MA 02116.  For more information and to register, go here.  When you are finished registering, come back and listen to the podcast of Ron Schmelzer’s recent SOA Consortium meeting talk on Growing your EA Skills and the Long Tail.  Also, consider sharing your success story in our case study contest.

New Podcast: Ronald Schmelzer of ZapThink on Growing your EA Skills and the Long Tail

Ronald Schmelzer, Managing Partner at ZapThink gave a lively talk on SOA Futures: Growing your EA Skills and the Long Tail, at the March 2009 meeting of the SOA Consortium in Washington DC. 

Schmelzer began by commenting on the inflexible, unreliable, unpredictable and non-compliant nature of enterprise systems.  Next, he spoke of the real digital divide – the technology experiences we have as consumers versus at work.  This divide is the equivalent of turning the clock back 10 years.

In diagnosing the problem, Schmelzer ruled out bad technologists, bad technology and inadequate investment.  In fact, enterprises are quite good at design and development.  The problem is not the artistry, but the engineering.  We lack the discipline to build durable systems that can meet new business needs for 10 years.

Equally troubling is that current IT practices – large buy and build projects – only satisfy a small portion of business opportunities.  Schmelzer describes this as the long tail of un-served business needs.  The keys lie in architecture, service-orientation and optimizing this equation: identifying the smallest number of services that enable the largest number of processes in the organization.

To hear Schmelzer’s advice on applying service-orientation to engineer durable solutions and view the slides go here. 

This is the seventh of eight podcasts recorded at our March meeting.  Previously, we released Sandy Carter’s Smart SOA in Tough Economic Climate, Dave Linthicum on Intersections of SOA and Cloud Computing, How SOA participates in a Green World Roundtable, Cory Casanave on Enterprise SOA modeling with SoaML, JP Morgenthal on Disassembling the SOA & BPM relationship and Todd Landry on Service Oriented Communications.  Next up, Mark Herring of Sun Microsystems on SOA is Dead?!?! Then, What are these Companies doing?

New Podcast: NEC Sphere’s Todd Landry on Service Oriented Communications

Todd Landry, SVP, NEC Sphere, spoke on taking a service-oriented approach to communications, at the March 2009 meeting of the SOA Consortium in Washington DC. 

Setting context for his talk, Landry spoke of the evolution in business communications, how private branch exchange (PBX) services have migrated from proprietary hardware switches, to IP based systems, to software based systems, in which voice is no longer the system, but just one of many business communication features.  Instead of locked in a closet, communication services are now available to business applications via an open standards based enterprise communications service cloud.

Landry pointed out that the most unpredictable, and highest latency, aspect of business processes and decision-making is human interaction.  By incorporating smart communications technology and collaboration mechanisms within business workflow, this latency is significantly reduced.  During his talk, Landry shared scenarios that occur across industries, including call center order monitoring and correlation, high volume hiring, and customer and supplier communications ‘integration at the glass’. 

Landry concluded his presentation with a demonstration of a first responder scenario that allowed responders across agencies to communicate both audibly and visually, incorporating individuals, incidents, state and geo-spatial elements.

To listen to an audio recording of Landry’s presentation and view the slides go here.

This is the sixth of several podcasts recorded at our March meeting.  Previously, we released Sandy Carter’s Smart SOA in Tough Economic Climate, Dave Linthicum on Intersections of SOA and Cloud Computing, How SOA participates in a Green World Roundtable, Cory Casanave on Enterprise SOA modeling with SoaML, and JP Morgenthal on Disassembling the SOA & BPM relationship.  Next up, Ronald Schmelzer of ZapThink on SOA Futures: Growing your EA Skills and the Long Tail.

New Podcast: JP Morgenthal disassembles the SOA & BPM relationship

JP Morgenthal, EA, SOA, BPM & Cloud Computing Strategist, gave a provocative talk on Disassembling the SOA & BPM Relationship at the March 2009 meeting of the SOA Consortium in Washington DC. 

JP opened with his contention that SOA and BPM are not the hand-in-hand partners that the technology press and vendors would like everyone to believe.  More so, SOA is not a prerequisite for BPM success.  In backing these assertions, JP described BPM as a practice that encompasses modeling, testing, implementing and measuring business processes, with supporting methodology to gather requirements, document processes, define KPIs, capture metrics, analyze results and optimize outcomes.

This view of BPM as a business discipline comes straight from the business practitioners whom JP interacts with on a regular basis.  The confusion on the SOA-BPM relationship comes from IT professionals, who solely focus on the execution engine (BPMS) of any BPM initiative.  As JP pointed out, many successful BPM initiatives have no underlying technology implementation. 

JP’s perspective provided for a lively discussion with meeting attendees.  The prevailing counter case was that SOA also has a business design element, that many businesses are organized as business services, with supporting process implementations.  A supporting point was that business personnel are more likely to think in terms of services than processes. 

To hear all of JP’s points and the attendee counter points, please go here.

This is the sixth fifth of several podcasts recorded at our March meeting.  Previously, we released Sandy Carter’s Smart SOA in Tough Economic Climate, Dave Linthicum on Intersections of SOA and Cloud Computing, How SOA participates in a Green World Roundtable, and Casanave on Enterprise SOA modeling with SoaML.  Next up, Todd Landry of NEC Sphere on Service-oriented Communications.

New Podcast & Slide Deck: Cory Casanave Introduces SoaML

Cory Casanave, CEO, Model Driven Solutions & ModelDriven.org, presented an overview of Enterprise SOA Modeling with the new OMG SoaML UML profile,  at the March 2009 meeting of the SOA Consortium in Washington DC. 

The SoaML (Service oriented architecture Modeling Language) specification describes a UML profile and metamodel for the design of services within a service-oriented architecture.  SoaML can be used for architecture level modeling, or as part of a model driven architecture (MDA) process, starting with a business model and transitioning through logical and physical models, resulting in technology implementation.

Casanave began by setting context, describing the rationale and objectives of SoaML,  how SoaML views a service (agreement between parties to exchange something),  the  top-down (business-driven) and bottoms-up (legacy-aware) usage paths, and the mapping of those paths to model driven architecture (MDA).

To bring the specification to life, Casanave walked through the artifacts related to a claims processing scenario, including the services architecture model (see below), business process model, service contract, participant interaction model, message types, service interface, service usage, participant model, composite application structure and information model. 

[Click on Picture to Enlarge]

Included in the example was the iteration of model detail as the process moved from business concept to logical model to systems model.  In a follow-on demonstration, Casanave highlighted the transition from physical model to technology implementation using ModelPro, a new open source tool.

To listen to an audio recording of the presentation portion of Casanave’s session and/or view the rest of the slides go here.  To view the SoaML specification, please go here.

New Podcast: How SOA Participates in a Green World, Roundtable Discussion

Continuing our practice of exploring SOA’s relationship with hot technology and business topics, at our March meeting, we hosted a roundtable discussion on How SOA Participates in a Green World.  

The roundtable began with the industry experts, Sandy Carter of IBM, David Linthicum of Blue Mountain Labs and Richard Soley of the SOA Consortium sharing their thoughts on how SOA contributes to the greening of business and IT, how BPM augments SOA’s green factor, and the priority of sustainability initiatives in the current economic climate. 

In their remarks, each roundtable leader spoke of economic benefits gained by companies and cities that reduce energy and water consumption and lower carbon emissions.  Beyond greening data centers and application portfolios via service-oriented techniques, organizations are using business process management techniques – modeling, instrumentation and dashboards – powered by SOA underpinnings, to optimize supply chains for both direct cost and sustainability.  An interesting metric shared by Sandy Carter is that for every dollar you save through carbon management, you save $6 of operational cost.

After the opening insights, the roundtable leaders engaged in discussion with each other and meeting attendees on a variety of topics including the greenness of cloud computing and virtualization, the transition of traditional hardware products to software, carbon management mandates, the power of individual green advocates and the need for common, standardized key green indicators, or KGIs.

To hear all of the insights from the Hot Topics Roundtable discussion go here.

This is the third of several podcasts recorded at our March meeting.  Previously, we released Sandy Carter’s Smart SOA in Tough Economic Climate and Dave Linthicum’s podcast on Intersections of SOA and Cloud Computing.  Next up, Cory Casanave on Enterprise SOA modeling with SoaML.

SOA Consortium | CIO Magazine Case Study Contest – 2009 Edition Opens Today

Do you have a SOA Success Story?  Can you tie your SOA initiative to quantifiable business value and/or IT efficiency?  Have you learned lessons that others should know?  Did you find a way to persevere despite a tough economic climate and industry noise on SOA’s health?  Would you like an opportunity to share your story?  Garner industry-wide praise for your well-deserving team?  Then, look no further…

The SOA Consortium and CIO Magazine are proud to announce the 2009 edition of our Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Case Study Competition. The competition is open to organizations of all sizes, including government agencies, which have successfully delivered business or mission value using a SOA approach.

Similar to the inaugural contest in 2008, the goal of the SOA Case Study Competition is to highlight business success stories and lessons learned to provide proof points and insights for other organizations considering or pursuing SOA adoption. To qualify for the competition, the SOA project must be complete with demonstrated business results.

Entries will be judged on the complexity of the business problem addressed, the ROI/Business Value achieved (Agility/Innovation/Flexibility/Optimization/Resilience), the level and sophistication of the cross-organizational collaboration (Business/Technical), the usage of SOA approaches and supporting technology and lessons learned. In addition to one overall winner, organizations will be recognized by industry/government.

To learn more about the contest and start your application, please visit the case study contest center on the SOA Consortium Site.

To read about last year’s winners go here.  And, for insights into the 2008 judging criteria, go here. 

To help us spread the word on real-world SOA success, please tell your colleagues and SOA community friends about our contest with CIO Magazine.

Fine print: Entries are open now through June 26, 2009.  Only entries from team members are valid.  [Translation: We will screen out vendor submitted marketing case studies.]

SOA Consortium @ IBM Impact: Does Your SOA Deserve a Pink Slip or a Raise?

SOA Consortium members are participating in a panel discussion, moderated by Richard Soley, at IBM Impact next week.  The Wednesday morning session  (#1279, 10:30am local time) is “Does Your SOA Deserve a Pink Slip or a Raise?”

The session abstract:

“How is your organization reacting to the economic downturn? Has the plug been pulled on ‘strategic’ initiatives to myopically focus on keeping the lights on? In rare cases, this is your only option, but for most organizations, short-term myopia leads to bigger troubles down the road. The trick is to fund strategies that allow your organization to survive the current economy and come out stronger in the recovery. Based on first-hand experience, SOA Consortium members argue strongly that taking a business-driven approach to SOA provides a means for both current-term business resilience and future-term business growth. In this session, leading members of the SOA Consortium will share anecdotes, practices, lessons and perspectives on employing a business-driven SOA approach to deliver business value in the short-term while building for the future.”

Panelists:

• Burt Covnot, Bank of America
• Melvin Greer, Lockheed Martin Corp
• Mark Krzysko, US Department of Defense/AT&L
• Darren Wesemann, SunGard

As you might recall, US Department of Defense/AT&L and SunGard were winners in our inaugural (hint) case study contest.  And of course, Mel and Burt are well-known to the SOA community for sharing their experienced-based insights.

In addition to the panel portion of the session, Richard has some news to share.  If you are attending Impact, please add our session (#1279) to your schedule.

New Podcast: Sandy Carter on Smart SOA in Tough Economic Climate

Sandy Carter, IBM VP, SOA, BPM and WebSphere, spoke on the importance of taking a Smart SOA^(tm) approach in a Tough Economic Climate, at the March 2009 meeting of the SOA Consortium in Washington DC.

Carter began by sharing that customers are asking about, and employing, service-orientation and business process management not only to survive the economic crisis, but also to thrive and become more successful when the economic crisis ends.  To this point, CEOs are equally concerned with cost optimization and agility.  Carter was careful to distinguish cost optimization – re-using services, optimizing processes – from non-sustainable cost cutting.

In addition to the economic climate, Carter spoke of marketplace changes based on technology location and proliferation. There are one billion transistors for each person on earth. One trillion things connected to the Internet. And, by 2010, there will be 30 billion RFID tags embedded into our world. This pervasive connectivity and instrumentation provides innumerable opportunities to smarten our companies, countries and environment.

Interestingly, in each of the Smarter Planet examples Carter cited, such as StatOil’s RFID tagging of blue mussels to quickly identify and stop leaks during oil drilling, the solutions all had SOA at the core. When an attendee called out this theme, Carter shared that SOA has become control point of competitive advantage for companies. If you haven’t deployed yet, now is the time.  If you have, now is the time to take your SOA to the next level.

To listen to an audio recording of Carter’s presentation and view the slides go here.

Following her presentation, Carter signed copies of her latest book,  The New Language of Marketing 2.0, How to use ANGELS to Energize your Market.

Sandy’s is the second of several podcasts recorded at our March meeting.  Previously, we released Dave Linthicum’s podcast on Intersections of SOA and Cloud Computing.  Next up, a roundtable discussion on How SOA Participates in a Green World.