Archive for: October, 2009
October 30th, 2009
Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 8:56 pm
Categories: Management
Tags: Fame, Information Technology, Strategy, Management, Joe McKendrick
Oliver Widder of Geek & Poke fame picked up on my recent Lean IT post and illustrates where the “leanness” comes into the picture.
October 29th, 2009
Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 6:59 pm
Categories: Management, cloud computing
Tags: Silo, Enterprise, Enabling Architecture, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Enterprise Software, Web Services, Software, Joe McKendrick
I just had the opportunity to moderate a panel with Miko Matsumura and John Favazza, in a rousing ebizQ roundtable discussion on trends on SOA governance. Miko pointed to the complexity of enterprises, noting the challenges of bringing the hopelessly fragmented parties within larger organizations into alignment. This is one of the objectives of good governance.
Miko points out that size matters when it comes to clouds as well. Especially when it comes to enterprise software. (Miko reminds us that the word “Enterprise” in the phrase “Enterprise Software” has come to mean “software that sucks.”)
Cloud gets particularly challenging when the organization grows, and is has fragmented into factions, silos, and niches. Adding cloud means more complexity, “yet another technology silo to maintain, integrate, secure and govern,” he says. A systematic enabling architecture is required to introduce cloud across the multiple parts of an enterprise.
One of the issues with many SOA efforts to date is that many people threw Web services out across their domains, hoping they will eventually gel into service oriented architecture. When you have different divisions or departments subscribing to their own choices of cloud services, the complexity grows.
October 29th, 2009
Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 7:15 am
Categories: Links, Standards Watch, Web Services
Tags: IPv4, IPv6, IP, Internet, Networking, Telecommunications, Joe McKendrick
The impending changeover from IP version 4 to IP version 6 won’t really be a big deal, and most people won’t even notice it as it happens. But the Internet will be running on both protocols for a while, and the head of the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) cautions that some online applications may run slow as a result. Online content providers need to start preparing as well.
In a recent interview, John Curran, president and CEO of ARIN, explained why businesses need to sit up and take notice of the impending shift that is taking place as we move from Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) to the more expansive IP version 6.
What’s happening is the original Internet numbering system — which assigns addresses such as 192.168.1.1 — is running out of numbers. IPv4 is a 32-bit system with four billion possible combinations. “That sounds like a lot of numbers, but it really isn’t when you think about the size of the globe and the number of devices being connected these days,” Curran says. In fact, we’re due to run out of numbers within 700 days, he warns. IPv6, with 128-bit addressing space, enables “numbering of all of the molecules in the galaxy,” he says.
As soon as the last IPv4 number is used up, every new device or site that comes along after that uses IPv6. Don’t loose too much sleep over your systems, however. Industry planners have been aware of this matter since the 1990s. Most hardware and software has been ready for IPv6 for some time.
However, Curran advises businesses to check their configurations before the changeover takes place, as glitches may come up. “We can’t actually get an IPv6 host and an IPv4 server to talk to each other, because the IPv4 server only knows 32 bits. It’s much like if your telephone was set up to only ever dial seven digits, and it wouldn’t let you dial 10. Sure you could almost have a conversation, but you couldn’t call most of the world.”
When the changeover occurs, “ISPs are going to have to start using IPv6 to connect customers,” he explains. “Then, they’re going to have to put IPv6 gateways in, boxes that work like network address boxes, to translate IPv6-connected customers to the IPv4 websites on the Internet. That will work, but that’s going to be suboptimal, because those are gateways doing the translation.” This may slow down online applications such as Skype, Voice over IP, real-time video games, which “won’t necessarily run smoothly going through those translators.”
Curran points out that the Internet will be running on two protocols for some time. “If you really want to start a business that’s Internet based, you’re going to want to take your equipment, and make it connected by both IPv4 and IPv6.”
Some businesses have more of a challenge ahead of them than others, Curran continues. While the major ISPs have been underway with IPv6, “the content providers are just beginning to work on this,” Curran says. “And that’s going to take a lot of work, and they need to enable a lot of software that we think of as the Web 2.0 software infrastructure. While all the parts may run IPv6, that doesn’t mean your infrastructure is ready.”
Consider the two years remaining to address IPv6 configuration issues as an opportunity to get a jump on the competition, says Curran. “I would recommend that people start thinking about the fact that the IPv4 Internet has a fixed size, and the global Internet is going to keep growing. What this means that you don’t want to be left behind on the fixed-size network. You don’t want to be left behind on a fixed-sized network in an Internet ‘backwater.”
By the way, the interviewer, Howard Greenstein, said it’s important to get this cautionary message out on ZDNet and other popular channels — so there you go, Howard!
October 26th, 2009
Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 1:00 pm
Categories: Data managemetnt, Management, SOA Events, Vendor Watch
Tags: Data Integration, Enterprise Application, Dave Linthicum, EAI, Middleware, Enterprise Service Bus, Enterprise Software, Software, Joe McKendrick
There’s a large gaping hole in the capabilities enterprise application integration (EAI) – and its successor, enterprise service buses – can deliver. Current middleware strategies fall short in addressing data integration and data quality issues – and this is costing organizations.
These are points raised by Dave Linthicum and Ash Parikh in a recent Webinar, I had the opportunity to moderate, posted over at the ebizQ site. Dave, who literally wrote the book on “Enterprise Application Integration” back in the 1990s, says EAI and ESB approaches are not suited for today’s high-transaction data integration needs, and have great limitations. But still, many organizations persist in attempting to plug in these types of solutions into vexing business problems that require a more holistic architectural approach. “There are a lot of people trying to put square pegs into round holes,” he says.
Dave says that while the square-peg-in-a-round-hole approach will work for a while, it’s far more costly in the long run. “With EAI and ESB technology, there are certain instances and problem domains where they’re a fit,” he explains. “But you need to understand there are certain limitations that are part of that technology that should be considered. Ultimately, if you don’t consider them and pick those technology approaches anyway, you’re going to start running into walls that are very difficult to back up and get around as you move the architecture forward.”
I posted a summary of points raised in the Webinar here at the Perspectives site.
October 26th, 2009
Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 10:17 am
Categories: Enterprise Architecture, SOA Events, Standards Watch
Tags: SOA, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web Services, Middleware, Enterprise Software, Software, Joe McKendrick
Service oriented architecture is not a thing that you do, and it definitely isn’t a thing that you buy. But it is something tangible, a style if you will, just as Roman, Greek or Modern are styles of architecture.
Why the fussing about semantics? This was a key point discussed over and over again by members of the SOA Manifesto Working Group, and an issue that is endlessly creating confusion in the market. In fact, it’s a semantic slip that even members of the group had to work at to keep in check.
There have been some comments raised about the Manifesto’s preamble, which said the following:
“Service orientation is a paradigm that frames what you do. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a type of architecture that results from applying service orientation.”
Yes this opening statement may seem like a statement of the blindingly obvious, like “the sky is blue” or “the ocean is wet” or “Hollywood makes crappy movies” or something like that. But there was a lot of discussion around this statement, and the intent was to dispel the notion that SOA is this thing that you do or can buy. In fact, vendors and consultants have been abusing these semantics and milking millions from customers with this notion for years.
That makes as much sense as the Romans going out and buying their architecture. It was important to put this notion to rest (definitely no pun intended) once and for all, and it was felt by the group that this was such an important statement that it was elevated from originally being a principle to the preamble to the entire document. And “applying service orientation” is the action that goes into building an SOA-enabled infrastructure.
October 26th, 2009
Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 3:00 am
Categories: Business ROI, Management, SOA Surveys and Research, Web 2.0-Enterprise 2.0, cloud computing
Tags: Avanade, Survey, Cloud Computing, Virtualization, Hardware, Joe McKendrick
Everyone figures that companies are buying into cloud to save money. A new survey says otherwise. But why are companies adopting cloud?
A new study (PDF link) commissioned by Avanade shows a 320% increase over the past nine months in respondents reporting that they are testing or planning to implement cloud computing. Avanade claims this is the first time a survey has documented a global embrace of cloud computing in the enterprise.
The study also found that while companies are moving toward cloud computing, there is little support for cloud-only models (just five percent of respondents utilize only cloud computing). Rather, most companies are using a combination of cloud and internally owned systems, or hybrid approach.
Okay, the survey confirms what we’ve been seeing anecdotally. That is, there’s been a huge uptick in cloud interest. And apparently, this has been taking place during an economic downturn. But here’s where it gets interesting: Only 13% said the onset of a tougher economy helped push them toward the cloud. A majority, 58%, say economic conditions had nothing to do with it.
While Avanade didn’t seem to read anything into this, another observer, Paul Miller, thought this finding was a real eye-opener, suggesting that contrary to what everyone assumes, cloud computing decisions are not being driven by cost-cutting needs:
“Also interesting was the relatively small impact of the economic situation upon Cloud adoption, with only 13% suggesting it had ‘helped’ adoption plans and 58% reporting ‘no effect.’ In my conversations with Nick Carr and others, there’s been an underlying presumption (on my part, as well as theirs) that cost-saving arguments with respect to Cloud Computing would prove persuasive and compelling. It would appear not. This would suggest, of course, that enterprise adopters are taking to the Cloud for reasons other than the budget sheet…”
If it isn’t its low entry costs, then why is cloud computing so popular? Avanade says half of the companies surveyed that have migrated to cloud computing technologies use it to “manage and deliver business applications such as customer relationship management (CRM) and human resources (HR) services.” Forty‐six percent of respondents are also using cloud computing for data storage.
Speaking of greater flexibility and agility, the Avanade survey suggests that the service model is taking over as the prevailing IT value proposition. As Avanade puts it, the “online services model is beginning to fundamentally change how IT services are consumed and provisioned in large organizations. More than half of respondents report that they are currently using Software as a Service applications. In the United States, that number increases to more than two-thirds (68 percent).”
And many of these deployments are internal cloud. Avanade says that globally, “there is a 2:1 ratio of respondents who prefer SaaS delivered internally (or as private services) versus from third-party service providers. There is an even greater dissparity in the United States, with a 4:1 ratio in favor of internal SaaS deployments.”
October 23rd, 2009
Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 4:32 pm
Categories: Business ROI, Enterprise Architecture, Links, Management, SOA Events, Standards Watch
Tags: SOA, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web Services, Middleware, Enterprise Software, Software, Joe McKendrick
As mentioned earlier, I had the opportunity to join a group of highly motivated and very smart people at the SOA Symposium in Rotterdam to formulate what is being called the SOA Manifesto. Here is the final version of the document, spelling out the core values and related principles that should be part of service orientation and SOA. Hopefully, they will help guide your thinking on the SOA journey:
SOA Manifesto
Service orientation is a paradigm that frames what you do. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a type of architecture that results from applying service orientation.
We have been applying service orientation to help organizations consistently deliver sustainable business value, with increased agility and cost effectiveness, in line with changing business needs.
Through our work we have come to prioritize:
- Business value over technical strategy
- Strategic goals over project-specific benefits
- Intrinsic interoperability over custom integration
- Shared services over specific-purpose implementations
- Flexibility over optimization
- Evolutionary refinement over pursuit of initial perfection
That is, while we value the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.
SOA Manifesto Guiding Principles
We follow these principles:
- Respect the social and power structure of the organization.
- Recognize that SOA ultimately demands change on many levels.
- The scope of SOA adoption can vary. Keep efforts manageable and within meaningful boundaries.
- Products and standards alone will neither give you SOA nor apply the service orientation paradigm for you.
- SOA can be realized through a variety of technologies and standards.
- Establish a uniform set of enterprise standards and policies based on industry, de facto, and community standards.
- Pursue uniformity on the outside while allowing diversity on the inside.
- Identify services through collaboration with business and technology stakeholders.
- Maximize service usage by considering the current and future scope of utilization.
- Verify that services satisfy business requirements and goals.
- Evolve services and their organization in response to real use.
- Separate the different aspects of a system that change at different rates.
- Reduce implicit dependencies and publish all external dependencies to increase robustness and reduce the impact of change.
- At every level of abstraction, organize each service around a cohesive and manageable unit of functionality.
October 23rd, 2009
Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 12:55 am
Categories: Business ROI, Enterprise Architecture, Management, SOA Events, Vendor Watch, cloud computing
Tags: SOA, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web Services, Middleware, Enterprise Software, Software, Joe McKendrick
SOA may have its detractors, but done right, it lays the groundwork for a new service-oriented paradigm going forward.
I’m at this year’s International SOA Symposium in Rotterdam, and the prevailing theme is “Next-Gen” SOA, in which we see service-orientation emerge from its bout with the skeptics to take a stronger role within the enterprise.
Thomas Erl, the conference organizer and prolific author on SOA topics, launched the event, noting that we are moving into a period of Next-Generation SOA, with the foundation of principles and practices being laid within many entreprises.
Next up was Anne Thomas Manes of Burton Group, who declared in a post at the beginning of the year that “SOA” — at least as we knew it — was “dead.” However, the second part of Anne’s post was “Long Live Services,” which is the theme that she picked up on in her keynote address.
“Business wasn’t really interested in buying something called ‘SOA,” she declared, adding that in her own research, fewer than 10% of companies have seen significant business value in their efforts.
However, that is not to diminish the importance of service oriented architecture. “The average IT organization is in a mess,” she says. “The average business has 20 to 30 core capabilities. Why do they need 2,000 applications to support those 20-30 capabilities?”
“We should be service orienting everything we do,” she contends. What’s getting in the way is the feeling that an “SOA program” needs to be launched to get there, she states. “We have an opportunity at this point to resurrect SOA. We need a different approach, one based on architectural principles.”
Anne also observed that current cloud computing initiatives bear a striking resemblance to SOA efforts. “All the discussions I hear about cloud are the same discussions we had about cloud four to five years ago,” she says. “How are applications in the cloud going to talk to the applications back home without intrinsic interoperability?”
I also had the opportunity to lead a panel discussion later in the day, joined by Anne, along with Microsoft’s John Devadoss (great to finally meet you in person, John!), Stefan Tilkov, and Clemen Utschig-Utschig of Oracle. Anne further elaborated on her thinking behind the “Dead” post, emphasizing her point that both end-user organizations and vendors are still too wrapped up in the idea of delivering some type of “SOA” package, versus delivering agility and flexibility. However, she noted, “Everything we do should be service oriented.”
Stefan Tilkov agreed with Anne on that point, but took issue on whether cloud computing represents some new phase of SOA. Cloud represents a different type of functionality and best practices, he emphasized.
I’m also part of the SOA Manifesto Working Group, which is meeting at the Symposium to draft a set of overarching principles to guide SOA efforts. We expect to announce the final document at the end of the conference — I’ll keep you posted.
October 21st, 2009
Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 1:26 pm
Categories: Data managemetnt, SOA Surveys and Research, Web 2.0-Enterprise 2.0, cloud computing
Tags: Enterprise Mashup, Gartner Inc., SOA, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web Services, Middleware, Enterprise Software, Software, Joe McKendrick
Gartner just issued its Top 10 Technology list for the year ahead, and guess what’s missing? Once again, service oriented architecture got sacked by the sages of Stamford.
SOA proponents, however, can take cold comfort that just as was the case last year, SOA is the underpinning foundation and enabler of many of the Top 10 technologies. Cloud computing? You need a foundation to deliver those services across firewalls. Cloud also sucks in Web oriented architecture and enterprise mashups — prime SOA territory. Advanced analytics? They won’t be so advanced if data doesn’t get pulled out of organizational and system silos. Client computing? Enterprise mashups, anyone? And, hey, where is event processing?
October 19th, 2009
Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 9:19 am
Categories: Business ROI, SOA Events, Vendor Watch, business process management
Tags: Oracle Corp., Human Resources Inc., SOA, Larry Ellison, HR Specialist, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Human Capital, Web Services, Middleware, Enterprise Software
In an analysis of last week’s announcement at Oracle OpenWorld that Oracle would finally be releasing its Fusion Applications next year, HR technology specialist Bill Kutik wondered out loud where and when we’ll see Fusion HCM (Human Capital Management) emerge in an SOA-ready configuration.
Despite Larry Ellison’s public pronouncement at the end of the show that Oracle will soon pull the trigger and release the new offerings, including Fusion HCM, Bill is still skeptical as ever. As he put it in a recent editorial in Human Resource Executive:
“From the short demos CEO Larry Ellison showed on stage at Oracle Open World — and even after examining enlarged screen shots from them — Oracle Fusion HCM seems to be only on par with our best current software.”
Bill alludes to the original promise of SOA in this regard, in which analysts and vendors predicted that new capabilities could be assembled in a relatively easy fashion to meet changes in the business requirements — a la Lego blocks. It seems that’s been a difficult state to reach, he says — and wonders if Fusion Applications will meet this vision. He expressed skepticism at Ellison’s continued pronouncements that SOA will enable Fusion to “easily connect to existing apps, even SAP.”
Bill is disappointed that more isn’t being said about the capabilities of Fusion HCM when it does arrive, and is even more than annoyed that Oracle is keeping everyone in the dark about it. He also says there has yet to be a clear migration path discussed for PeopleSoft and Oracle E-Business Suite customers.
He wasn’t all sour on the announcement, however — he’s glad to see Larry Ellison talked up the emerging Talent Management application that will be part of Fusion.
Additional note: The latest version of PeopleSoft Enterprise (9.1) was launched September 30. Paco Aubrejuan, Oracle vice president and general manager of PeopleSoft, will be holding a Webcast on October 28, 11:00 a.m. Pacific to discuss the latest release. (Register here.)
October 19th, 2009
Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 6:00 am
Categories: Links, Management, SOA Events
Tags: SOA, Service Orientation, Enterprise Customer, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web Services, Middleware, Enterprise Software, Software, Joe McKendrick
There’s been a hubub going on for years now on whether ‘reuse’ is a valid value proposition for service oriented architecture. Maybe reuse is simply the wrong word.
Luca Cutolo, the galloping SOA gourmet, recently posted a business-focused perspective on SOA that faults the lack of “vision” in many SOA efforts, and makes the following point:
“SOA means mainly to do things in a re-sell-able way. Service orientation is a way to make re-use of components and features across the Enterprise and to sell them between departments, line of businesses or to customers by defining service level agreements (SLA).”
Maybe it’s time we threw out “reuse” as a term for describing SOA-based services, and started couching services in terms of “resale.” After all, it’s all about being able to sell capabilities to the business, and the business being willing to pay for them in some way (either through inter-departmental funding or direct purchase).
Look to the emerging cloud computing model, that introduces the rigors of the market to services, be they internal or external, for this vision. For example, SOA could be run as the foundation of an internal cloud business. ZDNet colleague Dion Hinchliffe, for one, recently proposed that SOA-based services be deployed the same way cloud businesses deploy their open APIs. In other words, managing an SOA effort as an internal business, providing services to the rest of the enterprise, with profits or losses, a la cloud. Dion pointed out that cloud providers face the rigors of the marketplace and have to prove their value every day. So why not model internal service orientation efforts after the experiences of those external providers?
Cloud computing also introduces more marketplace-enforced cost structures to the SOA ecosphere as well. In a panel discussion I hosted earlier in the summer, David Bressler raised the issue of cost structure, and how cloud — for better or worse — provides greater visibility into hidden costs that SOA does not address.
An enterprise customer is far more sensitive to the costs of external cloud services versus internally provided services. That’s because “the cloud providers will provide their services at a specific cost, that’s the actual cost plus whatever the margin may be,” Dave said. “Whereas, internal IT has always been kind of subsidized. If you need a project, you get internal IT to put it together for you, and delivered for you, and a lot of those costs either were hidden, and were dispersed across the enterprise. Cloud is forcing organizations to look at the actual cost of service delivery and perhaps the alignment more with what the market will be.”
This all makes sense, as companies are becoming both consumers and providers of services. Such service delivery occurs internally as well as outside of the corporate boundaries. By applying market-driven pricing inside and out, companies will see the true value of SOA and cloud formations.
October 17th, 2009
Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 8:15 am
Categories: General, Links, Management
Tags: SOA, Geek & Poke, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web Services, Middleware, Enterprise Software, Software, Joe McKendrick
Geek & Poke’s Oliver Widder reminds us that designing and putting a great SOA-based infrastructure out into the enterprise is only half the battle.
October 15th, 2009
Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 10:17 am
Categories: SOA Events, Vendor Watch
Tags: Oracle Corp., Larry Ellison, Cloud Angle, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Asset Management, Web Services, Enterprise Software, Middleware, Venture Capital, Software
I was at Oracle OpenWorld in rain-drenched San Francisco this week, but the clouds parted when it came time for CEO Larry Ellison’s finale keynote, in which he outlined the company’s Fusion Application strategy. (Unfortunately, however, I had to fly out before the Aerosmith concert at the event later that evening. As they would put it, “My get up and go must have got up and went…”)
Ellison announced that Oracle would be launching its ERP-focused Fusion Applications in 2010, and they will be deployable both on-premises and in the cloud. The cloud angle is somewhat ironic, since Ellison is known to be not too keen on cloud computing — he recently said, in fact, the concept has been co-opted by “venture capitalist ‘nitwits’ on Sand Hill Road.”
Fusion Applications, not to be confused too deeply with Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g (which does form the foundational layer, however) is an integrated offering that will incorporate Oracle’s original and acquired software assets, including Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Siebel, and JD Edwards. The Fusion Application suite will also include business intelligence and analytical capabilities that will be embedded with all components of the suite.
ZDNet colleague Sam Diaz provides great coverage of the Ellison keynote. My colleague Tony Baer, who has been following Oracle for some time, also provides some insightful perspectives on Oracle’s thinking via guest post at Dana Gardner’s ZDNet site. Tony talks about the SOA aspects of Fusion: “It uses SOA to loosely couple, rather than tightly integrate with other Fusion processes or processes exposed by existing back end applications, which should make Fusion apps more pliant and less prone to outage. That allows workflows in Fusion to be dynamic and flexible.”
October 15th, 2009
Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 9:32 am
Categories: Business ROI, General, SOA Events, Web 2.0-Enterprise 2.0, cloud computing
Tags: SOA, Conference, Dave, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web Services, Middleware, Enterprise Software, Software, Joe McKendrick
Welcome to Service Oriented Architecture, Phase 2. It’s bigger, It’s badder, it’s all business. None of this namby-pamby JBOWs stuff. None of these SOAPY-REST tantrums. SOA is all grown up now, and it’s time it starts earning the bacon.
I am serving as conference chair and emcee for ebizQ’s upcoming “SOA in Action” virtual conference, scheduled for October 28th and 29th, and want to share some of highlights with you.
I will be joined by a number of leading industry figures in various sessions and panel discussions, including Forrester’s Randy Heffner, Software AG’s governance guru Miko Matsumura, Web Oriented Architecture guru Dion Hinchcliffe (also a rock star here at the ZDNet community), Gartner’s Yefim Natis, captain of the cloud Dave Linthicum, and US Department of Defense CIO Dan Risacher. The conference will be capped by a joint session featuring Gartner’s Roy Schulte and CalTech’s Mani Chandy.
Some author notes: Roy Schulte and Mani Chandy have just published a new work on event processing, Event Processing: Designing IT Systems for Agile Companies. Dave Linthicum has just published his latest book, Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise: A Step-by-Step Guide.
Topics to be discussed include organizational and governance issues, “selling” SOA’s value to the business is more difficult in today’s economy, ROI, complex event processing, and cloud computing.
October 14th, 2009
Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 7:14 am
Categories: Event processing, Links, SOA Surveys and Research, Web Services, business process management
Tags: SOA, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web Services, Middleware, Enterprise Software, Software, Joe McKendrick
Does event driven architecture (EDA) represent the next phase of SOA? This is a subject of continuing debate, but Udi Dahan makes the case for EDA as the next logical stage of SOA. In a recent post, he connected the dots between SOA and EDA, suggesting that EDA will shift the inherent nature of SOA.
Dahan makes his case thusly: SOA is currently based on a “commonly used request/response communication pattern of service consumer to service provider in SOA,” in which the consumer delivers the command, and the provider service responds accordingly. “Commands are often named in imperative, present-tense form—for example, ‘update customer’ and ‘cancel order.’”
With EDA, this relationship gets reversed, he points out:
“In EDA… Consumers do not initiate communication in EDA; instead, they receive events that are produced by emitters. The communication is also inherently unidirectional; emitters do not depend on any response from consumers to continue performing their work.”
Developing an architectural approach that employs both SOA and EDA principles will go a long way toward better so-called “business-IT” alignment, Dahan observes. The fusing of the two approaches may be the key. Either approach alone won’t do it. As Dahan illustrates:
“Architects can explain to the business the ramifications of their architectural decisions in ways that the business can understand—’There might be a couple of seconds during which these two bits of data are not in sync. Is that a problem?’—and the answer to those kinds of question is used to iterate the architecture, so as to bring it into better alignment with the business.”
SOA and EDA have been moving closer in recent years, as companies start to understand the value of event processing to ongoing operations and opportunities.
October 12th, 2009
Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 3:00 am
Categories: Business ROI, Links, Management, Standards Watch, Vendor Watch, business process management, cloud computing
Tags: Software, Information Technology, Lean IT, Strategy, Management, Joe McKendrick
Customer in a restaurant: Waiter, bring me a steak, and make it lean.
Waiter: Okay, sir. Which way?
As reported in my last post, Sandy Kemsley has done a great job of covering Forrester’s Business Technology Forum, which focused on Lean IT.
But which way is IT supposed to lean? Alas, it seems Forrester is helping to heap another buzzphrase on the world that seems to describe things that have already been in motion for years. (Some say this is the case with service oriented architecture as well, by the way.)
What, exactly, is ‘Lean IT’? Wikipedia’s definition of Lean IT is vague and convoluted:
“Lean IT is the extension of lean principles to the development and management of information technology (IT) products and services. Its central concern, applied in the context of IT, is the elimination of waste, where waste is work that adds no value to a product or service.”
Yeah, so? Again, haven’t organizations been battling waste in IT since day one?
I don’t know who coined the phrase “Lean IT,” but it takes a page from “Lean Manufacturing,” which tightened up that sector in the 1980s and 1990s to survive the onslaught from more efficient and quality-driven overseas competition. Noah B. Kindler, Vasantha Krishnakanthan, and Ranjit Tinaikar of McKinsey & Company discussed the concept back in May 2007, claiming that application development and maintenance (ADM) productivity can be boosted up to 40% by eliminating waste from routine processes. “Application development and maintenance is a prime candidate for lean methods not only because it involves a great many processes with the potential to be optimized but also because large differences in productivity among organizations suggest that some are far less efficient than others,” they said. As they put it:
“Each category of waste in manufacturing has a counterpart in ADM, which can be thought of as a kind of factory that develops new applications according to business requirements. Changes to an application’s requirements are one common source of ADM waste, causing many of the classic varieties identified in lean: designers rework their specifications, coders wait for specifications to stabilize, testers overproduce as their testing environments have to be set up repeatedly, unmet requirements pile up in a large backlog. As in manufacturing, systematically eliminating these sources of waste improves the delivery time, quality, and efficiency of the ADM end product.”
So they equate IT operations with a manufacturing process. Which makes sense, and is something we’ve discussed in this blogsite before (here, here, and here). By introducing assembly-line processes and greater automation to software development, we can definitely tighten up the process.
In past posts, I quoted IBM’s Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger and Microsoft’s Jack Greenfield, both who said we were at the dawn of a new era of IT — “industrialization.” Wladawsky-Berger said that IT-delivered services are starting to become more componentized, standardized, and mass-consumable across the spectrum, just as manufactured goods were a century ago. Greenfield talked about the concept of the “software factory,” defined as “a development environment configured to support the rapid development of a specific type of application. While software factories are really just the logical next step in the continuing evolution of software development methods and practices… introducing patterns of industrialization.”
He said, however, that “our IT infrastructures are nowhere near ready to handle this explosive growth of information and service. Much of IT, - including applications, data centers, systems management, and so on, - is way too ad-hoc and custom designed, sort of like manufacturing was decades ago….”
So, is Lean IT the right thing at the right time to seize upon this impending industrial revolution of IT services? The McKinsey authors identify the following areas for “waste reduction” in software assembly: flow processing to reduce overcapacity or excess inventory; release schedules to help prioritize projects; staff and supplier workload balancing; greater standardization; segmentation of projects by complexity to route projects to the proper resources; and and by avoiding unnecessary overhead for simple tasks; and quality ownership that extends to all groups involved in software production — not just QA.
These are are well and good goals, and I’m sure every organization can benefit greatly by applying these principles to their IT operations. But is there anyone who hasn’t been already trying to move these efforts forward? What does Lean IT bring to the table? Consider everything that has been underway in recent years:
- Service oriented architecture: Formerly siloed applications are decomposed into reusable services that are made available across enterprises.
- Agile development: Developers work side by side in an iterative way with business users throughout the process.
- Virtualization: Physical IT systems and resources are abstracted into a software-based enterprise service layer.
- IT automation: Routine IT processes formerly handled manually are handled on a systematic basis by the software and machines themselves.
- Cloud computing/outsourcing: Non-critical IT tasks and applications are acquired from more specialized providers, mainly on a pay-per-use or contractual basis.
- Business process management: Business workloads are decomposed and automated.
- ITIL: Best practices and principles for IT services applied uniformly across organizations.
References I’ve been seeing to Lean IT seem quite provincial — optimizing IT processes at the ground level without bringing in the larger picture — the transformation of the business. Lean IT lacks the expansive thinking that Wladawsky-Berger and Greenfield have in mind for the coming industrial revolution in IT services.
And, again, it begs the question: what does Lean IT offer that we haven’t been trying to do already?
October 9th, 2009
Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 8:48 am
Categories: Business ROI, Links, Management, SOA Events, business process management
Tags: Information Technology, Forrester Research Inc., Semiconductors, Hardware, Joe McKendrick
Answer: It depends if you wear a ponytail.
Sandy Kemsley has been providing wall-to-wall coverage of the Forrester Business Technology Forum in Chicago, and picked up on an interesting panel discussion on the role of packaged applications in Lean IT. (Lean IT is the theme of Forrester’s confab.)
Sandy’s reports on Forrester BTF are a good read for anyone trying to get their heads around the concept of “Lean IT.” (She starts here with her series.) I mean, isn’t that what we’ve been trying to do for the past 20 years anyway? (Not that things have turned out that “Lean” yet. We’ll see if it works this time around.)
According to Sandy’s report, Forrester’s John Rymer argued that “packaged apps can never be Lean, since most are locked down, closed engines where the vendor controls the architecture, they’re expensive and difficult to upgrade, they use more functions than customers use, they provide a single general UI for all user personas, and each upgrade includes more crap that you don’t need.”
Chip Gliedman, a Forrester analyst, argued the opposite side, stating that the opposite of packaged apps — custom-grown apps — are just about as bloated and klunky as you can get. You need packaged apps to pave the way to Lean IT. Sandy quotes Chip as “pointing out that you just can’t build the level of functionality that a packaged application provides, and there can be data and integration issues once you abandon the wisdom of a single monolithic system that holds all your data and rules.”
I like Sandy’s summary of the whole thing: “Clearly, Gliedman is either insane or a secret plant from [insert large enterprise vendor name here], and Rymer is an incurable coder who probably has a ponytail tucked into his shirt collar. :) Nonetheless, an entertaining discussion.”
October 9th, 2009
Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 8:07 am
Categories: Enterprise Architecture, Links, Management, SOA Events, SOA Surveys and Research, Web 2.0-Enterprise 2.0, cloud computing
Tags: Gartner Inc., SOA, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web Services, Middleware, Enterprise Software, Software, Joe McKendrick
In a new report, Gartner analyst Yefim Natis is quoted as saying that the success of cloud computing hinges on having good service oriented architecture underneath. “Prepare for the cloud by developing SOA skills,” Natis says. “The arrival of cloud as an option for the delivery of business applications could finally cement SOA into the IT mainstream,” he adds.
Natis urges enterprise IT shops to continue investing in service-oriented architecture skills and initiatives if they are to be able to take full advantage of the emergence of the cloud infrastructure. SOA may eventually become the standard way by which applications are accessed through a cloud service, he adds. This will also propel adoption of private clouds, contained with the firewall.
We’ve been banging the SOA-Cloud drum for years here at this blogspot (e.g., here in 2005; here, here, and here in 2007), and it’s good to see respected analysts also taking up the theme. SOA is evolving into the underlying enabler for private clouds, to the point where they almost can be considered one in the same. SOA has often been a tough sell. The good news is that the business readily grasps — and even likes — the idea of private and public clouds as a way to better organize and manage computing resources.
October 6th, 2009
Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 3:21 pm
Categories: Enterprise Architecture, Links, Management, Web 2.0-Enterprise 2.0, Web Services, cloud computing
Tags: SOA, WOA, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web Services, Middleware, Enterprise Software, Software, Joe McKendrick
Has the time come for a change in the way we do SOA?
Dion Hinchcliffe, ZDNet’s resident Enterprise Web guru, has posted an interesting analysis of the state of service oriented architecture, and what it will take to kick-start it into the future. SOA has a couple of issues that is keeping it from reaching its potential, Dion wrote in new post over at ebizQ.
- First, the velocity of SOA seems too slow to keep up with the rapid changes buffeting organizations:
- Second, SOA service consumption remains at “depressingly low” levels;
- Third, SOA projects tend to be over-engineered.
What’s a beleaguered SOA proponent to do? Time to move to a new level, Dion says: Web Oriented Architecture. Dion calls WOA a “parallel track” for SOA that’s evolved in the more open Internet space, versus behind the opaque walls of corporate enterprises. Or as Dion puts it: WOA has grown “organically in the wilds of the online world to meet many of the same challenges that we have in our organizations today.”
Dion defines WOA in terms of open APIs, such as we see in cloud-based or Enterprise 2.0 services. WOA will help SOA reach its next level of performance. Ways we will see this evolve is the trend toward running SOA more like a business in itself; cheap, lightweight service delivery models; and access via REST-based interfaces and mashups.
The WOA approach makes a lot of sense, in no small part because of its relative simplicity and cost-effectiveness. SOA evolves from being an IT-centric megaproject to a series of initiatives in which business end-users can partake. Yes, there are many instances where iron-clad SOAP Web services are required. But everyone is already doing mashups, and the extended enterprise may benefit from the rise of WOA.
Dion will be talking about the SOA-WOA evolution at the SOA in Action conference I will be emceeing October 28-29.
October 3rd, 2009
Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 8:38 am
Categories: General, Links, Management
Tags: CIO, Geek & Poke, Joe McKendrick
Geek & Poke’s Oliver Widder shows us what CIOs like to hear…
Joe McKendrick is an author and consultant with deep knowledge and insights regarding trends and developments in the technology industry. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Email Joe McKendrick
Subscribe to Service Oriented via
Email alerts or .
SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads
