Wow - how did I miss this one??
Mindreef was acquired by Progress Software!
Quietly, Progress added another set of tools to their growing SOA portfolio. Through this acquisition, Progress picks up new SOA testing at quality management solutions. Congratulations to Frank Grossman the rest of the Mindreef team.
And again, I've updated the SOA Acquisition List:
http://www.momentumsi.com/SOA_Acquisitions.html
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Iona acquired by Progress
Progress Software announced the acquisition of Iona.
This move continues to round out their SOA offerings by adding registry/repository, data services, message brokering and CORBA middleware. However, as others have pointed out, this leaves Progress with significant overlap in the ESB area. I'm confident that we'll be hearing from the Progress leadership on how they intend to resolve the redundancies that exist between Artix, FUSE, SOAPStation and SonicESB.
Naturally, here is the updated SOA Acquisition List.
This move continues to round out their SOA offerings by adding registry/repository, data services, message brokering and CORBA middleware. However, as others have pointed out, this leaves Progress with significant overlap in the ESB area. I'm confident that we'll be hearing from the Progress leadership on how they intend to resolve the redundancies that exist between Artix, FUSE, SOAPStation and SonicESB.
Naturally, here is the updated SOA Acquisition List.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Gartner: Force.com Case Study
Highlights from the Force.com Case Study presenation inlcude:
MS client/server developers will quit when you move to SaaS. Hire web developers to replace them. Those people then implement innovative ideas rapidly on the SaaS platform.
Don't underestimate the need for change management training in this or any software rollout.
Developers productive within two weeks.
Easy to train up people in India to be productive on the platform.
Myth is that data on SaaS platforms is not available. Customer downloads all data from all SaaS providers onto their SAn nightly.
Very excited about their release of SAML. Seems to be standard most vendors are coalescing around.
Gartner: SOA Design Patterns
As you know design patterns describe recurring solutions to common problems in software design. And recognizing and implementing these patterns is an essential part of successful Service Oriented Design. Below are 5 SOA design patterns that Gartner analysts have observed:
1. Multichannel Applications
2. Composite Applications
3. Business Process Orchestration
4. Service Oriented Enterprise
5. Federated SOA
Multichannel Application
SOA is a perfect fit for multichannel applications. This pattern separates the back-end business logic from the front-end logic and delivers full application functionality to a maximum number of users from various channels in a minimal amount of time while reusing the same exposed services.
Strategic Planning Assumption: By 2008, more than 66% of new midsize and large interactive applications will be designed to support multichannel access, up from less than 33% in 2007.
Composite Applications
Services used in composite applications may be new service implementations, fragments of old applications that were adapted and wrapped, or combinations of the above. Two types of integration technology are essential for effective operation of a composite SOA environment: 1) integration technology behind the service interfaces, helping users wrap and adopt various pre-SOA applications; and 2) integration technology helping users assemble and monitor transactions from services.
Strategic Planning Assumption: Through 2012, the majority of SOA-style applications will be interactive composite applications.
Business Process Orchestration
Business process management (BPM) suites are the tools devoted to implementing such SOA-based multistep processing flows. The BPEL standard is often used to document the designed metadata flow model. The metadata repository ("meta-database") is used to manage the proceedings of the business process model at runtime. Some steps of the process are implemented by calling
SOA services. Other steps require human intervention.
Strategic Planning Assumption: By 2009, more than 75% of SOA applications will implement some sequencing control outside of code of the service implementations, via external BPM technology.
Service Oriented Enterprise
The SOA-based enterprise model is a step beyond composite applications. Here, all applications are perceived as components of one integrated whole. No new application is created in isolation. Each application is built from reusable components that are available for use not only in their initially intended context, but also by other clients in other contexts. Essentially, the integrated composite enterprise consists not of applications, but rather business components — each an asset of the entire enterprise.
Strategic Planning Assumption: By 2010, more than 85% of enterprises will have combined their application integration and SOA management tools and organizations.
Federated SOA
The fundamental idea behind federated SOA is to logically split the enterprise into semi-independent SOA domains (for example, reflecting the enterprise organization in terms of subsidiaries, Business Units or departments), each with its own specific SOA infrastructure, governance processes and SOA Center of Excellence. Domains are then federated (that is, integrated — usually, but not necessarily, after the fact — to enable inter-domain sharing of services) through appropriate interoperability infrastructure, governance processes and organizational settings. "SOA federation" is the process of enabling a federated SOA by establishing the
proper technical, governance and organizational capabilities.
Strategic Planning Assumption: Few large organizations are able to establish a singular architectural blueprint for their entire IT. The best practice is to endorse domain independence and allow them to differ in technology and architecture in exchange for agreement to synchronize interoperability protocols and transports. Mergers and acquisitions are clearly candidates for Federated SOA.
Posted by Tony Cook
1. Multichannel Applications
2. Composite Applications
3. Business Process Orchestration
4. Service Oriented Enterprise
5. Federated SOA
Multichannel Application
SOA is a perfect fit for multichannel applications. This pattern separates the back-end business logic from the front-end logic and delivers full application functionality to a maximum number of users from various channels in a minimal amount of time while reusing the same exposed services.
Strategic Planning Assumption: By 2008, more than 66% of new midsize and large interactive applications will be designed to support multichannel access, up from less than 33% in 2007.
Composite Applications
Services used in composite applications may be new service implementations, fragments of old applications that were adapted and wrapped, or combinations of the above. Two types of integration technology are essential for effective operation of a composite SOA environment: 1) integration technology behind the service interfaces, helping users wrap and adopt various pre-SOA applications; and 2) integration technology helping users assemble and monitor transactions from services.
Strategic Planning Assumption: Through 2012, the majority of SOA-style applications will be interactive composite applications.
Business Process Orchestration
Business process management (BPM) suites are the tools devoted to implementing such SOA-based multistep processing flows. The BPEL standard is often used to document the designed metadata flow model. The metadata repository ("meta-database") is used to manage the proceedings of the business process model at runtime. Some steps of the process are implemented by calling
SOA services. Other steps require human intervention.
Strategic Planning Assumption: By 2009, more than 75% of SOA applications will implement some sequencing control outside of code of the service implementations, via external BPM technology.
Service Oriented Enterprise
The SOA-based enterprise model is a step beyond composite applications. Here, all applications are perceived as components of one integrated whole. No new application is created in isolation. Each application is built from reusable components that are available for use not only in their initially intended context, but also by other clients in other contexts. Essentially, the integrated composite enterprise consists not of applications, but rather business components — each an asset of the entire enterprise.
Strategic Planning Assumption: By 2010, more than 85% of enterprises will have combined their application integration and SOA management tools and organizations.
Federated SOA
The fundamental idea behind federated SOA is to logically split the enterprise into semi-independent SOA domains (for example, reflecting the enterprise organization in terms of subsidiaries, Business Units or departments), each with its own specific SOA infrastructure, governance processes and SOA Center of Excellence. Domains are then federated (that is, integrated — usually, but not necessarily, after the fact — to enable inter-domain sharing of services) through appropriate interoperability infrastructure, governance processes and organizational settings. "SOA federation" is the process of enabling a federated SOA by establishing the
proper technical, governance and organizational capabilities.
Strategic Planning Assumption: Few large organizations are able to establish a singular architectural blueprint for their entire IT. The best practice is to endorse domain independence and allow them to differ in technology and architecture in exchange for agreement to synchronize interoperability protocols and transports. Mergers and acquisitions are clearly candidates for Federated SOA.
Posted by Tony Cook
Gartner Update: The People Side
Massive changes coming:
IT organizations are becoming change saturated. Both home and work. In next 20 years will experience the world going through peak oil production of all time.
• Medicare/Medicaid big change. Baby boomers drawing down
• Social security
• Subdivisions/developments gated by water resources.
• Question. As a manager, how do I manage the people side of these kinds of changes.
Framework of change:
Why, what, who? Are we changing.
If we can’t get the people to achieve the change then we can’t be successful.
The gating factor on change is no longer technology (has it ever been? Chris) – it is people’s ability to handle/absorb change.
If our success in technology is gated by our ability to manage the people side of change then we had better figure it out. It was very disappointing to see in the target audience here at the Gartner conference how little effect current change management initiatives have had.
Key points are that as we knew, Executive sponsorship of change is vital. However executive sponsorship isn’t just “show up for the kickoff and sign the checks”. It really must embody active involvement. Even more worrying is that, again in the audience at the session, that most attendees don’t have a “structured approach”, nor proper communication plans.
It has been our experience that change management is viewed by the technical teams as “touchy feely, unnecessary, gets in the way.” Changing that perception is a change management in its own right. That being recognized, the whole “Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and reinforcement” cycle. The presenters thesis is that all change goes through this cycle. So if we attempt to encourage the technical teams just by giving them Knowledge, we are entering the cycle too early. We need to find ways to get Awareness and Desire enshrined.
IT organizations are becoming change saturated. Both home and work. In next 20 years will experience the world going through peak oil production of all time.
• Medicare/Medicaid big change. Baby boomers drawing down
• Social security
• Subdivisions/developments gated by water resources.
• Question. As a manager, how do I manage the people side of these kinds of changes.
Framework of change:
Why, what, who? Are we changing.
If we can’t get the people to achieve the change then we can’t be successful.
The gating factor on change is no longer technology (has it ever been? Chris) – it is people’s ability to handle/absorb change.
If our success in technology is gated by our ability to manage the people side of change then we had better figure it out. It was very disappointing to see in the target audience here at the Gartner conference how little effect current change management initiatives have had.
Key points are that as we knew, Executive sponsorship of change is vital. However executive sponsorship isn’t just “show up for the kickoff and sign the checks”. It really must embody active involvement. Even more worrying is that, again in the audience at the session, that most attendees don’t have a “structured approach”, nor proper communication plans.
It has been our experience that change management is viewed by the technical teams as “touchy feely, unnecessary, gets in the way.” Changing that perception is a change management in its own right. That being recognized, the whole “Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and reinforcement” cycle. The presenters thesis is that all change goes through this cycle. So if we attempt to encourage the technical teams just by giving them Knowledge, we are entering the cycle too early. We need to find ways to get Awareness and Desire enshrined.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Keynote...
Notes from Roy Schulte’s session on Event Processing.
The big key here is that Gartner are positioning EDA and Client Server (Request/Response) as subsets of SOA. We use many of the same concepts (standards based, abstracted, etc.) in both of the models. Event Driven Architecture is, however, better placed for situational awareness. Much of what Roy had to say was around the handling of Complex Events – typically described as aggregations of simpler events. He also made the key observation that an event stream can, of course, kick off a number of action streams. Using an airline example where as a result of some event data being received a whole raft of operational processes is triggered – from scheduling catering to preparing the ramp.
It is also clear from Roy’s remarks that even though we had the message oriented movements of the 90s, Event processing is still emerging. The usual innovators (financial institutions especially) have jumped onto this paradigm because of a combination of regulatory needs and some major competitive advantage in an environment when market analysis in milliseconds is now the norm.
BAM – Business Activity Monitoring leading to “real time BI” or genuine situational awareness is fast becoming a real possibility when event processing approaches are applied.
The big key here is that Gartner are positioning EDA and Client Server (Request/Response) as subsets of SOA. We use many of the same concepts (standards based, abstracted, etc.) in both of the models. Event Driven Architecture is, however, better placed for situational awareness. Much of what Roy had to say was around the handling of Complex Events – typically described as aggregations of simpler events. He also made the key observation that an event stream can, of course, kick off a number of action streams. Using an airline example where as a result of some event data being received a whole raft of operational processes is triggered – from scheduling catering to preparing the ramp.
It is also clear from Roy’s remarks that even though we had the message oriented movements of the 90s, Event processing is still emerging. The usual innovators (financial institutions especially) have jumped onto this paradigm because of a combination of regulatory needs and some major competitive advantage in an environment when market analysis in milliseconds is now the norm.
BAM – Business Activity Monitoring leading to “real time BI” or genuine situational awareness is fast becoming a real possibility when event processing approaches are applied.
Gartner Coverage!
For all the MomentumSI coverage at the Gartner show, please visit our corporate blog:
http://www.momentumsi.com/blogs.php
http://www.momentumsi.com/blogs.php
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Gartner Conference - SOA
MomentumSI will be sponsoring and participating at Gartner’s Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit taking place this week in Orlando, Florida. This is a significant milestone for SOA as it represents the 10th anniversary of the AADI Summit…the underlying theme being “How to deliver value in a fast-changing SOA environment”.
Our Enterprise Architecture Solutions team will be on the ground at the summit and interacting with the architects, application managers and analyst in attendance. We will be posting daily blogs regarding the hot topics encountered and engaged discussions across SOA, application and Web infrastructure… stay tuned!
Our Enterprise Architecture Solutions team will be on the ground at the summit and interacting with the architects, application managers and analyst in attendance. We will be posting daily blogs regarding the hot topics encountered and engaged discussions across SOA, application and Web infrastructure… stay tuned!
Saturday, June 07, 2008
The Worst SOA Presentation I've Ever Seen
Jean Jacque Dubray is outraged. He declares:
I watched it. It sucks - but I've seen worst. Jim and Martin keep talking about why we shouldn't buy an ESB. The early ESB's were largely just JMS products and proprietary. In addition, the vendors positioned the ESB as the center of the software universe rather than a valuable component that has a specific function. However, the concerns I voiced five years ago on this subject have largely been addressed. Regardless, I'll agree with Jim and Martin that the ESB has the potential to do harm if over used or used incorrectly (but this is true for just about everything).
Here's my beef with the presentation. Other than the lame attacks they did on the acronym SOA, they failed to present a solution to the problem they introduced: Attacking Silos of Systems. Jim and Martin avoid this issues completely. They basically say "use our stuff from 7 years ago and you'll be fine". This includes refactoring, continuous integration, test-driven development, dynamic languages, etc. Let's be clear, these are excellent concepts that all moderns software development groups should use (if they aren't already...) but it has virtually nothing to do with the problem at hand.
If you look closely at the pitch, they fail to discuss how to not create multiple silos in the enterprise, let alone how to remove the ones that exist today. Their approach is "program better" and "increment". Fowler is an icon of modern computing and the concepts that he championed in the late 90's were brilliant. However, this stuff is crap. The promotion of "use a dumb network" and "use agile techniques" are things SOA guys agreed on 8 years ago. It's a "no shit, Martin..." kind of thing.
Now, tell me how you're going to solve the silo problem. Attacking SOA with your Same Ole Agile crap is a non-starter. These guys will have to address the real problem and quit pushing their old books. Life sure would be easy if we could all just "do REST" and then call SOA a success.
"I watched Jim (Webber) and Martin's (Fowler) presentation tonight before I went with the kids see Kung Fu Panda. The two furious have given a presentation that's got to be by far the worst presentation on SOA I have ever seen, it is not even pathetic, it reached the level of Sadness. If you wanted to turn off customers you couldn't do it better. "
I watched it. It sucks - but I've seen worst. Jim and Martin keep talking about why we shouldn't buy an ESB. The early ESB's were largely just JMS products and proprietary. In addition, the vendors positioned the ESB as the center of the software universe rather than a valuable component that has a specific function. However, the concerns I voiced five years ago on this subject have largely been addressed. Regardless, I'll agree with Jim and Martin that the ESB has the potential to do harm if over used or used incorrectly (but this is true for just about everything).
Here's my beef with the presentation. Other than the lame attacks they did on the acronym SOA, they failed to present a solution to the problem they introduced: Attacking Silos of Systems. Jim and Martin avoid this issues completely. They basically say "use our stuff from 7 years ago and you'll be fine". This includes refactoring, continuous integration, test-driven development, dynamic languages, etc. Let's be clear, these are excellent concepts that all moderns software development groups should use (if they aren't already...) but it has virtually nothing to do with the problem at hand.
If you look closely at the pitch, they fail to discuss how to not create multiple silos in the enterprise, let alone how to remove the ones that exist today. Their approach is "program better" and "increment". Fowler is an icon of modern computing and the concepts that he championed in the late 90's were brilliant. However, this stuff is crap. The promotion of "use a dumb network" and "use agile techniques" are things SOA guys agreed on 8 years ago. It's a "no shit, Martin..." kind of thing.
Now, tell me how you're going to solve the silo problem. Attacking SOA with your Same Ole Agile crap is a non-starter. These guys will have to address the real problem and quit pushing their old books. Life sure would be easy if we could all just "do REST" and then call SOA a success.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
McGovern on EA-Joke
In a recent post, James "fully insured" McGovern disputes my criticism of enterprise architecture. Mostly, he was disappointed that I went after Zachman, suggesting that EA's just don't care about that anymore (which I agree). I'll add that many of them feel that FEAF and TOGAF are also a bit too 'fluffy'.
But unlike me, James seems content with the state of his Visio and Powerpoint tooling, suggesting that he and his colleagues are doing just fine.
And on the subject of "silo funding", James states, "Funding models should never look like enterprise architecture and besides they are managed by two different entities..." I'm not sure what that means. My point is that the funding model should align with your business strategy. If the strategy is to provide a seamless experience for a customer as they cross through the silos, then the funding should reflect that priority. Without proper funding, EA's become security guards with a flashlight and no gun.
BUT - the thing that struck me the most about his post was that he never actually defended the enterprise architecture discipline. This could be that he feels that it doesn't need defending. Alternatively, he could have his own frustrations with the discipline. So James, which is it?
But unlike me, James seems content with the state of his Visio and Powerpoint tooling, suggesting that he and his colleagues are doing just fine.
And on the subject of "silo funding", James states, "Funding models should never look like enterprise architecture and besides they are managed by two different entities..." I'm not sure what that means. My point is that the funding model should align with your business strategy. If the strategy is to provide a seamless experience for a customer as they cross through the silos, then the funding should reflect that priority. Without proper funding, EA's become security guards with a flashlight and no gun.
BUT - the thing that struck me the most about his post was that he never actually defended the enterprise architecture discipline. This could be that he feels that it doesn't need defending. Alternatively, he could have his own frustrations with the discipline. So James, which is it?
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