SOA filling the Gaps

A leading Cellular network company in Israel, Partner Communications Company Ltd ., provider of the Orange network in Israel, presented its SOA implementation in December 26 th meeting of the SOA Forum of the Israeli Association of Information Processing . I am moderating the forum since its imitation on March 2005. The forum meetings take place once in a month. The forum is opened for anyone involved or interested in SOA activities. Most of the meetings included presentations and discussions. The 16 th meeting was exceptional: experts' panel on SOA Governance . The presenter was Iddo Rachlewski (Infrastructure Applications Development Manager). Aharon Winder Partner's CTO , who joined us, answered the toughest questions asked by forum members. Background The Telecom service industry business model and technological infrastructure is changing due to Web based IP phone services, Wireless & Cellular communication and the need to transfer new types of data in additi...

Many years ago I read a Sufi tale about an elephant coming to a town in which all residents were born blind. No one of them have the slightest knowledge about elephants because no one ever traveled outside that town and this elephant was the first of his specie paying a visit to that town. The blind people touched the huge elephant and disputed about the question: What this object is? A blind man/woman who touched the elephant's leg thought it is a pillar. Another one touching his ear thought it is a big fan. The third blind man thought it is a pipe because he touched its trunk etc. The blind people argued and argued and could not agree upon a common definition of that object. The context of that tale is philosophical. However, when we look at SOA definitions we find partial definitions from the viewpoint of Developer s, Architect s, Analyst s, System Administrators and Business people. Business people may describe SOA as a collection of Business Services and Business Processes. ...

The presenter in the 15th meeting of the SOA Forum of the Israeli Association of Information Processing (June 2007) was Brent Carlson , Founder and CTO of LogicLibrary who was named to InfoWorld’s ranking of the Top 25 CTOs in business today. His presentation topic was: Service Lifecycle Governance: Principles and Best Practices. Unfortunately, he was stuck in a traffic jam, so I talked to the forum members until his arrival. I discussed the current status of SOA implementations in Israel. The two main points were: 1. Only few enterprises have a significant SOA production implementation 2. I am able to identify two enterprises that will surely fail in their SOA imitative just by a short discussion with them. One of the participants argued that my first point is not valid. He said that he is aware of enterprises implementing hundreds of Web Services . I answered that implementing hundreds of Web Services is not necessarily implementing SOA. Unsurprisingly, Brent Carlson's opi...

This post is the forth post in the "Web 2.0 for dummies" posts, based on my Web 2.0 presentation in a conference. The following image depicts the Meme map build in O’ reilly ’s brainstorming. This is the first and original Web 2.0 Meme map. It should be noted that the model is a developing model with no explicit boundaries. The central part includes the gravitational elements which are definitely the core of Web 2.0. The Web as a platform mentioned in the previous post is one of that gravitational elements and not just one of the elements but a very important element. The lower part in near to purple color includes principles, ideas and concepts. The upper part (dark green) includes services examples and principles related specifically to some of them. O’ reilly ’s model is not the only model. There are other Meme Maps. Analyzing and comparing different Meme Maps is beyond the scope of this post. However, the multitude of models together with the flexible boundaries enable...

The topic of the meeting of the Israeli SOA Forum of November 29th was: BPM & SOA . This is the 17th meeting of the SOA Forum of the Israeli Association of Information Processing . I am moderating the forum since its imitation on March 2005. The forum meetings take place once in a month. The forum is opened for anyone involved or interested in SOA activities. Most of the meetings included presentations and discussions. The 16th meeting was exceptional: experts' panel on SOA Governance . The presenter was Gilad Rothschild ( ARIS product manager of Seker the local distributor of IDS Scheer 's products).His perspective is Business Process Centric and mainly ARIS centric (and therefore focused on the modeling part of the Process Life Cycle). The view point of someone who is not a SOA expert, but rather an expert in business processes, as they are perceived by Business people instead of the usual IT people talking to IT people. The following bullets highlight the key elements i...

This post is the third post in the "Web 2.0 for dummies" posts, based on my Web 2.0 presentation in a conference. In year 2000 there were three leading operating systems families: Mainframe - The most robust and scalable platform, which was able to execute heterogeneous workloads, UNIX and Windows . The third was the least mature and the least scalable and robust platform. As an experienced expert in IBM Mainframe operating system, I was able to identify Windows 2000 Data Center weaknesses and to think of an add-on product for overcoming some of Windows ' limitations. The theoretical solution targeted both Data Centers and Web. I applied to a Seed Venture Capital which checked the document describing the problems and the proposed solution. The Venture Capital rejected my start up proposal. The only reason for immediate rejection was: "It is not pure Internet solution" i.e. the reason for rejection was possible applicability to Enterprises Data Centers. I am...

This post is based on my presentation on Web 2.0 . It is a continuation to Part 1: WOA , posted few days ago. For tasting Web 2.0 I am presenting four videos appearing in YouTube a Web 2.0 site for videos I choose deliberately a video on collapsing ( Domino Fall Down ) by search engine available in YouTube . The reason for my choice will be discovered in the next post of my Web 2.0 for Dummies posts to be appeared shortly. The Domino Fall Down Video slide shows a typical YouTube screen including: • The video was created by FlippyCat, probably an amateur and not a media expert. • Statistical information about FlippyCat • Options for the viewer e.g. adding to PlayList, downloading etc. • Flagging option in case of improper content or a content violating Copyrights. Flag is an alert for YouTube to delete the content. Flagging option illustrates a problem of partial content control by Web 2.0 projects. The YouTube 's community's help is needed for discovering improper content....

I presented in a conference of mixed audience: IT professionals and non IT professionals. The topic was: Web 2.0: The New Internet generation. The presentation was an introductory: describing and experiencing by navigating through examples of Web 2.0 services and discussing their attributes and the cultural and technological differences between them and traditional IT companies and products as well as Web 1.0 services and product. As SOA is the major topic of this blog, I am discussing the links between SOA and Web 2.0 before posting the rest of the presentation. The main links between SOA and Web 2.0 are as follows: Mashup s and Services share the same vision: non-IT people assembling services for creating an application. The results are Reuse of these services, Agility and fewer resources in comparison to previous Application Development methods. It should be remembered that assembling Services in an Enterprise or Virtual Enterprise context requires robustness, control and managem...

I read a new Aberdeen Group research titled: "Encryption and Key Management" (August, 2007). The article depict the changes of Data protection architecure and mechanisms and highlights current trends. The basic change is from data protection architecture which centralize all critical data in one place and denies unauthorized access to it to a more distributed data architecture. Aberdeen conclusion was based on a survey. However, many people can reach the same conclusion in less methodological approach: Data quantities, formats and locations are growing massively. users preserve data on PCs and on removable devices (e.g. Disk On Keys and CDs) as well as on multiple servers placed in multiple locations. The data protection approach of the DOD's Orange Book of the begining of the 90's is no longer realistic. Aberdeen Group basic findings can be summarized in three bullets: Critical and sensitive data should be indetified and protected. Probably not all other data could b...