SOA in Recession

On March 23th 2009 I presented in the Israeli Systems Analyst Conference. The topic: SOA a means for Leveraging Business development in Recession?

Vendors Survival: Sun Microsystems revisited

In July 2008 I published a post in my Vendor Survival series. In the post titled Will SUN Microsystems Survive until 2018? I argued that SUN will not survive and named IBM, HP and EMC as companies which may think of SUN as target for acquisition. It looks like the recession shortened the time frame, and now according to

Bloomberg IBM is in a process of examining acquisition of SUN.

According to Bloomberg, The purchase would give IBM access to customers loyal to the Sun brand.

Bloomberg adds that Sun counts General Electric Co. and General Motors Corp. among its customers. Servers, which run networks and Web sites, account for almost half Sun’s total sales,

General Motors Corp is a company which was heart badly during the recession. No wonder that SUN was also heart and is an immediate acquisition target.

Zdnet's Larry Dignan post states that the acquisition makes sense and it is a question of IBM's acquiring SUN as a company vs. IBM acquiring SUN in parts.

I recommend reading his interesting post.

As you can conclude by reading my first post on SUN survival, I agree with most parts of his analysis. In my view the missing part in his analysis is Java.

Dana Gardner opposed Larry Dignan's view and argues that buying SUN makes no sense for IBM.

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However he thinks of Dell, EMC, RedHat and the new player in servers market Cisco as the only candidates for purchasing SUN. He argues that one of these companies may buy SUN. A reasonable price, according to him is under 4 Billion USDs.

I do not think RedHat, a software vendor, will acquire a hardware vendor like Sun.

Anyway, his opinion is in accord with my prediction that SUN Microsystems will not survive for the Long Term.

Tony Baer's post states that SUN is irrelevant acquisition target for IBM.

He argues that UNIX market is not growing and that IBM does not need MySQL database because of its more scalable DB2 database.

His position is that Fujitsu, SUN's primary Solaris OEM, is the only logical suitor left standing.

IBM's acquisition history does not sustain his view, as far as the Databases market is concerned: IBM acquired Informix and a small Open Source database company.

MYSQL could be positioned as a cheaper alternative to Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle and as an Open Source alternative to commercial databases.

Mind the Gap not the Name

As mentioned in my post ESB for an Orphan, Business & IT alignment is one of SOA's Value Propositions. Do we need also to change the name of Information Technology (IT) to another name reflecting IT's new role as Business related technology?
George F. Colony, Forrester Research founder, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer thinks it should be changed to Business Technology (BT).

About three years ago, he posted his view in Forrester Research's Web site and initiated a very interesting discussion. Forrester's analysts and other IT or BT experts presented their views and their comments on George Colony's view. Some participants agreed with him, while other suggested other new names replacing IT. Surely, some participants thought IT should remain the name for IT. I do think that the issue was not resolved and therefore I am posting again my opinion. Comments are welcomed.

My Opinion titled: Mind the Gap not the Name

I read George Colony's view and the comments to it. The only agreement is no agreement about what a new name for IT should be if any.

The real issue is the gap between IT and Business. George Colony is right: Business can not function without IT, but IT is also a main obstacle to business growth due to no Business and IT alignment and the current inflexible IT architectures.

I think that in the past we (IT people) focused on new technologies and architectures (and perhaps new names and acronyms) instead of servicing the business requirements.

based on many clients' organizations, is that we (IT people) can do more in order to reduce the gap. In my opinion, SOA, if properly implemented, would reduce the gap for the long term.

As far as the less important naming is concerned I have no acronym to offer.

If a new acronym would emerge the following elements could be part of it:

Information, Processes, Services.

I agree with Phil Murphy and others that Business should not be a part of that acronym.

Should Technology be part of it?

I am not sure.

Technology is a broader term referring to other non IT technologies, which may be essential for some business segments (e.g. Mechanical Engineering technologies in Automobile or Airplane industries).