SOA filling the Gaps

On January 05, 2009 Burton Group 's analyst Ann Thomas Manes published her famous blog post S OA is Dead; Long Live Services.  She arguied that " SOA met its demise on January 1, 2009, when it was wiped out by the catastrophic impact of the economic recession. SOA is survived by its offspring: mashups, BPM , SaaS , Cloud Computing , and all other architectural approaches that depend on “services”. Recently, Burton Group published a Research note titled:  The Lazarus Effect: SOA Returns . According to this Research Note, SOA demised during the Recession, but SOA is returning now after the recession. In Burton Group's words:  "As the global economy struggles back to health and organizations seek to redefine themselves and make strategic investments, many organizations are reconsidering SOA". Unfortunately, I did not read Frank Herbert 's and Bill Ransom 's Science Fiction book titled The Lazarus Effect , so I could only imagine that it is about recoveri...

I recently read a post by ZapThink 's analyst Jason Bloomberg titled:  Continuous Business Transformation: At the Center of ZapThink 2020 According to that post the permanence of change drives how we run our organizations,but it is against our human quest for stability. As far as Enterprise Architecture is concerned, he notes that the To-Be Architecture organizations trying to move to from current As-Is Architecture is a moving target: There will never be a stable Enterprise Architecture. I do agree that Architecture is dynamic in nature, however we should look more deeply at the characteristics of that ever changing process.   Does Enterprise Architecture evolve linearly or  Spiraly? I use the term linear for describing any type of monotonic evolution, just because linear is simpler than other monotonic fuctions. In my opinion as described in a previous post it is spiral . Yesterday, I encountered a SaaS example supporting my case. I looked at an old Giga Informa...

Cloud Computing and the Security Paradox On September, 14th  I participated in a local IBM conference titled: Smarter Solutions for a Smarter Business. One of the most interesting and practical presentations was Moises Navarro's presentation on Cloud Computing . He quoted an IBM survey about suitable and unsuitable workload types for implementation in the Cloud. The ten leading suitable workloads included many Infrastructure services and Desktop Services. The unsuitable workloads list included ERP as well as other Core Applications as I would expect (for example, read my previous post SaaS is Going Mainstream ). However, it also included Security Services, as one of the most unsuitable workloads. On one hand, it is not a surprising finding because Security concerns are Cloud Computing inhibitors, but on the other hand Security Services are part of infrastructure Services, and therefore could be a good fit for implementation in the Cloud. A recent Aberdeen Group 's Research No...

Probably not. Java is too strong to be killed. I posted the following answer to the question: Will Oracle's lawsuit Against Google Put a Chill on Java Adoption?  asked in ebizQ SOA Forum When Oracle acquired Sun, I thought it was a wrong decision (read my post: Vendors Survival:The Sun is red - Oracle to buy Sun First Take   ). It seems that Oracle's managers reached a similar  conclusion and are trying to minimize the amount of money they lose. The lawsuit against Google is one  of the ways to achieve it. However, this lawsuit  supports the concerns about Java after Oracle  acquired Sun. The delicate balance of the Java community with two  strong players (IBM and BEA), Sun as the owner of  Java and leader of the Java Community Process and  other strong players (Oracle, SAP, RedHat/Jboss etc.)  no longer exists. Oracle swallowed BEA and Sun and is now the owner  of Java. Java w...

Unlike the other three leading Eco Systems vendors Microsoft , Oracle and SAP , IBM is not a player in the applications market. Its absence from this market is based on strategy which does not include ERP , CRM and other applications as one of its target markets. So why is I BM going to acquire a small CRM vendor named Unica?     In order to answer this question I am going to describe the first time the name Unica was mentioned to me. It was a strategic CRM consulting project I was participating in. The large customer was using Siebel . I joined a CRM expert with vast knowledge and experience of the customer's  implementation as well as other CRM projects. My role was to analyze the CRM market and its trends focusing on implications relevant to that client. I choose to focus on Siebel and the other three market leaders of that time: SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft and two other unique products which may supplement them (Unica and Kana ). Two days before we gave the cli...

I started my career in the seventies, working as a programmer for a Governmental Service Bureau providing service to most of the public sector organizations in my country. We used IBM 360 Mainframes with MVT Operating System . The V  did not stand for Virtual  (There was no Virtual Storage   support), but  stood for Variable, because it was an Opertaing System capable of managing  Variable length partitions. MVT predecessor  SVS ( Single Virtual  Storage ), was followed by MVS  (Multiple Virtual Storages) Current Mainframe Operating Systems are based upon MVS. ON 1995 it was extended and brnaded as  OS/390 . OS/390 was replaced by  z/OS   Operating System. In the 1990s many people believed that    "the Mainframe is dead".   However, the Mainframe is still a v aluable and profitable asset for IBM, used by many large enterprises.   On J uly 22 2010,  IBM announced the new z-E...

Borges in 1951, by Grete Stern Picture Source: Wikimedia Commons   On June 14th I attended the Israeli Wikipedia Academy 2010 conference in Tel-Aviv University. The interesting conference focused on Wikipedia and Wiki technology usage in Academic context and schools. Most of the presentations focused on Wiki or Wikipedia research, usage and projects. The main theme repeating in most presentations was that Wiki based Collaboration and Participation changes the Game's Rules. However, in some contexts changing the rules is very useful, while in other contexts the usefulness is questionable. Changing the rules implies new challenges to all process participants such as Users, Content Creators, Managers, Auditors etc. I already described these challenges in previous posts: Wikipedia the Good the Bad and the Ugly and Web 2.0 for Dummies – Part 7: Wikipedia. A Keynote Presentation on Remembering and Forgetting In my opinion, the Keynote by Prof. Viktor Mayer-S...

The Multi-Tenant model for SaaS  look like an efficient and simple model. However, it is so simple on the abstraction layer. Complexities are hidden in more technical layers. Separating users data and data growth are two of the main issues. I recommend reading an interesting blog post  written by Nati Shalom, describing clearly those issues and  current approaches for handling the problems.

On May 14th SAP AG signed a definitive agreement to acquire Sybase Inc. for approximately $5,800 million. The offer price represents a premium of 44% over the three-month average stock price of Sybase and a premium of approximately 56.36% over the closing price of Sybase' common stock of $41.57 on May 11, According to the announcements by the two companies the deal, which follows a partnership for a significant time, is beneficial for both companies. I partially agree: It is very good for Sybase. However, I think that acquiring Sybase looks like a SAP's mistake. What motivated SAP to acquire Sybase? Previous SAP's CEO LEO Apotheker was replaced by Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe due to conservative business approach. One of the significant results of this approach is few acquisitions. SAP's main competitor Oracle, is acquiring many companies in a relatively short time. So far SAP's significant acquisition was Business Objects a Business Intelligence inf...

Writing White Papers and Blog posts about Cloud Computing and SaaS is a common phenomenon. I estimate that approximately 30% of the e-mails (not including Spam messages) I receive are about Cloud Computing and/or SaaS. SaaS is not only a buzzword but a real solution which is rapidly going Mainstream.(Read previous posts:    E ven Sap is offering SaaS ERP , Future Applications SaaS or Traditiona l, SaaS is Going Mainstream ). IBM 's acquisition of Cast Iron is another indication  of SaaS importance. IBM is a leading Integration vendor. IBM's integration solutions are branded WebSphere , e.g.  WebSphere Application Server , WebSphere message Broker , WebSphere Process Server , WebSphere MQ etc. IBM's integration solutions address many integration needs and patterns; however it seems that none of them address properly integration of SaaS applications with  Data Center applications as well as integration of a SaaS service in one Cloud with a...