SOA filling the Gaps

Few days ago I published a post titled: BPM - Agility is a Must . In that post I explained why Agility is important in BPM Programs and Projects. I quoted two analysts firms: Aberdeen Group (ten years ago) and Forrester Research (2013). I did not quote the largest analysts firm: Gartner. I did not quote Gartner, not because their analysts' opinion is different. The reason was no quickly available source to quote. Today I read Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Intelligent Business Process Management Suites dated 17 March 2014. This Research Note was written by: Teresa Jones, Roy Schulte and Michelle Cantara.  Now I have an handy quote supporting my opinion: "IBPMS addresses the increasing need for Business managers to react quickly to event that impact their business and to gain better insights into business operations so that they can take the right corrective actions.  Business change is inevitable, and leading organizations will require the ability ...

Agility is essential in the modern Business and Information Technology world. Many posts about  Service Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management in this blog are about Agility and Adaptation. If you think that you know better than others, you probably will not Adapt. Example 1: A Bank Few years ago, instead of receiving Web Page with one of my bank account reports, I received an error message. As the report was consistently displayed correctly, it looks like a bug correction implemented with insufficient Regression Tests .   I notified the bank about the problem. They ignored my report and tried to find my incapability to use a Web Site (after more than 30 years in IT, including many years of using their Web Site). After a week or two I identified the circumstances in which the report is not displayed correctly: It happens if and only if, the report should be displayed in more than one Web Page . I send to the bank my analysis + the error m...

Agility is considered as a major advantage of SOA , Virtualization and Cloud Computing . By using Abstraction we create an Agile less complex model for Business people and IT experts.  In this new Agile world it is easy to Change, Adapt and Build new entities. Sometimes it could be too easy.   With too much Agility it may be a chaotic Enterprise rather than Elastic, Flexible and Easy to change enterprise or Virtual Enterprise. If we would like to enjoy the Bright side of Agility we have to take into consideration the possible Dark side of Agility and by Planning and Managing the Architecture and Infrastructure avoid of too much Agility.   Virtualization as  an example The following section is an example illustrating the problems caused by too much Agility in Virtualization. It should be remembered that not necessarily Virtualization implies too much Agility. Without too much Agility it is a valuable technology both in the Data Center context and th...

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...

One of the most difficult tasks of a major paradigm shift or architectural change or major technological change is Organizational Culture change (Corporate Culture change). Without a cultural change SOA 's Value Proposition could be turned to nothing, because SOA's benefits such as Service Reuse will not take place.  In a recent ebizQ webinar Gartner 's VP Distinguished Analyst Yefim Natis , talked about SOA Proponents’ Myths. 100% Service Reuse is one of these myths. The reality is that successful Service Reuse ratio is about 30%. It is obvious that Service Reuse is easy to say and is hard to use . The expectations of near to 100 percent usage of Objects in Objects Oriented also failed. However, there are significant measured benefits even to small percentage of Object Reuse and more significant benefits for small percentage of Service Reuse. Why is Service Reuse limited? The main reasons are Technical and Cultural. As far as Technical reasons are concerned, somet...