SOA filling the Gaps

Nobody is able to predict accurately. IT is less predictable than other industries because it is a"moving target".  My "Vendors Survival" posts titled: Vendors Survival: will X survive until y (ten years from the year the post was written)? X is a large IT vendor such as Google , Apple , Facebook , Microsoft , IBM . HP etc., could be wrong. Actually I wrote explicitly that my predictions could be wrong. Even predictions for the next year could be wrong. Even leading analysts firms predictions could be wrong. Based on this idea I wrote a post titled: Gartner's 2015 Strategic Predictions: Trivial, Over Estimated and Interesting . Gartner's prediction about IOT as a Strategic Technology was included in the Interesting group i.e predictions that are not trivial and I believe will be important few years after the prediction.  In 2017 it seems that Gartner's IOT Prediction was not a wrong prediction. There are plenty of Things which are Internet entiti...

Agile Methodologies are used frequently in modern systems development. Readers of this blog, as well as many people who do not read it, know that the rate of Business changes was accelerated and Information Technology systems should be flexible in order to adapt  quickly  to the Business changes. Agile Methodologies focus on high priority requirements. If you would use classic Waterfall methodologies, probably the requirements will change before you complete the Analysis. According to an old Aberdeen Group's survey, published a decade ago, the time for implementing BPM is more important than the implementation's costs. The results of the Aberdeen Group's survey implies that  Agility was required in implementing BPM. Those days, it is required more than it was required ten years ago. Forrester's analysts  Clay Richardson and John R. Rymer wrote in 2013: "The Mantra for BPM has always been "start small, think big, move fast!" However, most teams ...

More than ten years ago I presented in a local ERP conference in Haifa . I am not an ERP expert. I was invited to present because I worked as a self-employed consultant for GiGa Information Group , which was acquired in February 2003 by Forrester Research .   Instead of presenting non-expert's presentation, I preferred to tell the audience that I am presenting Giga's Analyst's Byron Miller's presentation. Miller's presentation was interesting. He described three ERP states, depicted in the simple image above. I built a simplified image based on his classification. The current state, in 2002, was Suite state. transformation to the other states requires advancements in Technical Integration and in Semantic Standards. The harder task is Semantic Standards, therefore different ERP states are applicable for the same level of Technical Integration. Suite state, in which you have to chose a single ERP vendor solution, is the less desired state. According to...

picture source: Wikipedia The word Captive in this context, is not about someone caught by enemy's forces.  It is about a customer, whose conception about the Consultant's topic are dictated by an expert or someone pretending to be an expert.  In a previous post you can find an example. The post titled:  Vendor Survival Guide: Supermarket, Grocery and Kiosk .  An example depicted in that post was Data Sorting   Software product selection process. The Captive Customer selected a product of Servers and Operating Systems vendor (The vendor is an analogy to a Supermarket). I recommended, a superior product of a small company. Sorting Software was the only product the company developed and marketed (Kiosk). The "Supermarket" does not care, if you buy chewing gum , as long as you buy meat , fish , bread  and milk (Servers, Storage , Operating Systems etc.). The kiosk's existence depends on chewing gum (Sorting Software). The "kiosk" will try...

Why SOA is implemented by more enterprises than BPM ?  SOA is an Architecture, so an enterprise may use an Architecture or not.  Many Enterprises without any architecture, begin their SOA initiative, when SOA was only Hype and buzzword. Other Enterprises followed when it matured. Some realized measurable SOA benefits.  Unfortunately, many of them executed it wrongly, and therefore their SOA benefits were limited or even non-existent.  Managing Business Processes is not an option it is a must . Therefore Enterprises managed their Processes manually or by usage of  code  embedded in Systems' Business Logic Layer. It is difficult to convince them to change their Process Management practices by implementing BPM. The company's management team may use the slogan: If it is not broken do not fix it.   The significant value of BPM is not Business Process Automation. It is Business Process Change or Improvement or Flexibility. In order to change a Bus...

In previous posts such as  Cloud Computing: Hype, Vision or Reality? ,  Hyped Cloud Technologies ,  PAAS is not Mainstream yet ,  SaaS is going Mainstream ,  Future applications: SaaS or traditional?   I discussed Cloud Computing. Recently I read  Joe McKendrick 's interesting article titled: Cloud Computing Market Hot, But How Hot? Estimates are All Over the Map Joe's views and predictions are similar to mine. However, he base his opinions on actual survey done by him, as part of his work with  Unisphere Research / Information Today Inc and on leading Analyst firms predictions. I recommend reading Joe's article.  The following bullets quote few highlights: Market Research Media ,cited  in the Bloomberg report, says the cloud market will reach $270 billion in 2020. Forrester is a tad less optimistic,  predicting  last year that the market will hit $241 billion by that time.   Research firm IDC  says...

In a previous post titled Hyped Cloud Technologies Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) tied in the fourth place in a ReadWrite Cloud survey of Hyped Cloud Technologies. Yesterday, I read a Forrester Research Note about PaaS, which may explain why it is rated as one of the most Hyped Cloud Technologies.    Simply, PaaS is immature technology.  Immature technologies related to in the spotlight topic such as Cloud Computing , are natural hype candidates.     PaaS and IaaS PaaS and IaaS are related concepts: both provide technology for development and deployment of applications in the Cloud. IaaS solutions such as Amazon EC2 or Amazon S3 provide basic platform for Application Development and Application Deployment.  It is only infrastructure. Unlike IaaS, PaaS provides a complete Application Platform which includes Development Tools (e.g     Integrated Development Environment ), Runtime Environmen...

A s 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 Ge...