SOA filling the Gaps

Dovel Technologies is buying Zapthink . It is the first time I read about Dovel.  Unlike Dovel, Zapthink is well known to me. As a SOA expert, I read Zapthink's analysis of SOA and other Architectural topics as well as short articles named ZapFlash .  SOA is Zapthink's major field of expertise. The small company headed by Ronald Schmelzer and Jason Bloomberg provides SOA training and certification, SOA Consulting Services and SOA Research. Schmelzer and Bloomberg's work reveals deep understanding and vast knowledge of SOA. The challenges facing small Analysts and Consultants are incomparable to challenges facing a lot larger company.  Like small software vendors many of the small Consulting and/or Market Analysis companies will not survive. The  circumstances are similar to the circumstances of smaller software vendors described in my post titled:  Vendors Survival Guide: Supermarket Grocery and Kiosk   as well as in other Vendors Sur...

My prediction as posted in ebizQ SOA Forum: The most promising area in SOA developments in 2011 could be Services for Social Networks . I would expect SOA related key developments in Business Process Management (BPM) , Business Intelligence (BI) and Case Management. I doubt if we will see key developments in SOA related to Cloud Computing in 2011. As far as Cloud Computing is concerned, we may see Service Oriented Infrastructure (SOI) related developments, which will also be related to Virtualization . Read also other opinions in  ebizQ SOA Forum and Zapthink's prediction . Unfortunately, failure rates of IT projects are high, and more unfortunately SOA endevours failures rates are even higher. will 2011 be the year in which SOA endevours rates fall gradually? I am not sure it will.

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...

The first question to ask is do you really need a SOA Consultant? In most cases the answer is yes. The consultant has vast knowledge and experience and deeper understanding. An Aberdeen Group survey finding supports the conclusion above. Consultants participate in Best in Class (BIC) enterprises SOA initiatives more than in average enterprises. Laggards SOA initiatives include consultants even less often than average enterprises initiatives. The next question to ask is: What kind of SOA Consultant should you hire?   I read a relatively old but interesting ZapFlash   written by ZapThink 's Jason Bloomberg in 2008. The ZapFlash titled: The Great SOA Consultant Squeeze discusses this issue. The ZapFlash describes a scenario of Request for Proposal (RFP) send to three consulting firms: a large, internationally known firm, a midsize firm with a well-regarded technical focus, and a boutique SOA firm that focuses solely on SOA engagements. Surprisingly, the large firm...

Few years ago a SOA Guru employed by one of the vendors paid a visit to my country and discussed SOA issues with a group of local architects. His reaction to my comment that a major goal of SOA is Business and IT alignment was that Business and IT alignment is only a buzzword. Real SOA is ESB based implementations. I could find at least 4 or 5 Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) products which are superior to his company's solutions (and I am not the only one: Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Wave at that time agreed with my opinion). The limitation of that vendor's ESB solution is not the point. The point is expressed extremely in Burton Group 's analyst Anne Thomas-Manes famous post SOA is dead Long Live Services : In many cases we (IT experts) implemented SOA wrongly due to lack of Business alignment . Another important point was discussed by ex - ZapThink 's analyst David Linthicum in a Zapflash titled: Avoid Vendor Driven Architecture (VDA)!   Many ...