From the Editor

The PaaS Supply Chain

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 09:00:00 EST

In many cases, the end of the year gives you time to step back and take stock of the last 12 months. This is when many of us take a hard look at what worked and what did not, complete performance reviews, and formulate plans for the coming year. For me, it is all of those things plus a time when I usually get to catch up on my sadly neglected reading list. First up on my reading list this year: Clockspeed : Winning Industry Control in the Age of Temporary Advantage by Thomas Fine. I am sure many of you have either read Clockspeed yourself or heard it mentioned in various circles. I am fast approaching the end, and while the book itself is not new (originally published in 1999), it seems, based on my own impressions and several other notable reviews, that the lessons of this piece are timeless.

Why Data Center Consolidation Makes Sense

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 10:45:00 EST

Now more than every there is pressure on IT to offer higher levels of service and a greater degree of availability all while cutting back on costs. As such, making sure your technology environment is efficient and effectively managed is absolutely essential. The data center, by its very nature, is the one place where IT resources are most concentrated, and the one place where potential strategic gains are most likely to occur. If you want to improve your computing environment and cut costs at the same time, you need to start with the data center.

The Benefits of Data Center Consolidation

One of the best ways to do just that is through consolidation. By simplifying your data center environment, you achieve several goals:
•   Increased manageability
•   Reduced costs in areas of human resources, facilities, complexity and capital expenditures
•   Improved service levels
•   Higher availability
•   Minimization of impact from outside factors

In short, if you get your data center humming along the way it should, your business will ultimately do the same.

Factors in Data Center Consolidation

Data center consolidation is about more than just combining servers. While that’s certainly part of the process, there are a number of areas that go into data center consolidation. Each of these factors is an opportunity for reduced cost and greater manageability.

One factor to start with is the issue of physical locations. A business that has multiple physical data centers has multiple cost redundancies, all of which are ripe for cutting. By combining physical locations, you greatly reduce overhead. While multiple data center locations can be one way to address disaster recovery and business continuity, there are much more effective (and cost-effective) ways to address those concerns.

Another important issue is server consolidation. This doesn’t just include combining like servers, however. It also includes looking at issues like application consolidation. If two departments are handling the same data from two different applications, you have another opportunity for improved efficiency. The obvious concern here, of course, is making sure that you can provide the same features to both departments that they had pre-consolidation.

Infrastructure is another area of data center consolidation. This includes creating more efficient networks, as well as more efficient storage management. It also includes utilizing shared services to whatever degree is possible.

The final area of data center consolidation is the most difficult, and it relates to people and processes. While you can switch out a server in a matter of hours or even minutes, bringing personnel up to speed on those changes can take much longer. Still, for your company to be at the top of its game, it’s sometimes necessary. The key to dealing with these kinds of issues is to have buy-in from someone in upper management, as well as department heads, who understand the business case for consolidation and can really get behind your consolidation efforts.

The Modern Virtualized Data Center: Download the whitepaper

Data center resources have traditionally been underutilized while drawing enormous amounts of power and taking up valuable floorspace. Storage virtualization has been a positive evolutionary step in the data center, driving consolidation of these resources to maximize utilization and power savings, as well as to simplify management and maintenance. Read more by downloading the white paper from Pillar Data Systems.

Economy Drives Adoption of Virtual Lab Technology

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST

Everyone wants to lower their capital expenditures and increase operational efficiency - it's a sign of the times. The economy of the past 12 - 18 months has forced all organizations to do more with less and become more efficient. While everyone can identify with the request to do more with less, they can also identify with the overwhelming need to deliver quality. The need to deliver quality is an age-old adage and has many interpretations as to what "quality" actually means. This argument is likely to rage on in perpetuity at an academic level.

SOA World: Give Me a Sign

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 07:00:00 EST

One of my favorite sayings is, "If you don't know where you're going, any direction will do." While in many cases people take that as license to do whatever they feel like, what it really means is that before you embark on a journey, you should plan your destination. You know, get out the map, plot your direction, find out where you want to go, and what you want to accomplish along the way.

How to Sell an SOA

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 08:00:00 EST

As you can imagine, I spend a lot of time speaking to people about service-oriented architecture (and its variants for infrastructure and enterprise) and about how best to create a true implementation (or at least, an effective one). There is a great deal of detail in creating such an artifact – design yes, but also implementation, operational details, governance, and a myriad of other tasks that can easily take up a chief architect’s entire day.

Five Reasons to Start a SOA Technology Company Now

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:00:00 EDT

I know, the economy is rough these days. Myself, I'm unwilling to look at my mutual funds until we're through this. However, when times are tough, markets normalize, and while the stock holders and venture capitalists out there are crying in their beers, now could be a great time to start something new for those innovative and resourceful few. The idea is that when it does not seem like a good time to start a company, typically that is the best time to start a company. In this case you’re looking to bring in second generation technology, or technology created out of the lessons learned in the first. Thus, you have a better understanding of the problems at hand, and how SOA technology can solve those problems. There are huge opportunities here, as long as you make the right moves.

How to Sell an SOA

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 14:00:00 EDT

SOA in many ways reminds me of relational database technology. At it’s first inception, the concept of an RDBMS must have had a hard sell. Sure it made perfect sense to arrange the data and ensure that the relationships between the data were enforced but what was the business case that enabled the purchase of this new and expensive technology? You certainly couldn’t say that by introducing a relation database you were going to make the company twenty million dollars a year annually. So the RDBMS slowly made it’s way into the IT arsenal a little at a time, with justifications added in a variety of ways.

SOA World Editorial: Plays Well with Others

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:00:00 EDT

I remember (vaguely) when I was in kindergarten, playing with my classmates, learning to make things out of clay and paper, and generally enjoying that sneaky introduction to education. Little did I know that my teacher (I forget her name, it was a long time ago) was grading my performance, checking off boxes on a card with phrases like "plays well with others" or the now infamous "Runs with Scissors."

SOA Editorial: Blowing My Horn

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:12:00 EDT

There's a biblical story about a walled city called Jericho. In the story, the walled city was under siege, and the folks who wanted in blew their horns for seven days and then the walls all fell down. The Open Group has an initiative based on this story, called Jericho Security, which is based on the premise of security without walls.

SOA and Services

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:00:00 EDT

When I was a kid, which seems like just yesterday (and no comments from the peanut gallery), I loved playing with LEGO, making imaginary ray guns, space ships, and other things that amuse the average boy. LEGO's popularity and longevity have to be due in no small part to the ability to assemble a new creation from basic components.

SOA World Editorial - Discovering Dr. Dolittle

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:15:00 EDT

From the title, you might be thinking that I'm about to start this month's editorial with a reference to talking to animals and somehow tie that into SOA. Instead, what I actually would like to talk about is the pushmi-pullyu (I got the spelling from Wikipedia; I always thought it was 'push-me pull you'). In the books, the pushmi-pullyu is an animal with two heads, each one going in the opposite direction.

SOA Governance vs SOA Management

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 22:15:00 EDT

It seems like not a day goes by lately in which some new story of malfeasance in office doesn't come out - whether it's lying under oath, using the services of a call girl, or spying on other officials in the government in order to further a personal agenda. Clearly, our elected officials don't have a clue about the meaning of governance.

Put on a Happy Face(book)

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:00:00 EDT

I had the opportunity recently to speak at a Microsoft event on Web 2.0. It was an interesting evening, with speakers from several organizations discussing various issues and strategies that could be used to move the bar forward on the Web. Now if you're a faithful reader, you've seen me rant every so often about the inadequacies of browser technology when it comes to delivering applications over the Internet.

How Does Einstein Relate to SOA?

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:45:00 EST

As a student of physics, Albert Einstein is one of my personal heroes. Aside from being one of the most brilliant minds to ever contemplate the universe, Albert had a way with words. One of his quotes strikes me as particularly apropos for this month's issue - 'Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.'

The Last Mile in SOA - Taming the User Interface

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 05:15:00 EST

Last month I wrote about the future, what might be ahead for SOA and beyond, focusing significantly on user interfaces. This month I'm still thinking about user interfaces and the impact they have on the final judge of any SOA project - the end user. If you've read my editorials over the past few years, you're aware I'm an absolute opponent of the browser as a means of delivering applications.

I'm Wondering What Comes After SOA

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 10:00:00 EST

At the end of the year, it's always interesting to take a moment and try to imagine what's next. In this case, I'm not thinking about whether the Patriots will win the Super Bowl, I'm wondering what comes after service-oriented architecture. Although SOA has been dramatically hyped as the solution to cure all ills, it has still taken a good deal of time for organizations to adopt SOA in even a limited fashion.

Technologists Are No Longer Speaking in Tongues

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 09:45:00 EST

Recently I had a chance to do some training in France. I participated in a week of coursework with classmates from all over the world. Some were from France, Spain, Holland, Sweden, and England; others were from even further - the United States and even India. To say the least, it was an eye-opening experience and dramatic evidence that standards and interoperability are important in all aspects of our work as technologists.

Uncle Sean

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 13:00:00 EDT

I have no children myself, but I've watched my nieces and nephew grow from newborns to walking, talking, independent individuals over the years. To me, one of the most fascinating parts of watching a child grow is seeing them go from their first tentative, hesitant steps to toddling around, grabbing the furniture at every opportunity but gaining mobility to finally running around and crashing into my legs more often than I care to think about.

SOA World - Come Together

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 15:00:00 EDT

SOA - which provides capabilities for loosely coupling these duplicate systems, federating the data between them and managing the concept of systems of record - is an enabler that eases the pain of bringing two entities together. Much like a catalyst that enables a reaction, SOA simplifies the integration requirements by lowering the barriers for simultaneous operation. It also provides the ability to provide a common façade over multiple integration points, allowing the indefinite operation of redundant systems, as well as for the eventual retirement of some of the redundant software.

Child's Play SOA

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 19:15:00 EDT

When Web services first burst onto the scene, which in my mind was the beginning of the SOA movement, one of the biggest challenges faced by early implementers was the perceived lack of security. Fear and uncertainty abounded, and it was years before the majority of IT organizations became comfortable with the level of security that could be provided. What I find interesting at this juncture, when SOA is now a fairly well-established architectural paradigm, is that in many ways Security is the security blanket (you had to know this was coming) of SOA.

SOA Plays Well with AJAX and Web 2.0

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 07:45:00 EDT

Recently SOAWorld Magazine was the host of a conference on SOA and Web 2.0 in New York City. SOAWorld 2007 brought together an amazing group of IT professionals who helped describe and expand the definitions of SOA. Web 2.0 is more than just AJAX. RSS feeds and blogs provide new ways to publish and edit Internet-based content and form communities. Flash and a host of other technologies are going a long way to provide the rich Internet application landscape that may make the browser truly useable instead of downright annoying. In time, the plug-ins may replace the browser entirely, which would be a godsend (in my opinion at least).

SOA Editorial — The Rise of the Machine

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 16:30:00 EDT

Many recent science fiction novels deal with the concept of nanites - tiny bits of computers than can aggregate themselves to form new larger composites to assist their host. These concepts typically relate to making human cells self-healing, but they also have their sinister aspects, like the terminator, made out of liquid living metal in the last movie, who could reconfigure himself at will into any shape, and recover from any injury.

SOA World Editorial — Ready, Fire, Aim

Thu, 24 May 2007 07:15:00 EDT

We all do it from time to time - forget something, get it out of sequence - and experience that annoying feeling that we've just done something incredibly stupid. I usually arrive at the dry cleaners to pick up my clothes, only to realize I'd left the next batch behind. Fortunately, it's not a long drive. But it's usually because I'm in a rush, trying to accomplish multiple things. If I slowed down just a second, I might accomplish more.

SOA World Editorial — (Over) Due Process

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 15:30:00 EDT

Sometimes it seems like it takes forever for new technology to be adopted, and even when a technology goes mainstream, it seems as if people cling to the old ways long after a better way has been shown. Heck, I drive a car but still have a couple of horses - sometimes you just want the old and familiar around.

SOA World Editorial — Who's in Charge Here?

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 19:30:00 EDT

You know, I love an election year. The drama, the emotion, the positioning, it all makes me think about running for office myself - or at least going through the motions to generate a large war chest that I can dip into (I AM from New Jersey, it's a time-honored tradition). Oh, wait a minute this isn't an election year. Not that you'd know it from the slew of politicians tossing their hats in the ring. I guess it's a good idea to get in the race early if you're aiming for the brass ring.

Would You Buy SOA From This Man?

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 13:30:00 EDT

This month I thought I'd put on my sales hat for a moment and talk about what it takes to actually sell someone on the concept of using service-oriented architecture as the underlying paradigm for an organization's information technology implementation and direction. In part this is because there's still a good deal of resistance to SOA as that basis.

SOA World Editorial — Getting on the Grid

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 07:15:00 EDT

One of the most interesting aspects of being a consultant is that I get exposed to any number of different facets of system design in the course of an assignment. While I tend to focus more on application and integration work, I find it fascinating to deal with the concepts of services in the context of infrastructure.

SOA Web Services — Learning the Language

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 10:45:00 EST

In some ways, an industry is like a country. It has its citizens, the corporations, its own particular nuances that serve to make one industry just that much different from another (think insurance and financial services) as to be distinct, and it has a language.

SOA Editorial — Building Codes

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 15:00:00 EST

There's a guy I know who's incredibly gifted when it comes to building things. I've watched him repair a barn, build a new shed, put up a roof - you name it; if it can be done with wood and tools, this is the guy to do it. And I've never seen him use a plan - he just knows what to do.

SOA/WSJ Editorial — SOA for SaaS

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 10:00:00 EST

If I were a lot more paranoid than I am (well, perhaps at least a little more than I am), I might suspect that the various free e-mail programs were a social engineering attempt by the big software coalition (yes, I know, it doesn't exist) to ultimately change the way we use our computers.

SOA Web Services Editorial — Development Blues

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 16:00:00 EDT

Nothing is more enlightening for a technologist than to observe development in progress. We're faced constantly with a bewildering array of choices and tools. We see specifications on paper that then become something completely different when we actually get to see them implemented in actual software that we then configure to meet our needs, or at least we hope.

SOA Web Services Journal Editorial — The SOA Dichotomy

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 19:30:00 EDT

As editor, I review a great many proposals for articles. A good portion of them deal with SOA, which is to be expected. When I review them, I'm reminded that there are two very different views of SOA, which in my opinion are both equally true. I call this the SOA Dichotomy, because these views seemingly contradict one another.

Compliance Issues Represent Pieces of a Puzzle

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 13:00:00 EDT

Imagine trying to solve a puzzle without being certain what the end result should look like, much less how the pieces fit together. Now imagine trying to build the puzzle pieces themselves. Bit of a challenge? To say the least! But this is exactly the situation facing many business and IT executives when it comes to complying with the increasing number of standards and regulations in their industries today.

SOA Editorial - A Little Help from My Friends

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 16:45:00 EDT

It's sometimes funny to write about service-oriented architecture. One of the things I say often and believe is that you can't buy a service-oriented architecture. SOA is not just technology, it's philosophy, organizational change, and business transformation. There's no place to buy that kind of dramatic, deeply impacting change.

SOA Web Services Journal - Collect(ing) Calls

Fri, 09 Jun 2006 14:00:00 EDT

I'm sitting in the airport, waiting for my end-of-week flight, and listening to the latest security controversy. Apparently the government has compiled a database of phone records as part of their fight against terrorism - the theory being that by analyzing the call patterns and using some social engineering, they might be able to identify terrorist activity.

What's the Only Thing Worse...?

Wed, 10 May 2006 10:00:00 EDT

If you work in the IT industry long enough, you're bound to hear one particular joke (well, you'll hear a number, I want to focus on this one) - 'What's the only thing worse than no architect on a project?' The answer of course is 'Two or more'. And of course that's true, since when you put four architects in a room, you get five opinions (at least one is schizophrenic) on anything.

SOA Web Services Journal Editorial: "The GUI I Want"

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 14:45:00 EDT

Recently I happened upon a blog site that had a discussion of one of my previous articles, one in which I proposed a need for a new 'browser.' The discussion was very interesting, but it was obvious to me I had not been clear about what I was asking for. Some of the folks on the board suggested that we could do what I wanted using Swing. Others realized that that required an installed or installable software distribution, and fixed on things like the Ruby language as a different approach. While all of these ideas had some merit, they didn't capture the true essence of what I think we need.

SOA Web Services Editorial: Lego My SOA

Mon, 06 Mar 2006 15:00:00 EST

Just about every publication, marketing brochure, and IT commercial currently on parade for your enjoyment contains some mention of service-oriented architecture. If products were still sold in boxes, instead of downloaded, you would see a bright sticker on the box saying 'New and Improved: Now with SOA.' Instead of Fuller brushes, today's sales wiz now pushes SOA - it's good for what ails you.

"The Backdoor" – BPM Solutions Pay

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 19:45:00 EST

People who know me would generally agree I'm a straightforward guy - I pretty much just like to move in the direction I've said I was going, rather than try to move from side to side and finesse something. So when it comes to technology, I tend to like to go with technology because it makes sense, and I usually assume that most IT organizations work that way as well.

Editorial: Who's in Charge Here?

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 16:00:00 EST

If you're old enough, you probably remember the whole episode with Al Haig in the White House, saying 'I'm in charge here' during the period when Reagan was shot. He wasn't really, but it's a good illustration of the concept of confusion, and how different people react to situations. How is this relevant to SOA and Web services? That's an excellent question.