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Liz Book (LB): This is Elizabeth Book, Editor-in-Chief of ebizQ and thanks for joining us on another ebizQ podcast. Today, I’m speaking with Rob Morris, Sr. VP for Marketing and Strategy at GT Software, a rapid SOA development solutions company for the mainframe. Thank you for being with us today, Rob.

Rob Morris (RM): Thank you, Elizabeth.

LB: So, GT Software is a 25 year old company doing really nothing but mainframe. Can you talk about SOA in the mainframe and maybe give us a state of the market perspective on what is going on?

RM: You know, it’s really interesting. Within the mainframe space and it’s long been known this way, there’s still vast amounts of corporate data, corporate applications and core business functionality that’s locked up in the mainframe and certainly the problem the mainframe integration has been around for quite some time. With the advent of SOA as an approach to maybe unlock or provide a better means to approach how I leverage that data and leverage those applications, what we’re seeing is that companies are taking what I would consider a very simplistic approach to solving the problem. I think it’s things we’ve been seeing in the industry lately that doing web services does not mean you’re doing SOA and therefore, you cannot expect to realized the benefits of SOA if you’re just focused on web services.

So, for a lot of reasons, we see mainframe organizations simply stopping at the term Service Enabling or web service enabling the mainframe and not really getting to the broader spectrum of what SOA can mean for them in the context of the mainframe. So, that’s everything from not getting the right resources involved on the mainframe, not focusing on how I define services and what are proper services vs. just worrying about the mechanisms of how I communicate to them or something a bit broader and something not as obvious to how am I going to incorporate things like my batch systems which are still prevalent in the mainframe world and have those participate in my service oriented architecture.

So, again, people continue to take this very simplistic view and unfortunately from some of the vendor perspectives it’s a view being promoted out there or being confused by what a lot of people are talking about out there and the complexities around it and when you start to break it all down, you realize that they’re not going to achieve these benefits unless they take a step back and take a broader view of how they’re going about this.

LB: OK, you mentioned batch processing and people don’t really associate batch processing necessarily with service oriented architecture. Can we talk about that?

RM: Actually, it’s a very, very interesting and intriguing development that, frankly, we’re very happy about. We’ve been working on it in conjunction with some customers and if you take a step back on this topic and start to think about it in the financial services industry, specifically insurance and other industries like that, batch is a huge part of how they continue to run their businesses. It’s really the only way that you can continue to process the volume of transactions required on a daily basis to do things like maybe claims processing or payroll remediation, things of that nature.

So, almost, you know, kicking and screaming, batch is being drug into this world by the simple fact that every day there’s another web service, there’s another service that those systems need to talk to.

And let me give you an example; I’ll give you a couple of examples: In the insurance industry, if I’m processing auto insurance claims, one of the steps in that process is to validate the vehicle ID number, the VIN number against data that I might get from my state or federal government data sources. Well, where that used to be a daily download of data is quickly becoming a real-time web service request.

So, here I am with a batch cycle, if you will, I maybe have 3 hours to process four million claims on a daily basis and now, somehow, I have to introduce a full round trip web service call to do my VIN number validation. So, I start to have to think about how am I going to deal with a window, a batch window, that I cannot alter because I only have so much time to do this work. I have a certain volume of work I have to push through there and now I have to introduce the overhead of web service calls.

And so, we’ve been working very closely with the organizations on how they deal with that and, in fact, the other side of this equation is as companies themselves introduce web services into their own world and take and SOA approach, we’re finding that those batch systems need to then talk to those new systems so with one of our customers that works in the health care industry, they were trying to deal with the fact that in the health care industry there’s now something called a national provider ID – an NPI.

Essentially what that means is that all doctors nationally now have a number associated with them and that’s how those doctors should be referred to. So, as opposed to the time when every company would associate their own proprietary ID, we now have a national identifier system so we have a customer that took an SOA type approach and built the service to do a translation between their proprietary numbers and the national provider numbers. So, again, at night, while they’re trying to process claims, they now have to convert back and forth and they have to do that in such a way that they don’t compromise their batch window. And, in working with them, we were able to achieve essentially a full round trip web service call in a little less than 12 milliseconds which enabled them to maintain their batch window, add the translation process and do all this in an SOA type fashion. Again, this is one of these requirements that I think in the next 6-12 months is really going to come to the forefront in the financial services base.

LB: Thank you. I guess I’d like to ask two things at the end of this. First, can you tell me in the context of GT Software and the experience that you’ve had at GT Software, a long-standing company with a lot of experience in this space, can you talk about some best practices for mainframe/SOA integration?

RM: Sure, absolutely and it’s an area that we’ve tried to take ahold of and work as much as we can to help educate the market a bit that are companies that are achieving unbelievable results including the mainframe in their SOA strategy and I would say at the forefront it’s thinking about the mainframe as you start to lay out your SOA strategy for many, many organizations we find, it’s a bit of an afterthought and when you start to take a step back and say, you know what, if this is going to be important to me, if that data and the applications are important and the participation is important as I am setting my standards from an architectural level, I need to consider the requirements as it relates to the mainframe and what that immediately does is start to get into how I involve the resources on the mainframe. One of the most disturbing that I continue to see in the market is that mainframers are “dissed” if you will, in terms of SOA simply because SOA tends to be driven by more of your distributed, open systems type resources and I hear a lot, “well, mainframers don’t understand SOA” or “these guys will never get their head around how to define the service properly” and I think, in the end, what you see is that’s clearly not true. Since SOA is not about web services and about the technology, it is much more about a collaborative process by which we determine needs or services that make sense in the context of our organization and then we find ways to fulfill those needs, many times on the mainframe is where the data, those applications, that need can be fulfilled and by not including the mainframe group in that process, you’re simply going to be playing catch up after the fact in building systems that do not give you the re-use, the longevity that you’re hoping to get out of SOA.

So, our number one best practices is including it early and getting the people involved. And what that then leads you to are technology decisions to allow you to do both bottom up as well as top down service design. I know we went from a very broad topic to something very specific, but essentially, if you are able to work in a service definition process, working from the top down, that is working from the need that the services is supposed to fulfill and then worrying about how to fulfill it, your technology choices and who you get involved will be dramatic different because you will involve that group from the get-go, they’ll be part of the process and you’ll find that you’ll get maybe a different set of services but certainly services that are more valuable, that give you the re-use that you’re looking for an participation where people are trying to help solve the problem not working at odds with each other.

LB: All right. Thank you very much, Rob. I think we understand a little better about why GT Software is in this space and why it’s considered a best of breed mainframe solutions provider. So, thanks for your time, very much.

RM: Thanks, Elizabeth, hopefully it was of value for everybody.

LB: Thank you. And, so Rob Morris, Sr. VP for Marketing and Strategy at the privately held at the Atlanta, Georgia-based GT Software.

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Lisa Damast, ebizQ's almost blisteringly cool Membership Manager, brought forward some new proof of how social networking firm Facebook is pushing the envelope and bringing some much needed 3.0 tinges to our ho-hum 2.0 world.

From Lisa:

This article discusses how Facebook messaging is replacing the need for sending traditional email in certain instances. It also mentions how the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is 35+. I did a search on Facebook, and noticed that companies like Google have created their own networks, do you think there might be a future for serious work collaboration and communication based in Facebook? Maybe Facebook should build a special platform for companies? Also, if Facebook does end up being bought by Microsoft (which is another one of the endless rumors) or partners with it, perhaps that would pose a serious threat to Google's efforts.

This also reminds me of a "future of email" podcast discussion I hosted on ebizQ a while back, around the time enterprise instant messaging firm Antepo got bought by Adobe in a hush-hush undisclosed sum deal.

Instant messaging, messaging inside social networks, email messsaging with approved senders only... All these topics are kind of converging (SPAM-free, that is the key) on Facebook, and it's exciting to see what's going to happen. A spam-free email world would be exciting indeed.

Posted by elizabeth in Enterprise and Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Leave it to our fantastic ebizQ team, who are constantly coming up with new and exciting ways to tell us how to do our jobs better (and I mean that in good, thankful way)! Our own Lisa Damast reports that our absolute favorite social networking tool, Facebook, is headed for an IPO. Really exciting stuff, because you know what, this is the most exciting IPO I've seen talked about in years. It's not just because Facebook is hotter than hot right now, it's because Facebook has a unique and somewhat beautiful approach toward application development.

Application development, like Web 2.0 and other SOA related trends that we write about here in ebizQ all the time, takes time and energy, but application development also requires buy-in from the users. For technology to be disruptively successful, it has to be either forced on people, its benefit must be extremely obvious, or it must be easy to use.

What Facebook does is make applications available to its users, and then the users can decide to install the application. I don't know how applications are introduced initially but I do know if a user in my network installs an application. I find out about it in my regular Facebook news feed, which is where I also find out what my friends are doing. Like if they're planning a blood drive in my neighborhood, or just got engaged, or whatever.

Why this is genius:

1. I have already "bought in" to my friends on Facebook. They are my friends, so there is some kind of non-Web-related buy-in that is assumed.

2. Because I am a social networker, I am interested in what my friends are doing, both on and offline.

3. Therefore, if my friends download an application and I see it and download it and start using it, then all of my friends see that I have downloaded something new and may download it for themselves to use. Then all their friends see it, then their friends' friends see it, etc.

Facebook is so 2.0 it's almost 3.0.

Posted by elizabeth in Enterprise and Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In light of Google's buy yesterday of Postini for $625 million cash-money, I direct you to a VERY interesting piece in the Washington Post, which basically hails this as part a new strategy by Google Enterprise to target the financial firms which have great compliance pressures and therefore must have extraordinarily reliable security infrastructure. It also continues to keep Google in the game in its competition with Microsoft Office.

The article, by Kendra Matt, is here.

More discussion of the Google/Microsoft battle can also be found in this Businessweek.com article.

Also, Peter Schooff, ebizQ's fearless security editor, did a great podcast with Postini about the dangers of Web 2.0 and what the company was doing to fight spam. I direct you to that informative podcast here.

Posted by elizabeth in M&A • security | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the hottest topics in the enterprise technology space right now is open source. Open source is kind of the Wild West of software and, increasingly, application development. There is just so much going on, what with the Free Software Foundation people screaming at each other, with general public licensing debates, with Linux development, JBoss, Red Hat, Google, Salesforce.com, even the government is getting in on it... and it's hard to keep it all straight.

For an open source neophyte like me, this story about the FCC fighting open source just brings more questions than answers. And we have IONA and Mulesource, both companies we've been following for some time, developing their open source ESBs faster than we can even think of uses for optimized service-oriented messaging.

That's why here at ebizQ, we've brought on a top industry analyst to talk about these issues, with our audience's input, every day. ebizQ's new senior open source software analyst, Dennis Byron, has spent the last 30 years analyzing middleware and other emerging technologies for various firms, and we're really happy he's here with us now, to "agnostically" help us navigate the exciting new world of open source.

I invite you to read Dennis' most recent piece, "The 411 on Open Source Software Development", and to bookmark ebizQ's brand new Open Source tab, right here.

About Dennis Byron:
Dennis Byron, ebizQ's Senior Open Source Software analyst, is also a Senior Analyst for Research 2.0, which is aimed at institutional and individual investors in information technology (IT), or just anyone who likes to peer under the covers of "the financials" where both large companies and emerging IPOs like to bury their most interesting facts. Byron has more than 30 years experience researching and analyzing all areas of information technology and information-systems use. He was the ERP and Middleware Analyst with the Datapro division of McGraw-Hill and at IDC FROM 1991 TO 2006. He has conducted over 500 specific information-systems case studies, and has contributed to Application Development Trends magazine and other publications.

Posted by elizabeth in Open Source • SOA and Web Services | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hot news: Google acquires Enterprise Spam Warrior Postini, and ebizQ's own Peter Schooff recorded >this really exciting podcast
with Postini's EVP late last February. Good call, Peter! Check it out, everyone.

Raw news here:

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Postini, a global leader in on-demand communications security and compliance solutions serving more than 35,000 businesses and 10 million users worldwide. ebizQ's Peter Schooff recorded >this podcast
with Postini's EVP recently.

The Google Enterprise group makes popular Google technology available to businesses of all sizes -- from small, two-person startups to some of the largest companies in the world. Google Enterprise products help businesses find, see and share information through products such as Google Search Appliance, Google Mini, Google Earth, Google Maps and the Google Apps suite of hosted applications.

Posted by elizabeth in security | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)