I recently caught up with John Schmidt, who has recently joined Informatica as the VP, of Global Integration Services. John is also the Chair of the Integration Consortium, and is now helping Informatica define a set of best practices and services for implementing an Integration Competency Center (ICC). John stated that when Informatica polled its customers and asked what they would like to see Informatica invest in, it was in helping them create the ICC.

Now, this intrigued me because, if the truth be known, lately I've been taking the "I" off my ICC slides and just renaming it the Competency Center for SOA initiatives - the thought being that integration efforts are now being subsumed as a part of SOA, or as an enabler to SOA - but becoming less of a separate initiative. But John insisted that integration was indeed important in and of itself, and is being driven by enterprise strategies for aligning IT and Business, (and this includes SOA), and the need is to create formal governance processes and this demands and ICC, The second driver John mentioned is data warehousing and business intelligence, and the need to create a common view of the customer, or a 360 degree view of the business. These initiatives include master data management and integration. The third driver John mentioned is regulatory or other compliance issues, data security, and privacy, where the ICC becomes the center for maintaining data quality.

Must admit I had some difficulty getting my mind around the last one. The ICC responsible for Data Quality? Isn't that the realm of the data center, which most large organizations have had in place for years? But John insisted that federated data requires a centralized governance group to manage the canonical models and map the semantic meaning of data across business domains.

In my experience, data governance is more about politics than anything else - who owns the data and who can access it. And of course, governance needs governors. If no one is responsible for enforcing governance policies, how is governance going to actually be implemented? So I agree that these issues of control and governance of distributed and federation information require some changes to the org chart in order to make them happen. But what is the correct organization and what should the responsibilities of a CC be?

John Schmidt outlined core competencies he has defined as part of the practice:

1. Financial management. The ICC operates as a shared service. This is a set of best practices around charge back for shared infrastructure and individual services.
I think this capability is definitely needed for SOA as well.
2. Architecture . The ICC does not do enterprise architecture, but is responsible for the information architecture. They work with the enterprise architecture group, and "connects the dots", by mapping schemas to physical data sources to enable the translation, transformation, and integration. This ICC is the central federated repository.
I asked John what he thought about using semantic metadata to enable this instead of all the proprietary mapping techniques, and he responded that it's not a viable alternative today.
3. Business Process Management. According to John this is not BPM per se, but this includes service flow modeling, information flows, business event modeling, and common definition of business events.
Sounds to me this is more about SOA, than integration.
4. Integration methodology . The process of running an ICC, defining it, organizing it, all the things you need to run an integration group, and how it will interact with other IT groups.
5. Metadata management . The core tool is the metadata repository. The ICC group is responsible for data assets. Metadata ends up being a federated model. There are multiple repositories, and all have different views. The ICC understands the federated model and focuses on the key integration points between the different parts of the organization.
6. Modeling management . This includes techniques around canonical data modeling, what are the best practices, how do you build them.
7. Integration Systems. This is about running integration systems as a specific class of applications – all the discipline of how your manage, plan and operate the system. Formerly, when he was at the Bank of America, John Schmidt was responsible for running the the biggest Web methods integration system in the world. There was never any time when there were no transactions going through it. He said doing maintenance is like changing the tire while the car is moving. – how do you do maintenance. Changing tires on the care when it’s moving. Business rules, hierarchy of services. All needs to be managed. Integration will be a core competency and discipline.

In his book, Integration Competency Center: An Implementation Methodology, John defines different ICC models:

While I absolutely agree with John that organizations truly need to develop core competencies in integration, I think it is less clear what the roles and responsibilities of an ICC should be, and some of that depends on how organizations approach integration - whether it is a strategic initiative in itself, part of a an SOA strategy, or (as it is in most cases) a tactical solution for implementing a new business capability, as well as the model of the ICC or CC, or SOA CC.

While some of the roles and responsibilities John outlines may not all fall within an ICC, I think organizations that are seeking more agility through integrated solutions that cross existing application boundaries, need to think about these roles and responsibilities and define where they lie within the organization. Without governance we're going to to fall into the lawlessness of the wild west, and distributed, federated approaches will quickly run into problems. Governance requires governors.

So where do you fall on this spectrum? Are you building an all encompassing ICC? Are you creating different org structures? Are you experiencing the pain of having to make these decisions yet?

Posted by bethgb in Industry News • Industry Trends • Vendor Briefings | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday Lombardi announced availability of Blueprint, its on-line process modeling tool designed for business people, and offered on a SaaS basis. Lombardi also announced process definition packages to accelerate the development and deployment of processes.

I decided to hold off on this blog post this until I actually had a chance to check this out. Lombardi is claiming it’s one of the easiest modeling tools on the market. I’ve used the SaaS modeling tools from TIBCO, and Intalio, and I’ve looked at some Visio based tools. I wanted to check into this one. So here’s my first impression.

My initial question when I logged in was “where is the BPMN pallet?” I was expecting to see all the BPMN shapes up there to drag and drop. Instead, Blueprint offers two views. One is the business level discovery view which essentially has milestones and activities (business level ideas). To add decision points and loop backs, etc, you right click on a line to choose a shape. I wondered if Lombardi had read the Israeli pilots manual. There was a story (I admit I don’t know if it’s actually urban legend because I have not verified it) that a panel tried to determine best practices by the best Israeli fighter pilots. What made them so successful? The pilots only agreed to talk after they were promised there would be no recriminations. But the answer was that when they got into a combat scenario, they shut down most of the control panel to only focus on what was relevant to finding and shooting the enemy. This is the approach that Lombardi has taken. Not a lot on the pallet to get confused by, but you can go deeper by right clicking.

In the discovery view you add things like business owners, process experts, inputs and outputs, any problems (which can also be color codes), and documentation. In other words it’s the initial business view. From there, you can simply change views to the Process Diagram and get the full BPMN diagram with swim lanes. There is also a documentation view. It is fairly easy to link to sub processes and go back and forth between linked processes. I found this to be a major differentiator from other tools I’ve tried.

Lombardi also announced packages, which are built around things you would do with Blueprint. These are service offerings that include Lombardi’s BPM methodology. They announced a Process Inventory Package, a three week service offering where they will inventory all the processes in a certain area of the business to increase productivity. There is also a Process Assessment package, a 3 day service which focuses on a certain area of the business with the goal of understanding which of the detailed processes impact key KPIs and SLAs. There is also a two-week Process Analysis to detail a BPM process. These are all fixed priced service offerings.

You can go online and check Blueprint out for free, which allows you to model a few processes. The full version will allow you to import Visio diagrams, of course model more processes, export diagrams to PowerPoint, print them, provide a shared repository, and integrate with Teamworks to automate the processes.

Posted by bethgb in BPM • Industry News • SaaS • Vendor Briefings | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm in Las Vegas from IBM IMPACT - their yearly customer event focused on SOA. Over 6300 attendees are here. The morning started out in the MGM Arena with a marching band, the CIO of Harley Davidson riding in on a motorcycle, Cirque du Soleil acrobats swinging from long pieces of fabric hanging from the ceiling, and Drew Carey MCing and entertaining. It culminated in a improv script which had Drew Carey and Robert LeBlanc, General Manager, Global Consulting Services and SOA, IBM, navigating their way barefoot and blindfolded among 100 mouse traps. Couldn't help but wonder if it was strangely familiar territory for LeBlanc. A fun morning so far.

The major theme is Smart SOA. Drew Carey stated he had no idea what SOA is (and many in the audience around me indicated he was not alone) but IBM does it smarter. Steve Mills indicated that IBM does it smarter because of the 6550 customer implementations IBM has done. In fact the number one announcement was that IBM is the industry leader in SOA implementations. Over 272 customers speaking this week. IBM is capitalizing on and productizing this experience. Also announced was the release of 270 agility metrics 270. You can even take an SOA health check.

Another way IBM is capitalizing on the experience is by creating industry solutions. One of the solutions that has me very intrigued is Smart SOA approaches for going green. Have to wait until tomorrow to hear what that's all about.

IBM is also announcing a BPM Suite with Events Management, which includes the Apsoft acquisition. Last year IBM introduced an electronic game to teach BPM. They have introduced the curriculum into hundreds of colleges.

One of the more interesting ideas IBM is moving forward with is creating social networks to enable architects, analysts, business people, academics, to share ideas around SOA. There is a 72 hour SOA JAM going on. You can join it from your desktop.

Onto more sessions.

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There is a very big movement in the industry away from after-the-fact reporting and analysis to on-demand information delivered in context, what some are calling operational BI. Last year ebizQ did a virtual conference on BI in Action during which we had a panel discussion on BI and BPM, and how BI was evolving into more on-demand, operational BI. The overall message was clear. Organizations are seeking more in-depth information on-demand, within the course of business, as opposed to periodic, after-the-fact reports.

I recently spoke with Truviso about an innovative approach they have developed for delivering on-demand information in high data volume environments. As Roman Bukary, VP marketing and business development, explained it, instead of executing SQL queries against large volumes of data, Truviso analyzes the information as it moves through the pipe. It actually uses standard SQL, but can apply queries to high volume data streams, and feed dashboards with the information or even trigger data-driven actions and alerts.

The company was co-founded in 2005 by Berkley professor Michael Franklin and his assistant Sailesh Krishnamurthy, who is now the chief architect. They developed an engine that uses standard SQL queries to analyze data as it moves across systems, regardless of where it comes from. The result is massive scalability and performance, clocked at 100,000 records per second on a single machine. Additionally, thousands of concurrent queries can be run continuously and simultaneously on a single server, and the queries can be run over both real-time and historical data from within a single engine. Truviso uses open source database PostgreSQL which enables data to be optionally persisted for replay, back-testing, drill-down, bench-marking and other purposes. The system can be run distributed across applications, databases, and edge devices, allowing for massive linear scalability. The system includes integration components so it can accept data from multiple different sources, including message queues. Each connector is provides transformation capabilities.

Foreign currency trading was the first market Truviso entered. They also have solutions for capital markets, retail inventory, logists, SOA/Network monitoring, and RFID/Sensor Network.

Because it built on top of PostgreSQL, it can deploy natively on any OS or hardware platform. It can run in a virtualized environment, and Truviso is (or will soon be) available as a SaaS solution. Because it uses standard SQL companies can migrate historical reporting to real-time analysis in a matter of hours.

BI meets event processing. On demand BI. Intelligent event processing. This technology seems to span categories, as well as uses in the enterprise.

Posted by bethgb in BI • Business Intelligence • EDA • Industry News • Industry Trends | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today TIBCO announced general availability of TIBCO ActiveMatrix™ 2.0 which is designed to simplify SOA development, deployment and management. While SOA is being widely recognized and an architectural best practice for enabling business and IT to respond quickly and more easily implement new solutions, SOA is not a single technology, which makes it inherently complex. The challenge is to get all the different technologies that comprise a SOA solution to work together easily.

TIBCO’s ActiveMatrix allows companies to design, develop, deploy, manage and govern SOA solutions without having to worry about each of the underlying technologies. It is a grid architecture that enables different technologies to be “plugged in”. The grid provides the integration and common management and governance across all the technologies.

In ActiveMatrix 2.0 BusinessWorks now runs natively as a container. You can take existing BusinessWorks projects, including BPEL orchestration, can compose it with java or .Net and deploy and manage it all as a single application. Adapters also run in service containers. You can take a configuration that defines what functionality is being exposed from the application, such as SAP or a database, deploy it in an ActiveMatrix container, and it becomes a fully managed service.

ActiveMatrix 2.0 has added a new standalone engine for service mediation. Tibco has unbundled the service bus (ESB) from BusinesWorks to provide a lower price entry point for developing new services that can be plugged into the ActiveMatrix platform.

TIBCO has also expanded its SCA support. SCA emphasizes the decoupling of service implementation and service assembly from the details of the technical infrastructure and access methods used to invoke services. SCA components operate at a business level and use a minimum of middleware APIs. The companies contributing to the SCA standard include: BEA Systems, Cape Clear Software, IBM, Interface21, IONA Technologies PLC, Oracle, Primeton Technologies Ltd, Progress Software, Red Hat Inc., Rogue Wave Software, SAP AG, Siebel Systems, Software AG, Sun Microsystems, Sybase, TIBCO Software Inc. As more companies build SCA support into their platforms it will make services easier to deploy. This is TIBCO’s goal is supporting SCA.

ActiveMatrix 2.0’s SCA support includes a composition editor as well as expanded deployment and management support. It provides an integrated service view which shows a service with all its dependencies. This enables operations to more easily understand what might be the root cause of a failure. Policy management is also available for all services. When services are built with ActiveMatrix all the SCA annotations are automatically generated. TIBCO claims this contributes to up to 50 percent greater productivity and lower cost of ownership. Integration, maintenance and governance are built into the platform, and available regardless of the technology used to develop the service.

ActiveMatrix 2.0 can also import process models developed in Visio or Aris, make them live, and tie them to the applications. The integrated registry and repository can then show how business processes are impacted by changes. This allows better alignment between IT and the Business.

From a pure architectural standpoint, ActiveMatrix 2.0 represents best practices for creating an integrated infrastructure. It simplifies SOA by providing a set of common infrastructure services to all business level services, regardless of technology difference, making it almost as easy to deploy a new business service as it is to plug in a new appliance into the electrical grid.

Posted by bethgb in ESB • Industry News • Industry Trends • SOA • Vendor Briefings | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This week HP made a number of announcements around their SOA governance capabilities including new professional services and software in order to help companies “accelerate SOA adoption, drive increased business value and reduce potential risk to the business.”

According to Avrami Tzur, VP SOA, HP’s customers were asking for help in determining the governance process and deciding whether to focus on quality or performance. In response HP has launched three new professional services, all of which are short in length, with defined deliverables. The SOA Validation service comes with Systinet and the best practice governance process for validating services embedded in it. This can then can be expanded across the organization. The Quality service includes pre-defined metrics and processes. Because so many customers already have the Mercury quality software this service focuses on validating the quality and performance. The other new service regards helping customers with performance of their SOA services.

The software announcements include a new release of Systinet SOA Manager. This includes the Talking Blocks software purchased by HP 3-4 years ago. It includes runtime management, security, and routing mediation of web services. HP’s vision is to provide software to govern the whole life cycle of a service.

HP also announces a new product. HP SOA Registry Foundation packages and simplifies the Systinet registry, so it can now ship to many OEMs. It can easily be put on developers’ desks, and into distributed replicated environments such as oil and gas. The US Army is putting it in tanks. The registry is autonomous but is also integrated with Systinet and supports interoperability at runtime to achieve the full governance solution.

HP is also offering a new suite of SOA education and training courses. Last May HP announced its SOA strategy as focusing on governance and management - two areas where HP has considerable enterprise experience and software offerings. HP's strategy is to remain platform agnostic and provide the services and software to manage, govern and provide quality assurance for services. This announcement of new services and software furthers this vision.

Posted by bethgb in Industry News • SOA • Vendor Briefings | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today Amberpoint released the results of a survey designed to determine the maturity level of the SOA market, the issues practitioners are worrying about, and to assess complexity and technology of their environments. There were a total of 330 respondents, including 48 customers and 282 non-customers. 34% of the respondents were in operations, 31% were in development, 24% were architects, with remaining 11% characterized as "other".

Like all of the ebizQ polls and surveys have shown, the Amberpoint survey found that the majority is still in the early stages of adoption. But there were also some surprising results. The Amberpoint survey showed that relatively few (20%) of the deployed SOA solutions are standalone, single department systems. Most are used across departments or even externally. This survey indicated that the biggest benefit of SOA is its used in addressing integration issues. This, again, is an indication of the early stages of the market as few companies have mastered the art of building reusable business services and achieving true business agility based on SOA infrastructures.

But IMHO the singularly most surprising finding of this survey is that 98.5% of respondents called their SOA implementations "successful". When in the industry have we EVER seen a 98.% success rate with any technology or approach - especially in an early market? I think this is something worth exploring more. What has been your experience. Have you had a 98.% success rate?

Download a copy of the survey results.

Listen to the podcast with Ed Horst, VP Marketing, Amberpoint  

Download file

Posted by bethgb in Industry News • Industry Trends • SOA | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

At the end of this month on Jan 30th, I'm heading out to San Francisco for a new conference The Open Group is launching - the IT Specialist Conference. It will be held on the last day of the The 17th Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference which runs January 28-30. Both are at the Fairmont Hotel, San Francisco. If you plan to be out there and would like to meet for a chat please respond to this blog. I'll be speaking on a panel and doing some podcasting from out there.

This week I spoke with James de Raeve, VP of Certification for The Open Group. The Open Group is kicking off its IT Specialist Certification program to attendees at the conference along with current Open Group members. We talked about the role of the IT Specialist, and the new certification program.

You can listen to the Podcast here:

Listen to the entire podcast Download file

You can also read the transcript of the podcast.

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Two big stories today. First Al Gore getting the Nobel Peace prize which both surprised and delighted me, and then Oracle making a bid for BEA - which did neither. This one has been circulating the rumor mill for quite a while now. Last month the chatter was becoming noiser and it seemed like the time was drawing nearer. However, even though the element of surprise was not present, this is still big news. BEA has issued a statement saying Oracle significantly unvalued the stock. While they will certainly negotiate over price, it seems like it's only a matter of time before BEA falls to acquisition. The writing has been on the wall for a while.

As SOA is slated to become the dominant enterprise platform over the next 5 - 10 years, it is not surprising that the big platform vendors are vying to own the platform. And once the price is right, the BEA stockholders are not going to complain much. In her blog, Elizabeth Book related the reaction of Neil Macehiter of the firm Macehiter Ward-Dutton. Macehiter feels that IBM is the winner here. "Suddenly, customers looking for a middleware backbone that’s independent of their applications suite are left with only one credible candidate." Well there's actually two - TIBCO and Progress (Actional ESB and governance). (There were over 35 independent vendors when I started covering the integration middleware market a dozen years ago.)

But the bottom line is when a market consolidates to the point where only the big players are left, the real loser is market innovation. The small pure play vendors tend to find market niches and provide sometimes disruptive innovations. The large players tend move much more slowly, even when they are selling business agility ;-).

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I don't usually do gadget blogs, but I just got a new BlackBarry 8820 and I need to share the news. I'm in love. This little thing is actually a bit addictive in fact. I replaced my Treo 650 which kept hanging up on my mother (I swear it really was the phone). In making my decision I of course considered the iPhone, so I'd like to share my findings with you. Your results may vary.

First, the iPhone is definitely very cool. It's the best mobile web browser I've seen. But there are some issues. You can only use their browser which doesn't support flash yet - but I was told by the sales people "it will". In fact that was a familiar refrain in my discussions with them. Despite the commercials where the PC guy is the geek and the Mac guy is cool, these guys were pretty geeky over the iPhone. They just exuded too much enthusiasm.

That was a minor issue. More difficult was the typing. You have to use your finger tip - no nails, no stylus. If you have finger nails, typing is very, very difficult. I found it very slow and inaccurate. It helped somewhat that the phone offers suggestions for words as you are typing. Supposedly the more you use it the smarter the phone gets smarter at recommending words. I called some people I know who have the phone and they all said typing is difficult. That's kind of annoying if you actually want to answer emails on your phone.

For me the ultimate deal killer was the inability to transfer files to the phone and then send the files as email attachments. I did this a few times through Bluetooth on my Treo and it was a life saver when I was on the road with no internet connectivity on my PC. Turns out that now I cannot live without this feature.

The salesman in the AT&T Mobile store told me the BlackBerry 8820 could transfer files via Bluetooth. Well, that turns out to be partially true. Bluetooth works for file transfer and wireless synching if you are connected to an Enterprise BlackBerry server. I am not, so I need to use the USB cable to transfer files and synch with Outlook. One more cord to carry on my trips - not the end of the world. At least I know I can email files through the phone in an emergency.

Here's a picture of my little beauty.

I know the pinching and finger spreading thing on the iPhone is way cool, but the BlackBerry 8820 has this little trackball in the center that is a great way to navigate the screen. One reviewer commented that the keys on the keyboard are flat, not raised buttons. But each key actually has a little rims, and which I find makes typing both fast and accurate - even for women with nails.

The 8820 also has WiFi and I found that very easy to set up. There is one button on the side that you can set to instantly bring you to any function. I set it for email, after first setting if for the phone, then wondered if I should set it to the home screen with all the applications. But then I found that when you are in a different application, pushing the left green phone button to place a call brings you to the phone screen. Pushing the red hang up button on the right automatically brings you to the home screen. So navigating the functions on the phone is very fast and easy.

The phone supports photos and music but you need to install a data card for that functionality. I found a 2 gig micro card for $26, free shipping. It does not have a camera. It does have a GPS, but it's a $5 per month subscription fee. Haven't tried it yet.

I'm very happy with my BlackBerry. Maybe next time I'll be ready for a new phone the iPhone will be ready with more business friendly features. Has anyone else seriously considered the iPhone and decided to pass?

Posted by bethgb in Industry News | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

This year for our annual outing the ebizQ team headed off to Yankee stadium for the first game in the Yankees-Redsox series. Les Yeamans, president of ebizQ, is a baseball fan. But the problem is that while the company is based in NY, I'm based in Boston. And even through I was born, raised and went to college in NY (and can't quite totally rid myself of the accent), I've been in Boston for 30 years, and everyone in Boston is automatically a Redsox fan, whether or not they even follow baseball. Not to be a Redsox fan would risk bringing a curse onto my house and first born. I brought my Redsox hat to wear, but Les circumvented that by getting us all ebizQ hats, which you can see here.

From left to right, Les, Lisa, Liz, Rick, Prakash.

We were right behind home plate and had a great view of the field. Michele's trust iPhone took some great photos.

Here's Dan and Liz Book with the back of my head and Neil on the end. By the way, to all of you who send email to me when you mean to reach Liz, she's Elizabeth and I'm Beth.

Well, as you know the Yankees won that game, and the next game too. We'll see what happens today. The Sox are still up 5 games, but it's a matter of pride. I have to say both the Yankees fans and Redsox are very intense. There were many Sox fans at the game. A recent article stated that more SOX fans go to away games than any other fans. Yankees are up there though. As the game wore on, and more beers were consumed, they became louder and louder, screaming Masshole at anyone who walked by in a Redsox hat or shirt.

The ebizQ team had some deep revelations at the game, Liz, our editor in chief, realized that the Yankee logo actually stood for NY. Lisa learned there are 9 innings in a baseball game. Les educated Prakash in how the game is played. And even though I follow the Sox just enough to know how they're doing in the standings, and basically only watch when they're in the World Series, I learned, somewhat to my surprise, that I really detest Johnny Damon and hope he can't get served in a restaurant when he comes to Boston.

Thank for the outing Les. Go Sox!

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Today Metastorm announced it acquired Proforma Corp.. Metastorm has already updated the website . In fact, when I tried to go to proformacorp.com it was re-directed to the Metastorm site.

Metastorm also announced their new platorm, called Metastorm EnterpriseTM. The platform combines Proforma's enterprise architecture modeling tool and business process analysis tool, with Metastorms BPM tool. Metastorm feels this combination heralds a new category of enterprise platform, that "will address the complete spectrum of activities required to achieve enterprise alignment, optimize execution across the business process value chain and help organizations gain a sustainable strategic advantage through true enterprise visibility and continuous improvement."

The platform includes:

Metastorm ProVisionEA – A complete solution for Enterprise Architecture and organizational context – allowing customers to translate business strategy and operational objectives into effective enterprise change through models that describe enterprise assets, relationships and future state.

Metastorm ProVisionBPA – A robust suite for Business Process Analysis that enables architects and analysts to document, analyze and streamline complex processes using sophisticated modeling, simulation, Six Sigma and other optimization methods.

Metastorm BPM – A complete Business Process Management Suite for roundtrip process life-cycle management – including design, automation, analysis, and monitoring of an organization’s human- and system-centric activities and processes.

Frankly, I just don't get how ProVisionEA translates business strategy into effective enterprise change by modeling IT assets (even if it includes present AND future models). But my lack of understanding might be because I missed that part of the call. After the call started, the operator VERY RUDELY interrupted and required me to provide my name, title and business affiliation. Now, I don't mind providing Metastorm with that information, but get it at the beginning of the call - don't interrupt my listening. I thought the call had stopped and there were technical difficulties. I've never experienced that on a call before. Hope never to again. So if they gave a plausible explanation of how that tie works - I apparently missed it.

The tie between the Provision BPA and Metastorm BPM is a natural fit. Providing BAM and simulation does provide a platform for process analysis, optimization and execution. Most of the BPM vendors are moving in this direction. It's a natural fit to maximize the value to the organization of business process automation and management.

I can also envision that tying the BPM execution model to the EA models could speed deployment. But it sounds like a stretch to me to say that THIS particular set of capabilities is the one to provide THE seamless platform to address the complete spectrum of activities required to achieve enterprise alignment. That sounds like a bit of a stretch. I would not expect other vendors to hurry out to get themselves a EA modeling tool to ensure they remain competitive.

Unfortunately, no one was able to ask any follow-up questions. That function was not enabled. Hopefully next time Metastorm will use a different conference service - or at least a different operator.

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A few months ago ebizQ launch (in ninja stealth mode) ITGumbo, a community blog site. Last week an hysterical new blog was launched, which I bet you will end up passing along. Mumbo Gumbo, by Leah Archibald, features the heads of Harry Potter and Hermoine on muggle bodies in muggle world settings, navigating the ever shifting electronic age. Apparently it can be as challenging as fighting off Death Eaters.

In the first issue Harry advises Hermoine that email is now only used for communicating with grandmothers in nursing homes. Hermoine is eager to find out what the cool kids are now using. This one is too funny to pass up.


The second edition features Harry and Hermoine during the blackout last week that took down Craig's List. For a moment there it looked like the outage was going to give Harry and Hermoine some extra time on they could devote to fighting the dark lord.

The most recent edition focuses on a recent study confirming that many Americans are addicted to email.

Check these out. They're clever and funny. Enjoy, and please pass it along.

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I recently spoke with the folks at HP responsible for shaping and implementing HP’s SOA policy and I must say, I came away impressed. Check out with my interview with Tim Hall, Product Manager SOA, HP Software.

The reason I’m impressed is because, to tell the truth, HP has not been very successful in the past in their software endeavors. For example, do you think of HP as a BPM thought leader? At this point you’re probably asking what BPM product HP has. That’s the point. They had one of the first BPM tools on the market – called Change Engine – but sadly it ended up in moldy dusty HP software dungeon. Unfortunately Bluestone, probably THE BEST application server on the market in terms of engineering elegance, suffered the same fate. I know I should not get attached to technologies – it’s usually be best marketing not the best technology that wins. But still it’s sad to see good technologies die an untimely death.

So I was very interested to hear how HP was articulating its SOA strategy. Realizing the true benefit of SOA, according to Avrami Tzur , HP’s VP SOA, is making sure the services can be shared across the organization. To this end, HP is focusing on governance, quality, and management. This positioning also fits well with HP’s strength in operational management software, and keeps HP’s SOA offering platform independent (a good strategy since HP does not have a platform).

As part of this strategy, HP acquired Systinet – the registry/repository tool, and Mercury Interactive. But while it is not unusual for organizations to buy their way into hot markets, what impressed me is the plan and vision of how these tools work together. Presently the industry is making the distinction between design-time and run-time governance. But Tim Hall correctly points out that governance needs to happen throughout the SOA life cycle, and management must also be performed through the life cycle. In truth, the distinction was introduced due to tool capabilities – not end-to-end governance requirements. Tim is on a mission to get rid of those terms, and instead focus on distinguishing between governance and management.

HP’s life cycle governance offtering is Systinet. The next release, due out in a couple of months, will add workflow to automate the governance life cycle. HP connected the line between reuse and trust and decided to make quality an essential part of the life cycle, which led to the acquisition of Mercury Interactive. From what I have been hearing from practitioners in the field – HP is on the money with this one. I especially like the ability to take the policies from the repository and use them to build test cases. A change in service quality should trigger a new test case. The QA process is then linked back to the repository. Developers considering when to use a service need to know what kind of tests have been run.

The HP SOA Manager is the runtime component which monitors the services in the environment and manages the SLAs. The issue with SLAs is that performance is not dependent solely on the services themselves. It could be an app server or database issue. HP provides end-to-end traceability.

This strategy plays to HP’s strength in systems management. It is well articulated and so far looks like HP is executing well. Tying testing to governance is something that none of the other vendors are doing yet, putting HP in a thought leadership position in this area. Although the services division has been building SOA centers of excellence, HP seemed to be a little late to the market with a clearly articulated SOA offering. IMHO I think HP has positioned itself well to assume a leading role in the with the governance-quality-management offering.

Posted by bethgb in Industry News • Industry Trends • SOA | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

IBM announced the introduction of the IBM Rational Asset Manager at IMPACT 2007. The Rational Asset Management (RAM) is a registry of design, development and deployment related assets,. RAM also integrates with WebSphere Servvce Registry and Repository (WSSRR) and Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database (CCMD)

This slide shows how the 3 repositories integrate. RAM is used in development, WSSRR is used for runtime governance, and Tivoli CCMD is used for management, such as exception handling. It is clear that many organizations will end up with multiple repositories and will face integration issues. Unfortunately, at the present time there are no standards to easily enable this - it's point to point integration.

In the future, one thing we'd like to see are governance solutions, similar to what IBM in doing with business process solutions and frameworks. FileNet has a great workflow tool and governance is a people based process. Seems like a good next step, as governance is a process, not a technology.

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I barely needed my double soy cappuccino this morning. IBM started their Global customer conference off with a loud bang, including a Stomp-like performance by Rhythm Nation. 4000 people in the room. Another 4200 online for a simulcast in Second Life. It's a big event (very evident when 4000 people all left the ballroom at the same time - maybe bumping into walls and falling off cliffs in Second Life would have been easier). And it's all about SOA.

IBM has been investing very heavily in SOA and it is clear here that it is central to the future strategy of IBM - not just lip service to the latest buzz word. It is clear, listing to Steve Mills, Sr. VP and Group Executive of the IBM Software Group, that IBM sees SOA as part of the overall shift to business driven IT. Citing some results of a survey of 700 CEOs worldwide, he said that 87% expect fundamental change in their business in the next 2 years, 78% believe innovation requires business and technology, and 75% said they don’t know how they are going to make the change - they do not believe they have the ability to support change. The theme of the morning keynotes was clearly that SOA is an enabler of change. Moreover, Mills stated that unlike other shifts there are no clear industry or geographic leaders.

IBM is addressing this at a number of levels - from a business view, ensuring clients understand the business view of what SOA enables. About 8000 are hearing that message today. IBM also announced some education initiatives. Sandy Carter, VP, SOA and WebSphere Strategy, Channels and Marketing, showed SOA Sandy, her Second Life alter ego, who gave a short tour of IMPACT in Second Life. She hinted about some special jewelry, but clearly those second lifers have much more time than I do.

Carter also demoed Innov8 BPM Simulater, a game (which also looks very Second Life-ish) meant to teach BPM at universities. IBM is working with 58 universities in 20 countries to implement a Service Science curriculum. She also announced IBM's virtual university with certification in basic and intermediate SOA.

In additional announcements IBM made today is developing content and services to accelerate the adoption of SOA including industry specific roadmaps, business blue prints, SOA industry framework, and SOA professional services. IBM will also be delivering this with partners and expects to grow from 3600 partners going to 10,000 partners. IBM also announced new software aligned to SOA entry points (more about this later) and new and enhanced software for BPM and Registry.

In an effort to post this while continuing to hear more about the story I'm going to post this now, and continue more posts later. If you're interested, check out Second Life and let us know your experience.

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Industry pundits require a certain amount of detachment from the technologies and companies they cover. Vendors are attached to their particular solutions, and buyers are attached to what has made them successful in the past. Analysts, however, observe markets closely, do extensive research, talk to vendors and customers, but remain unattached. This detachment provides a valuable perspective on the market.

After many years of this type of market observation, suffice it to say that it usually takes something particularly exciting to rouse an analyst, particularly a noted industry leading analyst, off a perch of detached enlightenment. Because while analysts remain unattached to the markets they observe, some may become attached to their high perch.

So it was particularly surprising to learn that Jin Sinur, formerly VP and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner Research and noted BPM expert, announced he is leaving Gartner to become the new Chief Strategy Officer for Global 360. Jim is going to drive acquisition efforts to deliver his vision of the next generation of BPM capable of providing competitive advantage . After 15 years at Gartner he is certainly well positioned to know which vendors have the right technology.

However, the very act of becoming a vendor has now dethroned Jim from his formerly high perch in the industry. In speaking about how it feels to join the “other side” Jim admitted it was a bit strange. But he is clearly engaged and excited by the challenge and opportunity that lies before him. Instead of just talking about what the next generation of BPM should be, he is now going to build it at Global 360. We wish him well, and will be watching with detached interest.

To listen to my conversation with Jim Sinur about his plans to build the next generation BPM tool, or download the entire podcast click below:
Listen to or download the entire 6:32 podcast below:

Download file

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Today Software AG announced the acquisition of webMethods. Frankly, I find this truly exciting news. While the consolidation trend is not exciting in itself (at this point there are few integration vendors left that have NOT been acquired) I think this acquisition is a true synergy. Each vendor has some very compelling solutions that are underappreciated in the market. Together the combination provides a complete infrastructure for SOA.

I listened in to the analyst call this morning, which was mostly about the CEOs and CFOs of both companies talking to the financial analysts. Hey I get it, financial analysts, unlike us techie geeks, effect stock price. No technical analysts got to ask any questions, while a few financial analysts did have some technical questions.

Here’s the quick and dirty on the financial side. Software AG is offering a cash buyout of $9.15 per share, which is a 25.7% premium over webMethods closing price yesterday of $7.28. Karl-Heinz Streibich, CEO of Software AG, spoke about the synergies between the two companies which he thinks will add up to one billion Euro software giant. These include synergies in market areas, geographies and revenue streams. While Software AG's business is 56% Europe, 25% America and 19% rest of the world, webMethods business is 62%America, 26% Europe and 17% RoW. Combined the two companies will have 4500 customers including 1500 webMethods customers and 3000 Software AG customers. Clearly webMethods will help Software AG gain a larger presence in the Americas, something it has tried to do before unsuccessfully (do you remember SAGA?).

According to a chart taken from Gartner numbers, this acquisition is going to put Software AG as the #3 player in the leading SOA/BPM players.

IBM $387m
Tibco $199m
Software AG & webMethods $156m
Microsoft $155m
webMethods $122m
Oracle $116m
Sun Microsystems $102m
Sybase $ 68m
BEA $ 60m
Axway (SOPRA) $ 57m
Sterling Commerce $ 57m
Vitria $ 52m
Software AG $ 34m
Hitachi $ 30m
Fujitsu-Siemans $ 24m
SAP $ 18m

While I predict the financial geeks will find the numbers interesting, frankly from a purely technology view, I think this acquisition is positively exciting. Both companies have some industry leading next generation technology that has been underappreciated in the market. But while they were downplaying the overlap and playing up the synergies, there is actually considerable overlap that will have to be reconciled.

They identified 5 areas of technology for what they have identified as the SOA/BPM market (hey let’s stick with the hot buzz words here – helps the stock price). But in any case, the 5 areas are a pretty good representation of a complete infrastructure required for SOA:
• SOA Governance
• BPM/BAM
• Application Composition
• Application Integration
• Legacy Modernization

So let’s take a look at the overlaps and synergies in each of these areas.

In SOA Governance Software AG has made a considerable investment in CentraSite, a registry and repository which is a joint development effort between Software AG and Fujitsu, and which includes a community and .org site. In September of 2006 webMethods acquired Infravio, another governance product. My guess is that CentraSite is going to win out here. There might be a possibility of bits and pieces of Infravio ending up in CentraSite, especially if the Fujitsu partnership falls apart now that Software AG will no longer need Fujitsu InterStage as its BPM solution.

Currently Software AG’s BPM solution is reselling Fujitsu’s Interstage. However, webMethods also brings a BPM/BAM solution to the table. On the call Karl-Heinz Streibich make it clear that in the near term Software AG salespeople will continue selling Fujitsu, the CentraSite so-development partnership will continue, but the webMethods BPM solution will be the clear winner, as it should be. webMethods has industry leading, next generation BAM technology. In February I spoke with Susan Ganeshan, VP Product Management for webMethods Fabric. Quite frankly, she knocked my socks off, and that’s saying a lot as I have listened to thousands of vendor pitches, and this one was probably the 15th in the course of 2 days. webMethods has some of the best BAM technology out there. It has predictive capabilities, great visualization and a host of other goodies. I think the closest competitor to its BAM capabilities is Tibco. But the combined Software AG and webMethods offering surpasses Tibcos’ platform capabilities. For example, Tibco does not have application composition.

Software AG will actually now have two Application Composition offerings – their own under their Crossvision brand name, and webMethods Fabric, which has been positioned as a composite application platform.

While on the call they indication that webMethods was bringing the Application Integration capabilities, there is quite a bit of overlap in this area. Interestingly, on the call they cited Forrester as saying that Software AG is the leading Enterprise Service Bus provider. This truly surprised me, not because Software AG doesn’t have a good ESB, it’s actually a robust multi-protocol ESB. However, I can’t imagine how Forrester did the numbers. After all, IBM renamed a few products as their ESB, and MQ Series already had a leading market share for messaging. I guess Forrester didn’t carry those numbers over. Anyway, these days an ESB is often in the eyes of the beholder.

Software AG bundles its integration/SOA/BPM offerings under the brand name of Crossvision, which includes:
• Crossvision Application Composer – for designing SOA interfaces
• Crossvision Application Designer – for creating XML, AJAX apps
• Crossvision Business Process Manager – which is Fujitsu’s Interstage BPM product
• Crossvision Service Orchestrator – the ESB
• Crossvision Information Integrator – includes semantic data integration
• Crossvision Master Data Manager – for master data management
• Crossvision Legacy Integrator
• CentraSite™ - SOA Governance

Out of this list, the legacy integration, master data management, and information integration represent added capabilities that webMethods does not yet have (well, WM has legacy integration, but Software AG’s technology is more likely to win out here). What is really exciting to me is Software AG’s Information Integrator, which I believe represents the next generation of semantic integration capabilities. I’m totally convinced that semantic integration will provide the next great leap forward in integration productivity because it enables automatic semantic integration through metadata alone. While those graphical mapping tools make integration easier, someone still has to go in, understand the semantics behind the data and create the maps. When a new system or partner needs to be integrated, new maps need to be created. Software AG’s Information Integrator has an inference engine and provides the metadata for semantic integration. It’s industry leading technology that frankly hasn’t really gotten the recognition it deserves yet. Probably because it is still ahead of the curve and the rest of the industry hasn’t yet caught on to the value and importance of semantic integration.

As a side note, when I was writing the book with webMethods last year on SOA and Integration, we had some discussions about including information integration. They argued that since webMethods didn’t have it, it wasn’t important and shouldn’t be included in the book. I stuck to my guns and we included it, because I truly believe this is where the next great leap forward in productivity is going to come from.

While I’m usually more of an observer than a cheerleader, I must admit to being a fan of Software AG’s Information Integrator and webMethods BAM solutions. After many years of observing this industry the sad truth is the best technology does not always win. Success much more depends on market strength. Maybe in this case the acquisition will create a stronger company which will propel some leading technologies to the forefront of the market and challenge the other vendors to step up. That will be a good thing for the industry in general. In the meantime, while Software AG may be able to soft pedal the overlaps in the webMethods and Software AG offerings, it’s clear that they are going to have to do some rationalization, or confuse their sales people and customers. That would be good for no one.

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InfoWorld made it official this morning – this week is the last print issue they will run. There were rumors going around the Internet over the weekend, apparently catching some employees by surprise. But InfoWorld is trying to make this a “no big deal” kind of announcement. The official line is the brand is not going anywhere, they’ve merely stopped “killing trees.” They’re still going to continue with their on-line publication and events.

This may be the harbinger of things to come. I’ve been told I’m one of the few who still likes getting my news in the morning from a print newspaper. Apparently TV, radio and the internet is shrinking newspaper circulation and many are predicting that newspapers will soon succumb as well. A recent internal study down by ebizQ showed that while predicted growth for online advertising is somewhere between 18 and 20 percent for next year, projected growth in print media advertising is around 1.4%. So online publications are more lucrative, less expensive to produce, and deliver more up-to date information. And yes, it does kill fewer trees, which is good news for the environment.

But none of this comes as a surprise to us at ebizQ. We've been an on-line only publication for 9 years. Guess you can say we were way ahead of the trend. Looks like we’re going to have to work harder to stay ahead when all the print media starts to join us. So I’m going to let you in on an ebizQ sneak preview. We are expanding our community and our coverage with our new ITGumbo blog network. We already have some bloggers posting, and if you’re interested, you can sign up and start your own blog. We will be offering cash prizes for best blog, best entry, and most commented entry. Check it out.

And thanks for helping to make us a trend setter.

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On Tuesday Steve Mills announced the new version of IBM FileNet P8 4.0. The fact that Mills himself made the announcement left no doubt to the importance IBM placed on it. In fact, Mills stated that this new release is part of a broad based strategy they are calling “Information on Demand”, which includes the management of data, information, content.

This is the first new release of FileNet since acquired by IBM in October 2006. IBM FileNet P8 Version 4.0 represents significant advances in all areas of the product. The major design goals were to support the needs of customers with large implementations, deploying to 80,000 – 100,000 users, with hundreds of millions of documents under management. Big systems. The key feedback FileNet got from customers was the need to scale. The benchmark FileNet used was 2 billion objects in the repository.

Version 4.0 supports federated data which is very important to IBM’s overall information management strategy. It supports open standards, and has a new Web-based client that provides universal connectivity to content based applications. This new version now makes FileNet integrate better with the overall IBM portfolio. P8 can now take advantage of webSphere capabilities and scalability. However, FileNet will remain open. Many FileNet customers are on BEA webLogic, which will be supported on the same tier as WebSphere. JBoss and Linux are also supported. The modeling environment has been enhanced and now supports round integration with Visio for closed loop documentation. Complex models and documents are now supported such as complex engineering.

According to Mills, “by 2010 the amount of codified information will double every 11 hours”. That’s a pretty sobering statistic. Furthermore, this information will be widely distributed, which for a typical company could mean “between 5 to 20 different content management systems and repositories”. IBM’s federated architecture is a pragmatic approach to this reality.

According to David Caldeira, VP, Platform Product Marketing IBM ECM Division, the FileNet name and brand is being kept, as well as the management. Lee Roberts, the former CEO of FileNet, is now the General Manager of the IBM Enterprise Content Management Group (ECM). ECM is part of the overall Information Management group which is approximately 3000 people. FileNet management and sales are still intact within the ECM group.

Mills' presence and presentation made it clear that IBM places importance on this announcement, and is investing heavily in ECM. The ECM development organization has 1200 engineers. The total number of customers for both FileNet and IBM ECM is over 3000. IBM ‘s current market share is 19%, which, according to Caldeira, is almost twice the market share of its leading competitor EMC Documentum. ECM is a fast growing market segment and IBM is clearly doing all it can to try and dominate it. Steve Mills put the stake in the ground this week, and the FileNet flag was waving on top of it.

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I can’t read Japanese so I have no idea how true the translation is, but it was exciting to learn that the primer I wrote with Gary So of webMethods has been translated into Japanese. This is a short, easy read that serves as a primer on the business uses for SOA and Integration, how the two are related, and the different technologies involved.

ebizQ offers on-line course based on the book called A Manager’s Guide to Integration and SOA. Coincidentally, the price on this course has recently dropped to $99. Check it out.

The English-language edition, which was first published in June 2006, is available for free as an ebook on ebizQ.

Complimentary copies of the Japanese version of the book, is also available as an ebook from webMethods’ Japanese website.

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Roy Schulte is now giving the live keynote at the ebizQ SOA in Action Conference. Listen live Roy is giving a very comprehensive overview of what it takes to do ESB.

At 2:00 we're having a live panel on ESBs wiith Progress and Cape Clear. Attend at be entered into a drawing for Dave Chappell's book on ESBs.

If you miss any of the sessions they'll be avilable for archive viewing.

Be sure to check out the cook virtual booths!

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IBM announced it is acquiring Filenet for $1.6 Billion. IT seems IBM's buying spree continues unabashed. And just as it finally brought together all of it's process engines and rationalized that offering, it goes and buys yet another one. Probably not to dredge up all that BPM confusion again, IBM is positioning FileNet squarely as an ECM solution, after years of FileNet trying to gain respect as a full fledged event driven BPM.

Bottom line, IBM bought a competitor it was most worried about. It's done that before, and has proved to be a winning stragegy for IBM.

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IBM has acquired Webify Solutions, a company that has created veritcal industry Services and frameworks. Webify is based in Austin., TX and Mumbai, India. IBM is making a $200 million a year investment in a Global Business Solution Center (GBSC) in India with the intent of creating ready to use business Services(IBM sets up SOA hub in India). This acquisition will give them a leg up in having services to sell. It may also help guide other develpment efforts as they set up shop in India. IBM plans to employ 54,000 - 60,000 in India - 20% of its workforce, and plans to invest $1 billion this year on SOA. So if you've got any good SOA services to sell, or have some interest in moving to India, I suggest you try giving IBM a call.

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