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If the idea of carving up an SOA strategy sounds a little ghastly, ebizQ is scaring up some help this Halloween with the SOA in Action Virtual Conference. One of the keynotes for the conference, scheduled for October 31, is "Building a Strategic and Tactical Platform for SOA" with Forrester Research's Randy Heffner. Heffner joined ebizQ's Gian Trotta recently to offer a preview and some quick tips on SOA strategy.

SOA Misconceptions (or Tricks)

Web services and SOA are not the same thing, says Heffner, and viewing the two concepts that way tends to lead companies down the wrong path to a series of other pitfalls and tricks.

"Instead, view SOA as a broad set of design concepts centering on your major business processes and transactions,  and view Web services as one set of application-to-application communication protocols by which to access your services," he explains.

Another idea that follows that one is the idea that SOA is a technology only. That's a very small view of SOA, says Heffner, and what's more important is the idea of SOA as a business design to enable strategic transformation and flexibility to optimize processes, which is the higher level view of SOA.

And you don't necessarily need to buy loads of new products that break the bank in order to do SOA, he continues. "While it's true that you may eventually buy enterprise services buses and SOA management and repositories and appliances and such, you may well be able to get started on SOA and achieve strong business benefits without buying anything new."

SOA Truths (or Treats)

No one wants tricks, so how about some treats? Heffner says there are plenty of them in SOA. "The real treat within an SOA registry repository solution is not the registry, but the workflow and the service lifecycle tools around the repository," he states. That's what gets you a start on what makes SOA successful -- strong governance and organizational maturity to use a repository in the right way.

Considering SOA and Web services management, the real treat is visibility into the service implementation layer, says Heffner. A management product that looks only at requests and responses leaves you in the lurch if you need to troubleshoot something at the Java component or .Net component layer.

In an enterprise service bus, the treats may vary by the product but nearly all of them give you a unified access point for your services, he says, which gives you control over how services are accessed and how routing and various specifications are handled. And SOA testing tools give you strong and repeatable testing -- crucial as your company evolved and upgrades.

Heffner's Upcoming Keynote

Sound interesting? Heffner will be discussing all this and more in greater depth at his upcoming keynote.

"What we'll talk about in that presentation is focusing on the strategic view of your SOA platform," he says. "So, in some sense, starting with a more theoretical view in, 'Well, what are we aiming at? What do we want to get to with our strategic SOA platform?'"

A problem many companies encounter is how to get there while juggling different SOA projects on conflicting application platforms with different requirements and priorities for the infrastructure. And in order to put all that together, companies need a strong model for the SOA platform.

"You have to move towards that model by leveraging each project as a tactical step in a longer-term evolution towards that strategic platform," he says. "So in that session, I'll give the audience an overall view of what a strategic SOA platform is, what its major functions are, how some of the product categories of SOA infrastructure are playing out."

So in order to learn more about how to battle your company's SOA monsters, be sure to check back in to the SOA in Action Virtual Conference on October 31.

Executive Summary by Krissi Danielsson

Posted by krissidanielsson in SOA | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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You have no doubt heard a lot about Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0, but what about Office 2.0? At IT Redux's upcoming Office 2.0 conference scheduled for September 5 through 7 in San Francisco, numerous experts and customers will gather to take a look at some of the mobile productivity and collaboration technology that may revolutionize day-to-day life in offices around the globe. And in the spirit of Office 2.0, they're going paperless and giving away an Apple iPhone to each attendee for use during the conference.

"We're promoting the idea of doing everything online, and there is no better way of proving that it works by actually using online tools for managing the company itself," says event producer Ismael Ghalimi about the iPhone giveaway.

But why are iPhones symbolic of the spirit of Office 2.0? Ghalimi has more to say about that.

The Idea of Office 2.0

Office 2.0 is the extension of Web 2.0 into office productivity tools. It's the idea of getting office-type work done from anywhere using online technology and services through a Web browser rather than solely through desktop or laptops in the office.

"It's doing everything online, putting everything in the clouds," Ghalimi explains. "The primary reason for that is, when your data is online it is much easier to share with people, and more and more your work gets done with your peers, with your colleagues, with your customers and partners... When you can share information online it can make you more productive, it's going get things done a lot faster and a lot easier for a lot less money."

So, Office 2.0 collaboration tools might be anything from word processors to spreadsheets to database presentations and collaboration tools all delivered through a new model.

What iPhones Have to Do With Office 2.0

According to Ghalimi, iPhones are the perfect vehicle from which to demonstrate the ability of online tools and services to get the job done. At the Office 2.0 conference, attendees will be given iPhones and then instead of a printed agenda or schedule, they'll be able to connect to the Internet and go to a website with the information. They will also be able to connect to a directory to get contact information of other attendees with whom they want to network, or even to get a live video feed of sessions.

"I think we're going to demonstrate that what you get with that device is a real-time tool that makes it a lot easier to collaborate with people when you're on the go," he says.

Attendees will also be able to try out a lot of really neat applications through their iPhones, says Ghalimi. And of course there's a backup plan for those that already have an iPhone.

"For people who already have an iPhone we're giving a Sony Playstation 3 on which we've installed Linux, and so we can run the Firefox Web browser, which plugs into your TV and now you can not only play games but you can also do word processing from your sofa," he says.

New Office 2.0 Product Launches

So what else is the big buzz for the Office 2.0 Conference? Well, last year Google announced Google Docs and Spreadsheets at the Office 2.0 Conference. Expect even more this year, says Ghalimi, in the Launch Pad even where 20 new companies will announce new products and services on Thursday September 6th during lunch break.

"I can't tell you what this is all about; you're going to all discover that at noon on September the 6, but there are some very very interesting applications that will be released -- especially several of them directly working on the iPhone so we're very excited about that," he says.

Executive Summary by Krissi Danielsson

Posted by krissidanielsson in Business Collaboration Tools | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)