Outlook Series | SOA Archive

SOA Testing, Validation & Virtualization

Companies are adopting Virtualization in the data center to reduce the server costs of supporting SOA. Furthermore, if you are tackling the hardest quality and integration challenges, you need to eliminate dependencies among teams throughout the application development lifecycle. That can be achieved by virtualizing the behaviors of complex services-based applications. Moreover, expanding on the value of server consolidation and test lab virtualization beyond the enterprise data center, is key to providing faster time-to-market and quality across the full lifecycle of developing, testing and maintaining highly interconnected services-based applications. We interview John Michelsen to gain with iTKO's perspective on SOA Testing, Validation & Virtualization.
John is the Chief Scientist & co-founder of iTKO. 45 Minutes

SOA Quality Management

SOA bring challenges for every part of the IT organization, and the IT quality organization is no exception. Moreover, SOA requires quality management across all types of testing—functional, performance, security, and compliance. Each of these is affected by multiple factors such as the type of SOA being built, the needs of service providers and consumers, and the testing tools and techniques currently in use. Furthermore, IT quality managers must develop and implement a SOA quality program thatfurthers the organization’s goals for SOA. Success can be achieved by leveraging the right strategy, implementing the right processes and selecting the right tools. We interview Jeff Meyers to gain HP's perspective on Software Quality Management for SOA.
Jeff is a Senior Product Manager for HP Software's SOA Quality Management Solutions. 55 Minutes

Multi-Enterprise SOA

In today’s enterprise environment, growth is king. To facilitate growth, executives must listen to the marketplace, as well as their customers and partners and adapt strategies to wring value from constantly changing conditions. But if processes are to keep pace with executive decision-making, the old paradigm of IT manually automating individual, monolithic processes must evolve. Instead, IT must facilitate system heterogeneity and reusability, not only within the enterprise, but with an expanding number of partners, customers and distributors. To gain that completive advantage, IT must go beyond today’s B2B applications and processes and marry them to service-oriented architectures. We interview Russell Scherwin to gain Sterling Commerce's perspective on Multi-Enterprise SOA. Russell Scherwin is a Global Director of Product Marketing with Sterling Commerce. 40 Minutes

The Journey to Web 3.0

Web 3.0 is a collection of concepts, and inventions that have yet to be adopted by the masses. Furthermore, the missing links of vocabulary and event processing are preventing current solutions around SOA and Business Intelligence from completely delivering on their promise of agility, customer retention and growth. SOA is the enablement platform for Web 3.0 and Semantics will play a key role in its functionality. We interview Sam Ceccola to gain BEA Systems' perspective on how Semantics is the glue binding Social Computing, Business Intelligence and SOA to create Web 3.0. Sam Ceccola is the Deputy CTO of BEA Systems.
60 Minutes

SOA Mediation

Every service needs to combine a set of artifacts. Furthermore, leveraging SOA Assemblies is instrumental in simplifying most common SOA applications. Indeed, integrators need to implement an architecture which supports multiple input and output transports and is payload agnostic. Being able to connect to whatever data source is required and handle diverse set of content formats will enhance your flexibility. Moreover, SOA Assemblies allow integrators to rapidly process messages from a variety of sources and to apply mediations like logging, transformation, validation and routing. We interview John Maughan to gain Cape Clear Software's perspective on SOA Mediation. John is Director of Engineering at Cape Clear Software. 42 Minutes

Higher Business Performance

Enterprise BI solutions need to be efficient, reliable, and agile. To meet that requirement, leaders must leverage an architecture that is open and standards-based, platform neutral, location transparent, and that features peer-to-peer services that are loosely coupled, interface based, and coarsely grained. SOA, on the other hand, is ideal. Furthermore, with the right information-enabling technology and leadership, decision-makers can become performance managers. Reporting is key to catalyzing your performance management effort. We interview Meg Dussault, and Leah MacMillan to gain Cognos' perspective on turning information into higher business performance. Meg is the Director of corporate positioning, and Leah is the VP of product marketing both are with Cognos. 39 Minutes

SOA integration and BPM

Companies that are adopting (SOA) are realizing that one size does not fit all of their requirements. Furthermore, enterprises are looking for flexibility to scale to increasing complexity as the scope increases to multi-domain or multi-enterprise applications.
However, most companies are initially choosing light-weight ESB products to avoid the risk of huge up-front investments. The problem is that they ultimately need these products to scale with their growing business needs. Moreover, companies would like to seamlessly transition to an Enterprise-class BPM to solve the growing complexity of long-running and human oriented processes. We interview Dale Skeen to gain Vitria Technology's perspective on SOA integration and BPM.
Dale is the Chairman and CTO of Vitria Technology. 50 Minutes

ECM Web Services

With Oracle’s acquisition of Stellent and IBM’s acquisition of FileNET, it’s clear that the ECM, SOA relationship is tightening. In deed, there are technical and practical realties that enable this relationship, but there are also constraints. So, what are the technical consequences and impacts of ECM web services on the document life cycle? The answer to that question lies in the invocation and provisioning of web services. Not to mention the transport of metadata and document content via XML.

We interview Lloyd Dugan to gain IES' perspective on the implications of web services across the document lifecycle. Lloyd is Information Engineering Services' CTO. 54 Minutes

EA Governance

IT planners face a tough challenge when it comes to project tracking and investment management. Fail to meet this challenge, and you will have an ineffectual enterprise architecture, and a poor alignment between IT and your business strategy. Application backlogs, outsourcing and off shoring tasks, and new government regulations can exacerbate your planning challenge. However, the successful management of all aspects of your activity cycle will balance the proportions of your IT budget that support operations and innovation. We interview Dr. Ulrich Kalex to gain alfabet's perspective on enterprise architecture governance. Ulrich is the VP Product Line Management at alfabet. 45 Minutes

Decision Services

When planning BPM systems and SOA, the role of business rules management needs to be examined and clarified. This is best achieved by creating a set of modular software applications that can work together and allow each component of the system to focus on what it does best. By leveraging SOA, organizations can create and implement new applications more quickly than with other development approaches. These new service-based applications can easily be designed to interact with other “services” both inside and outside of the organization. The next step in the SOA paradigm is to automate the answering of business questions for other services, applications or processes. We interview James Taylor to gain Fair Isaac's perspective on decision services. James is the VP of marketing at Fair Isaac. 46 Minutes

Mass Market SOA And Web 2.0 Apps

Rich Enterprise Applications arise from the convergence of two major trends in the development of Web applications. Those applications have become more complex, and any project that is targeting the goal of “retiring” an old outdated system often ends up, not only replacing the old functionality, but actually adding many new functions to the system. Furthermore, enterprise developers must serve two demanding groups of masters at the same time: consumers desiring all of the user interface aspects of Web 2.0 and businesses wanting more and more functionality.

We interview Fima Katz to gain insight into meeting the Web 2.0 challenge with a components-based approach.
Fima is the CEO of Exadel. 43 Minutes

ESB Driven On Demand Integration

More services are being made available via the Web. These are either provided by Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors or by traditional businesses providing new ways for their customers to access their services. Customers may be using multiple services in conjunction with their existing IT systems creating a need to synchronize data between them. As part of a Service Oriented Architecture, the provider may provide Web Service interfaces to its main business functions, thus enabling customers to automate their interactions with the provider. However, the service provider may not be able to isolate themselves from this integration task, particularly in a market where they compete for customers. We interview James Pasley to gain Cape Clear Software's perspective on ESB driven on demand integration. James is Cape Clear Software's CTO. 30 Minutes

Distributed SOA Infrastructures

Service Oriented Architectures are by definition, distributed. The purpose of a service is to communicate remotely with another service, and typically to share data. The objective is to build applications that are developed and integrated by using assets from a collection of shared, reusable services. A distributed SOA infrastructure represents the easiest way to deploy and consume shared, reusable services. Alternatively, a centralized approach to SOA infrastructure can lead to poor system performance. That in turn may translate into lost customers, significant expenses and reduced services.

We interview Eric Newcomer to gain insight into Distributed SOA Infrastructures. Eric is IONA Technologies' CTO. 34 Minutes

Better Decisions With Semantic Tech

Service Oriented Architectures are driving the adoption of real-time enterprises which allows executives and managers to reach across their distributed and disparate data sources for immediate, actionable information. A real-time enterprise architecture allows organizations to respond more quickly to changing market needs, but it also introduces a new set of problematic semantic differences. To meet these new challenges, a new technology is surfacing; one that will dramatically increase productivity in both Business Intelligence and in system interoperability.
We interview Chris Davis to gain insight into Semantic Technology. Chris is Semantra's CEO. 49 Minutes

Machine Self Dependency

Complexity is driving the high cost and time-intensive nature of machine management. However, this challenge can be met with automated M2M intelligence which leverages a standardized semantic web communication format. This universal language is being applied to provide a more 'machine readable' format for Machine-To-Machine Intelligence. Consequently, it is taming Complex Adaptive Systems such as Grid, Internet Multimedia Systems (4G IMS), Financial Services (Risk), and The DoD’s Global Information Grid. We interview Geoff Brown to gain m2mi's perspective on Machine Self Dependency. Geoff is the CEO of m2mi. 35 Minutes

Greater Productivity With SOAtest

Comprehensive quality management practices and tools should be leveraged when producing or consuming web services. The distributed nature, widely varying loads, and Internet exposure of Web services drive the need for automated regression, stress and security testing. Furthermore, it is critical that discipline be carried out throughout the entire software development lifecycle.
Additionally, ensuring secure, reliable and compliant Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) requires testing through multiple layers of business applications.
We interview Wayne Ariola to gain insight into achieving greater productivity through reduced software defects.
Wayne is Vice President of Corporate Development at Parasoft. 42 Minutes

Can ECM and SOA Forge A Marriage?

Can SOA and ECM be bought together in a Technological Marriage?

Particularly, should ECM technologies be run on or as part of the SOA infrastructure?

Furthermore, what roles do the platform vendors, and niche ECM vendors play in this paradigm.

We interview Lloyd Dugan to gain insight into integrating records management with SOA.
Lloyd is Information Engineering Services' CTO. 59 Minutes

Collaborative Software Development

Distributed development organizations are often limited by conventional build and test processes that are not designed to provide the flexibility, optimization and processes to meet the operational challenges associated with building and testing software in highly distributed environments. To overcome this limitation, centralized LAN-based approaches are being displaced by a distributed Collaborative Development Environment (CDE) approach. The goal of a CDE is to unify project managers, developers, and business users within a single development environment accessible from anywhere in the world. We interview Nick Bonfiglio to gain COLLABNET's perspective on build and test governance capabilities. Nick is the VP of Worldwide Operations for CollabNet. 40 Minutes

Semantic Tech Drives Actionable Insight

Semantic technology intelligently links customer data from existing disparate systems to create a common understanding of your customer across the enterprise. Using this contextual understanding, semantic solutions enable real-time analysis and insights, orchestrating coordinated responses amongst existing systems to optimize customer response and relationships. Furthermore, the semantic approach intelligently integrates existing systems in real-time to optimize and implement decisions based on the best data available. We interview Colin Britton to gain Metatomix's perspective on how turn data into actionable insight.
Colin is the CTO of Metatomix. 32 Minutes

Provisioning Composite Applications

In the coming months and years, composite applications will play a key role in the transition to a more dynamic business environment, and will allow organizations to deliver on the needs of service oriented architectures. However, the outdated provisioning processes developed around traditional mainframe and packaged applications is becoming an increasing liability, leaving IT Operations groups unable to cope with a more dynamic and demanding change and release environment.

We interview Annie Weinberger to gain insight into provisioning composite applications.
Annie is a Product Marketing Manager with Interwoven. 30 Minutes

SOA Implementation Best Practices

The concept of a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) existed long before the current set of Web services standards. However, it is the widespread adoption of these standards that has enabled the idea of SOA to enter the mainstream, and to start delivering the level of connectivity and savings it has promised for so long. Now that SOA has hit the mainstream, some are attempting to show how SOA can be successfully implemented using pre-Web services technologies. However, these approaches fail to fulfill all aspects of SOA and become exercises in rediscovering why SOA depends on Web services technology.

We interview James Pasley to gain insight into SOA implementation best practices.
James is Cape Clear Software's CTO. 47 Minutes

Globally Accessible ALM

Enterprises are realizing that their traditional software development tools and approaches can no longer deliver an end-to-end solution for application lifecycle management. In a geographically distributed environment, it has become essential for CIOs to set, measure, and improve their development processes and for project teams to understand and complete their specific development tasks in view of the overall lifecycle. To meet this challenge, enterprises need to bring their people, ideas, processes, and development partners together in one Collaborative Development Environment.
We interview Chris Clarke to gain insight into ALM. Chris is Director of Solution Architecture for COLLABNET. 44 Minutes

EA Migrations

Enterprise Architecture Planning can help improve asset productivity and lower costs. Leveraging a SOA and web services framework is key to succeeding with that plan. The framework should help break bigger activities into manageable smaller ones that connect. Consequently, SOA and Web Services technologies can provide powerful tools and capabilities to effect migration towards an Enterprise Architecture (EA). We interview Lloyd Dugan to gain IES' perspective on EA migrations. Lloyd is Information Engineering Services' CTO. 50 Minutes

Accelerating SOA Applications

As businesses strive to bring new solutions to their customers more quickly, they depend on the IT organization’s ability to deliver new services, reuse existing services and streamline the provisioning and deployment of SOA or composite applications. However, business agility may be stymied by the heterogeneous nature of the typical large enterprise's IT environment. Moreover, existing infrastructure solutions were not designed to manage composite applications or SOAs in environments with divergent technology portfolios. We interview Todd Scallan to gain insight into to managing the SOA life cycle.
Todd is the VP of Product Management for Interwoven. 36 Minutes

True ESB Federation

The rise of a ubiquitous service orientated computing theme has brought new opportunity for productivity and new challenges for architects and designers. As enterprises deploy multiple enterprise service bus instances, they will need to provide an infrastructure to manage, secure, mediate, and govern these instances.

Joining us to discuss how to move away from integrating islands of IT functionality with ESB federation is Ian Goldsmith and Frank Martinez.

Ian is a VP of product marketing, and Frank is an executive VP, both with SOA Software. 38 Minutes