SOA Consortium Insights

Community Insights: Services, Business Solutions, Portfolios Management Units

2009-07-16T16:51:12-04:00

Over the last few months, members of the SOA Consortium’s Community of Practice have been discussing concerns, practices, tips and gaps related to creating and maintaining a vibrant service portfolio. Discussion topics have included service investment, definition, reuse, rationalization, payback, governance, marketing, operations and asset management.

In recent weeks, these discussions have converged on the concepts of “management units” and “portfolio management”. From our working notes:

“Taking a service-oriented approach fundamentally changes IT’s basic management unit from an application, to services, or a bundle of services that represent a business capability (component, segment, flow or function), and can be applied to many applications, business processes and/or domains.

This unit shift ultimately forces changes to funding, project management and asset management practices. Most notably, organizations will need to be deliberate in the realm of product portfolio management, understanding the business capabilities offered in the portfolio, how those capabilities are instantiated via software and information assets, and how/where those capabilities are packaged into products (applications, processes) that solve a business need.”

This week, I distilled our on-going conversation into the diagram below. [Click on diagram to enlarge]

As you can see, and probably expect, the diagram spans business architecture, IT planning, IT delivery, IT operations, and service portfolio management concerns.

The arrowed lines show the connections between concerns. For example “Business solutions provide business capabilities” and “Business solutions consume services”.

The purpose of this post is two-fold. First, we want to share our in-flight work, particularly the diagram, in case it can be helpful as you enter into service management discusses across your organization.

Second, we have some questions that we’d love the broader community’s feedback on.

1. Has your organization’s management perspective shifted away from business solutions (applications, business process implementations) to business capabilities/functions? If so, in which areas: IT funding, IT delivery, IT operations, and/or IT product management?

2. Are you engaging in service portfolio management practices, such as service value prediction and assessment, marketing, sourcing, rationalization, refresh, and retirement? If so, what techniques and/or tools are you employing?

For example, to manage service sprawl that began from federated service development and was compounded by a merger, one of our members is considering marketplace techniques, both real and predictive, to let developers choose which of a redundant set of services survives, rendering the less popular obsolete.

3. Who manages the service portfolio? How does this compare, contrast with the management of the business solution and IT asset portfolios?

Given the convergence of SOA and Cloud Computing, I did a quick extension to include consuming cloud services. The extensions are in yellow. [Click on diagram to enlarge]

Obviously, an externally sourced cloud service is not an IT asset. However, since the cloud service does instantiate business capability, it is a member of your service portfolio. The question becomes which service portfolio management practices and policies apply to an externally sourced (and controlled) cloud service? I’ll be thinking that one over myself, and would love to hear your thoughts.

Please share any thoughts on the post, and/or our direct questions, via comment, blog post, or discussion forum. Just link to this post, we’ll find you.

New Podcast: Mark Herring of Sun Microsystems on the Evolution to Simple SOA

2009-07-07T12:22:45-04:00

Mark Herring, Vice President, Software Infrastructure Marketing, Sun Microsystems spoke of SOA’s purported death, real-world customer implementations and trends, at the March 2009 meeting of the SOA Consortium in Washington DC.

In dispelling the notion that SOA is dead, Herring shared customer success stories from telecommunications, automotive manufacturing, government and healthcare. Common to each example, was the need to solve a specific business problem in a tight time constraint, rather than taking on a grand SOA challenge.

This mindset shift, from “SOA as world hunger solver” to SOA principles being applied to specific business challenges, is critical in the evolution of SOA, which Herring describes as Simple SOA. Organizations need to simplify at the technology layer, in the form of simple APIs and lightweight infrastructure, and in project delivery techniques, from perfection to good enough.

In respect to technology layer simplification, Herring advised attendees to adopt open source, investigate WOA and cloud services for service definition and implementation practices, consider cloud computing and find a trusted partner.

To hear about the customer case studies Herring presented and learn more about Simple SOA and view the slides go here.

This is the last of eight podcasts recorded at our March 2009 meeting. Previously, we released Sandy Carter’s Smart SOA in Tough Economic Climate, Dave Linthicum on Intersections of SOA and Cloud Computing, How SOA participates in a Green World Roundtable, Cory Casanave on Enterprise SOA modeling with SoaML, JP Morgenthal on Disassembling the SOA & BPM relationship, Todd Landry on Service Oriented Communications and Ronald Schmelzer of ZapThink on Growing your EA Skills and the Long Tail.

SOA Case Study Contest Deadline Extended until July 20, 2009

2009-07-06T10:26:43-04:00

By popular demand, the deadline for the SOA Consortium | CIO magazine SOA Case Study contest has been extended until July 20, 2009. The contest is a great way to recognize your organization, garner industry-wide praise for your hard working project team, and as Dave Linthicum suggests, contribute your knowledge and experience to further industry best practices.

The entrance requirements and submission are simple. To qualify, your organization (business or government, any size) must have successfully delivered business or mission value using a SOA approach. That’s it. No membership, no fees, just brag about your success.

As for the submission itself, we understand your time is in high-demand. To submit your story, merely answer the following 7 questions:

1. What was the business challenge or problem addressed by the SOA project, and why was SOA selected to address this? (500 words max)

2. When was the project started, how large was the project and how was it funded, and how long did it take to see results? (300 words max)

3. What was the planned and achieved ROI/Business Value (ie, improved agility, innovation, flexibility, optimization, resilience)? (500 words max)

4. How was the SOA Project team organized and what types of business staff were on the team? How was cross-organization collaboration (Business/Technical) achieved? Was a Center of Excellence or Competency Center created? (300 words max)

5. What technology or software was used in the project? What vendors were involved? Was service reuse taken into consideration? What was the most complex technical challenge encountered? (300 words max)

6. What were the most significant lessons learned from the SOA project? (300 words max)

7. How has the challenging economic climate influenced your SOA project? (300 words max)

Need more information? Learn more about the contest, read about last year’s winners or get the scoop on last year’s judging. Still more? Check out what the SOA-rati are saying – Dave, Joe, and ZapThink.

Ready to start your submission? Go here. Good Luck!

David Linthicums Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise: A Step-by-Step Guide

2009-06-28T11:22:19-04:00

Since our founding, the SOA Consortium has been exploring the relationship between SOA and other “hot” business and technology topics. Over the last 2.5 years, we have looked into SOA & BPM, SOA & Event Processing, SOA & BPM & Green, and most recently, SOA & Cloud Computing.

To begin our SOA and Cloud Computing exploration, we invited David Linthicum, SOA expert, blogger and founder of Blue Mountain Labs, to speak at our March meeting. The distinctions and connections, according to Dave, are simple. SOA is something you do, an architectural pattern. Cloud computing is an architectural option.

Ever practical, Dave emphasized that cloud computing provides a way to leverage ‘other people’s work’ in your SOA. This shortens the start-up time of SOA, which creates business value quicker. The trick is to determine which services, information, and processes are good candidates to reside in, come from, the clouds. And the place to start, is your architecture. Understand your business drivers, information under management, existing services under management and core business processes.

In addition to understanding your issues, understand the early state of cloud computing, the portability and interoperability issues, and beware of the hidden costs, such as integration.

When we first published the podcast of Dave’s talk, I mentioned Dave had a SOA & Cloud Computing book coming out this summer, well that book, Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise: A Step-by-Step Guide, is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

If you are a SOA practitioner considering Cloud Computing, or a Cloud Computing practitioner considering SOA, check out Dave’s latest book. He’s a welcome voice of reason in a sea of hype.

If you haven’t already, listen to the audio recording of Dave’s talk from our March meeting.

Are you a SOA Zombie? Celebrate the Night of Living SOA Dead, July 23 in Boston

2009-06-17T16:28:50-04:00

Despite the continued reports of SOA’s death, do you find yourself with SOA based solutions in production, delivering business value? Or, on the way to production? Both? Well, according to our friends at ZapThink, that makes you a member of the fast-growing SOA Zombie tribe. What to do about it? Connect with fellow zombies and celebrate the “Night of the Living SOA Dead”, at ZapThink’s Boston ZapForum.

“On July 23, 2009 dozens of experts, pundits, and influential guests will gather in Boston, MA for an evening of networking and discussion on the topics of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Enterprise Architecture (EA). Open to public enrollment and attendance, the topic of discussion for the panel will be the recent news and discussion about the "Death of SOA." Is SOA really dead? Is it dying? Or is it changing? And what about those that are currently doing something with SOA or even just interested in the topic? Are we the "living dead"?

As a way of encouraging dialogue, networking, and communication within the SOA and EA, ZapThink is hosts its evening ZapForum networking events throughout the world. At this upcoming event on July 23, 2009 in Boston, MA, guest experts expecting to attend include Anne Thomas Manes (Burton Group), Dana Gardner (Interarbor Solutions), Jason Bloomberg (ZapThink), Brenda Michelson (Elemental Links), Sandy Rogers, and Ronald Schmelzer (ZapThink).”

The gathering is Thursday, July 23, 2009, 5:30PM-8PM ET @ M.J. O'Connor's Irish Pub, 27 Columbus Avenue, Boston, MA 02116. For more information and to register, go here. When you are finished registering, come back and listen to the podcast of Ron Schmelzer’s recent SOA Consortium meeting talk on Growing your EA Skills and the Long Tail. Also, consider sharing your success story in our case study contest.

New Podcast: Ronald Schmelzer of ZapThink on Growing your EA Skills and the Long Tail

2009-06-15T16:19:40-04:00

Ronald Schmelzer, Managing Partner at ZapThink gave a lively talk on SOA Futures: Growing your EA Skills and the Long Tail, at the March 2009 meeting of the SOA Consortium in Washington DC.

Schmelzer began by commenting on the inflexible, unreliable, unpredictable and non-compliant nature of enterprise systems. Next, he spoke of the real digital divide – the technology experiences we have as consumers versus at work. This divide is the equivalent of turning the clock back 10 years.

In diagnosing the problem, Schmelzer ruled out bad technologists, bad technology and inadequate investment. In fact, enterprises are quite good at design and development. The problem is not the artistry, but the engineering. We lack the discipline to build durable systems that can meet new business needs for 10 years.

Equally troubling is that current IT practices – large buy and build projects – only satisfy a small portion of business opportunities. Schmelzer describes this as the long tail of un-served business needs. The keys lie in architecture, service-orientation and optimizing this equation: identifying the smallest number of services that enable the largest number of processes in the organization.

To hear Schmelzer’s advice on applying service-orientation to engineer durable solutions and view the slides go here.

This is the seventh of eight podcasts recorded at our March meeting. Previously, we released Sandy Carter’s Smart SOA in Tough Economic Climate, Dave Linthicum on Intersections of SOA and Cloud Computing, How SOA participates in a Green World Roundtable, Cory Casanave on Enterprise SOA modeling with SoaML, JP Morgenthal on Disassembling the SOA & BPM relationship and Todd Landry on Service Oriented Communications. Next up, Mark Herring of Sun Microsystems on SOA is Dead?!?! Then, What are these Companies doing?

New Podcast: NEC Spheres Todd Landry on Service Oriented Communications

2009-06-14T11:42:20-04:00

Todd Landry, SVP, NEC Sphere, spoke on taking a service-oriented approach to communications, at the March 2009 meeting of the SOA Consortium in Washington DC.

Setting context for his talk, Landry spoke of the evolution in business communications, how private branch exchange (PBX) services have migrated from proprietary hardware switches, to IP based systems, to software based systems, in which voice is no longer the system, but just one of many business communication features. Instead of locked in a closet, communication services are now available to business applications via an open standards based enterprise communications service cloud.

Landry pointed out that the most unpredictable, and highest latency, aspect of business processes and decision-making is human interaction. By incorporating smart communications technology and collaboration mechanisms within business workflow, this latency is significantly reduced. During his talk, Landry shared scenarios that occur across industries, including call center order monitoring and correlation, high volume hiring, and customer and supplier communications ‘integration at the glass’.

Landry concluded his presentation with a demonstration of a first responder scenario that allowed responders across agencies to communicate both audibly and visually, incorporating individuals, incidents, state and geo-spatial elements.

To listen to an audio recording of Landry’s presentation and view the slides go here.

This is the sixth of several podcasts recorded at our March meeting. Previously, we released Sandy Carter’s Smart SOA in Tough Economic Climate, Dave Linthicum on Intersections of SOA and Cloud Computing, How SOA participates in a Green World Roundtable, Cory Casanave on Enterprise SOA modeling with SoaML, and JP Morgenthal on Disassembling the SOA & BPM relationship. Next up, Ronald Schmelzer of ZapThink on SOA Futures: Growing your EA Skills and the Long Tail.

New Podcast: JP Morgenthal disassembles the SOA BPM relationship

2009-06-05T15:07:13-04:00

JP Morgenthal, EA, SOA, BPM & Cloud Computing Strategist, gave a provocative talk on Disassembling the SOA & BPM Relationship at the March 2009 meeting of the SOA Consortium in Washington DC.

JP opened with his contention that SOA and BPM are not the hand-in-hand partners that the technology press and vendors would like everyone to believe. More so, SOA is not a prerequisite for BPM success. In backing these assertions, JP described BPM as a practice that encompasses modeling, testing, implementing and measuring business processes, with supporting methodology to gather requirements, document processes, define KPIs, capture metrics, analyze results and optimize outcomes.

This view of BPM as a business discipline comes straight from the business practitioners whom JP interacts with on a regular basis. The confusion on the SOA-BPM relationship comes from IT professionals, who solely focus on the execution engine (BPMS) of any BPM initiative. As JP pointed out, many successful BPM initiatives have no underlying technology implementation.

JP’s perspective provided for a lively discussion with meeting attendees. The prevailing counter case was that SOA also has a business design element, that many businesses are organized as business services, with supporting process implementations. A supporting point was that business personnel are more likely to think in terms of services than processes.

To hear all of JP’s points and the attendee counter points, please go here.

This is the sixth fifth of several podcasts recorded at our March meeting. Previously, we released Sandy Carter’s Smart SOA in Tough Economic Climate, Dave Linthicum on Intersections of SOA and Cloud Computing, How SOA participates in a Green World Roundtable, and Casanave on Enterprise SOA modeling with SoaML. Next up, Todd Landry of NEC Sphere on Service-oriented Communications.

New Podcast Slide Deck: Cory Casanave Introduces SoaML

2009-05-27T10:31:07-04:00

Cory Casanave, CEO, Model Driven Solutions & ModelDriven.org, presented an overview of Enterprise SOA Modeling with the new OMG SoaML UML profile, at the March 2009 meeting of the SOA Consortium in Washington DC.

The SoaML (Service oriented architecture Modeling Language) specification describes a UML profile and metamodel for the design of services within a service-oriented architecture. SoaML can be used for architecture level modeling, or as part of a model driven architecture (MDA) process, starting with a business model and transitioning through logical and physical models, resulting in technology implementation.

Casanave began by setting context, describing the rationale and objectives of SoaML, how SoaML views a service (agreement between parties to exchange something), the top-down (business-driven) and bottoms-up (legacy-aware) usage paths, and the mapping of those paths to model driven architecture (MDA).

To bring the specification to life, Casanave walked through the artifacts related to a claims processing scenario, including the services architecture model (see below), business process model, service contract, participant interaction model, message types, service interface, service usage, participant model, composite application structure and information model.

[Click on Picture to Enlarge]

Included in the example was the iteration of model detail as the process moved from business concept to logical model to systems model. In a follow-on demonstration, Casanave highlighted the transition from physical model to technology implementation using ModelPro, a new open source tool.

To listen to an audio recording of the presentation portion of Casanave’s session and/or view the rest of the slides go here. To view the SoaML specification, please go here.

New Podcast: How SOA Participates in a Green World, Roundtable Discussion

2009-05-13T11:23:27-04:00

Continuing our practice of exploring SOA’s relationship with hot technology and business topics, at our March meeting, we hosted a roundtable discussion on How SOA Participates in a Green World.

The roundtable began with the industry experts, Sandy Carter of IBM, David Linthicum of Blue Mountain Labs and Richard Soley of the SOA Consortium sharing their thoughts on how SOA contributes to the greening of business and IT, how BPM augments SOA’s green factor, and the priority of sustainability initiatives in the current economic climate.

In their remarks, each roundtable leader spoke of economic benefits gained by companies and cities that reduce energy and water consumption and lower carbon emissions. Beyond greening data centers and application portfolios via service-oriented techniques, organizations are using business process management techniques – modeling, instrumentation and dashboards – powered by SOA underpinnings, to optimize supply chains for both direct cost and sustainability. An interesting metric shared by Sandy Carter is that for every dollar you save through carbon management, you save $6 of operational cost.

After the opening insights, the roundtable leaders engaged in discussion with each other and meeting attendees on a variety of topics including the greenness of cloud computing and virtualization, the transition of traditional hardware products to software, carbon management mandates, the power of individual green advocates and the need for common, standardized key green indicators, or KGIs.

To hear all of the insights from the Hot Topics Roundtable discussion go here.

This is the third of several podcasts recorded at our March meeting. Previously, we released Sandy Carter’s Smart SOA in Tough Economic Climate and Dave Linthicum’s podcast on Intersections of SOA and Cloud Computing. Next up, Cory Casanave on Enterprise SOA modeling with SoaML.