[QUOTE]
Podcast: It's a fundamental IT question that David Linthicum asks. Is SOA working? "Most of the projects out there that are calling themselves service-oriented architecture are largely just a bunch of Web services that ultimately produce no value," he asserts. "You don't see too many SOAs that are actually service-oriented architectures unless you are able to take the project to a complete solution-oriented conclusion." There are some companies moving to a full-blown SOA, however, but it takes time. Tune into Real World SOA.

Gripe Line: Vista is not without dysfunctional aspects. "Nothing better epitomizes these problems -- and indeed the inherent shortcomings of the way Microsoft distributes and supports Windows -- than the experience of one reader with getting to Vista to work on his Averatec notebook computer," Ed Foster kicks off An aversion to supporting Windows. For starters, the Vista Express Upgrade took what felt like forever to arrive: three and a half months after Vista's retail release. Now, our reader's experience gets even more ludicrous. Averatec was rather adept at the tech-support two-step, and dodged the reader even after he contacted the California Attorney General. Twice. "You have to wonder if Averatec will even be capable of helping if it ever decides it should," Foster writes.

The news beat: The Linux Foundation takes the wraps off what it calls the Linux Weather Forecast, a Web site to keep interested parties updated on the status of Linux kernel projects. Microsoft releases a bundle of security patches, nine sets in all, that fix a total of 14 bugs in its software. And VMware, with its IPO, provides a bright spot on an otherwise dreary day on Wall Street.
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Found on: http://weblog.infoworld.com

The gap between BPM (business process management) and SOA just narrowed a bit today with the joint announcement of a new Web services specification, BPEL4People. Several years in the making, the specification has a lineup of all-stars promoting it, including Adobe, BEA, IBM, Oracle, and SAP. Possibly the silliest-named spec since TWAIN (technology without an interesting name), the new standard augments WS-BPEL (Web services business process execution language) with human workflow capabilities.

More of this blog:

http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=17F305C:B6DDBA76EF2619450CE75C2F6BD83D19EFF29049075316B4

[QUOTE]
Billed as "Microsoft's premier annual conference for IT pros and developers," the Microsoft TechEd 2007 show gets under way in Orlando, Fla. Monday, June 4.

Although Microsoft declined an InfoWorld request for a preview of TechEd, a look at the extensive list of sessions reveals Microsoft will focus not only on expected topics such as Windows Server 2008, SQL Server and Silverlight multimedia technology, but also will give a nod to concepts such as SOA, open source and dynamic languages.

The opening keynote on Monday morning will feature Microsoft's Bob Muglia, vice president of the company's Server and Tools business. He will discuss how IT has evolved from a cost center to a strategic asset and how to help an IT department embrace its new role in fueling growth and driving innovation.

In the SOA arena, TechEd features a session that asks, "Will SOA replace ERP?" Microsoft Dynamics applications and BizTalk software will be part of this discussion about "Real World SOA."

Another session entitled, "Open Source Software in Enterprise Development," ponders the role of open source and whether companies can manage licensing and support issues.

TechEd also will feature discussion on the next release of the SQL Server database and how it will evolve to go beyond relational data and OLAP to support digital data types of the future.

Other topics on the agenda include Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007, Java-.Net interoperability and Visual Studio "Orcas," which is the next release of Microsoft's software development platform. Microsoft's ASP.Net AJAX and Windows Communication Foundation technologies also will be featured.
[/QUOTE]

Source: weblog.infoworld.com

[QUOTE]
Best of the blogs: What with the SOA governance tool it released last week, Hewlett-Packard seems ready to battle the likes of IBM, Oracle and Tibco, David Linthicum explains in this Real World SOA post. Not so fast, though; HP has to straighten a few tactics out first. The starting points are a detailed product strategy, and a defined stack road map. "The issue here is that HP is rather big, and their SOA offering is rather small," Linthicum adds.

Startups: Nailing identity and access management, protecting against hackers and insider threats, all the while being able to pass external compliance audits is a daunting task for any IT shop. But Securent thinks it has a brand new approach. Securent takes access control to a new level. "We have a very distributed architecture that allows people to specify and configure entitlement policies in a central place to enforce them consistently over different applications and resources," says Rajiv Gupta, co-founder and CEO. Related:Wage inflation sinks offshoring.

Slideshow: The Ten Commandments of Blogs and Wiki Etiquette. Well, the title pretty much says it all, but here's a taste. One is 'Thou shall not confuse thy opinion with gospel truth' and 'Thou shall own up to thy mistakes' is another. Watch it here.

The news beat: While the U.S. FCC investigates the Google-DoubleClick acquisition for privacy and anticompetitive practice concerns, Google buys GreenBorder Technologies and its way into the antivirus fray. Garmin opens its GPS data to coders in hopes of making it easier to write applications that use the devices' information. And BMC buys ProactiveNet to add its analytics software to BMC's business service management roster.
[/QUOTE]

Source: weblog.infoworld.com

The notion that SOA is currently making more sense to business that it is to IT is gaining steam. Likewise, it follows that IT is actually inhibiting SOA, though it's not categorical pushback, David Linthicum writes, just caution around the issues. "I spend more time going after hearts and minds than pushing the technology and approach,"

he adds. "The technology is easy, hearts and minds are not." Sustainable

IT: While the U.S. government sets high standards for hardware makers, IT vendors such as Dell, IBM and HP "have been raising that bar even higher, scrutinizing not... ...

More of this blog:

http://newsletter.infoworld.com/t?ctl=1782A10:B6DDBA76EF261945CA79A75E2D538D91EFF29049075316B4

As part of a new market strategy aimed at growth markets, business software vendor Software AG will focus on SOA (service-oriented architecture) products and services, and plans acquisitions to broaden its product portfolio and market share, company executives announced at a news conference Wednesday.

[QUOTE]
The Darmstadt, Germany, software maker, which used to tag itself The XML Company, sees its future in helping businesses migrate their legacy IT systems to more flexible, SOA-enabled infrastructures, said Peter Kürpick, the member of the Software AG executive board responsible for research and development,

Software AG offers a suite of products, including its main Crossvision application, that provide companies with the necessary tools to build SOA-based services and the interfaces to link them to other applications, Kürpick said.

Kürpick pointed to the company's new Active Governance Framework (AGF) featuring an SOA policy editor that allows developers to edit and enforce business and technical policies. One of AGF's features is the capability to send alerts to business users when an application conflicts with an established policy.

With its focus on SOA products and services, Software AG aims to double its sales to €1 billion ($1.3 billion) within the next five years, said CEO Karl-Heinz Streibich.

While Software AG intends to "remain a product company," a huge share of its business will come from consulting services, said company spokesman Norbert Eder.

Acquisitions, particularly a larger company in the U.S., will help increase sales and thus market share, according to Eder. Software AG is also keen to acquire smaller software companies that can broaden its SOA portfolio or provide access to new markets in Europe, he said.

The company has set aside €700 million for acquisitions.

At the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany, next month, Software AG plans to provide more details about its SOA strategy, Kürpick said.

The company is the initiator of the "SOA World" event to held at the trade show. The event will include a forum and exhibition by providers of SOA products and services.
[/QUOTE]

Source: Infoworld.com

[QUOTE]
As I have been doing client work recently I've come across the notion of "SOA Levels" more than once, as consulting and product organizations attempt to define the space for their customer and client base. One of the common patterns is the fact that many seem to be over simplifying SOA, in short defining this notion around components and not degrees of maturity. While components are important, a maturity model is much more important, considering that products will change over time, but architectural patterns have a tendency to remain constraint.

Just to recall, here is my take on things, as discussed a few years ago. I'm still going to say: "That's my story and I'm sticking to it."

Level 0 SOAs are SOAs that simply send SOAP messages from system to system. There is little notion of true services, but instead leverage Web services as an information integration mechanism. Hardly a SOA, but certainly a first step.

It's also important to note that you don't need Web services to create a SOA. This is true for all levels.
Level 1 SOAs are SOAs that also leverage everything in Level 0 but add the notion of a messaging/queuing system. Most ESBs are level 1 SOAs, leveraging a messaging environment that uses service interfaces, but really does not deal with true services (behavior), but instead moves information between entities as messages through queues.

While services are a part of Level 1 SOAs, it's really all about information and not about application behavior. For instance, while you do indeed invoke a service to push a message on queue and retrieve a message off a queue, it's really leverages services as a well defined interface and not accessing application functionality. Sometime SOA architects may attempt to abstract application behavior using an ESB, if that's the case you're moving up to level 4 (discussed below). However, doing this is typically much more trouble than it's worth. This is due to the fact that you're dealing with information-oriented integration technology which is merely attempting to deal with services/behavior...an unnatural act.
Level 2 SOAs are SOAs that leverage everything in Level 1, and add the element of transformation and routing. This means that the SOA is not only able to move information from source and target systems, leveraging service interfaces, but is also able to transform the data/schemas to account for the differences in application semantics. Moreover, by adding the element of intelligent routing, you�re able to route the information based on elements such as source, content, and logical operators in the SOA.

Level 3 SOAs are SOAs that leverage everything in Level 2, adding a common directory service. The directory provides a point of discover of processes, services, schemas, and such, allowing all those leveraging the SOA to locate and leverage assets such as services easily. Without directories, the notion of service reuse, the real reason for building a SOA won�t work. Directories are typically standards-based, including UDDI, LDAP, and sometimes more proprietary directories such as Active Directory.

Level 4 SOAs are SOAs that leverage everything in Level 3, adding the notion of brokering and managing true services. Here is where the brokering of application behavior comes into play. In other words, at this level we are not only about managing information movement, but the discovery and leveraging of true services.

At this level we have the capabilities to broker services between systems, allowing systems to both discover and leverage application behavior as if the functionality was local. This is the real goal of Web services, the ability to share services not having to worry about platform specific issues nor where the service are actually running.

What's important here is that we understand that the value is in the behavior, as well as the information bound to that behavior. This level of SOA is able to provide capabilities for discovery, access, and management. Most SOAs are built with level 4 capabilities in mind, but may workup from the lower levels. If you do that, make sure you are leveraging the right technology and standards that support all levels.

Finally, Level 5 SOAs are SOAs that leverage everything in Level 4, adding the notion of orchestration. Orchestration is key, providing the architect with the ability to leverage exposed services and information flows, creating in essence a "meta-application" above the existing processes and services to solve business problems.

Indeed, orchestration is really another complete layer on the stack, over and above more traditional application integration approaches we deal with at the lower levels. Thus, orchestration is the science and mechanism of managing the movement of information and the invocation of services in the correct and proper order to support the management and execution of common processes that exist in and between organizations and internal applications. Orchestration provides another layer of easily defined and centrally managed processes that exist on top of an existing processes, application services, and data within any set of applications.

The goal of this type of SOA is to define a mechanism to bind relevant processes that exist between internal and external systems in order to support the flow of information and logic between them, thus maximizing their mutual value. Moreover, we're looking to define a common, agreed-upon process that exists between many organizations and has visibility into any number of integrated systems, as well as being visible to any system that needs to leverage the common process model.

IBM on Monday is due to officially announce the first two in a planned series ofeight centers around the world designed to help build up local expertise in the service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach to IT development.

The move to create so-called SOA Leadership Centers is in response to customer demand, according to Jason Weisser, vice president and chief technology officer of IBM's SOA advance technology. While IBM has already established centers in China and India focused on developing reusable industry-specific Web services, what users would likemore helpwithis SOA education and training.

These are the eight planed centers:

1. The first center to open is in Dubai Internet City (United Arab Emirates)
2. Opening in March or April will be another center in La Gaude, France
3. In March or April the auto makers Nissan, Toyota and Honda approached IBM to set up a center in Japan
   
   IBM is also looking to open four other centers:
   
4. one will be in Australia,
5. two in China, in Beijing and
6. Shanghai respectively and
7. in Central Europe, most likely Romania or the Czech Republic.

IBM would hope to have most of the centers open by the end of June. At present, the vendor has no plans for any other centers. "We'll plant the seed and see how well it grows," Weisser said.

Where is SOA as a technology? "SOA is past the infant stage," Weisser said. "It's probably into aggressive crawling." Walking is one to two years off, but SOA may move straight from "aggressive crawling to aggressive walking," he added.

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/01/16/HNibmcommunitysoa_1.html?source=NLC-WS2007-01-17

[QUOTE]
Die mit vielen Vorschusslorbeeren bedachten "serviceorientierten Architekturen", die in der IT eine neue Managementstruktur widerspiegeln sollen, funktionieren oft nicht, ergab eine Untersuchung der britischen Marktforscher.

Zwar werden service-orientierte Architekturen (SOA) in den nächsten fünf Jahren massiv verändern, wie IT-Abteilung und Unternehmen zusammenarbeiten, stellt die Butler Group in ihrer neuen Studie "Planning and Implementing SOA" fest. Doch die wenigen Unternehmen, die bereits Tests mit der SOA durchführten, neigten dazu, erst die internen Geschäftsprozesse umzugestalten und dann erst die IT in den betroffenen Bereichen anzupassen.

Mike Thompson, Co-Autor der Studie: "Viele konzentrieren sich auf die Technik, die direkt mit einer SOA verbunden ist, aber beschäftigen sich nicht mit der, die die Geschäftsprozesse steuern soll". Ein Mangel an Expertise im eigenen Haus und ungenügender Festlegung, wer wie mitreden will, führe zu Problemen beim Datenmanagement, der Performance, Sicherheit und der Dienste-Verfügbarkeit.

Nur etwa 8 Prozent der befragten 80 IT-Manager größerer Unternehmen hat bereits eine SOA installiert, 17 Prozent beschäftigten sich mit Versuchen, und 36 Prozent überprüften noch, ob SOA überhaupt in Frage kommt.

Fazit der Studie ist, nicht gleich alles umzukrempeln, sondern mit einem konkreten Geschäftsproblem zu beginnen, daraus zu lernen und anhand dieser Erfahrungen vom Kleinen zum Großen zu gelangen. Das Inhaltsvezeichnis der Studie mit wertvollen Tipps für Unternehmen, die SOA einführen wollen, stellt Butler als PDF online. Die komplette Studie ist kostenpflichtig erhältlich.

Rob Levy, Cheftechniker beim Unternehmens-Software-Anbieter BEA Systems, bekräftigt diese Erfahrungen gegenüber VNU: "Das A in SOA sollte man nicht als 'Architecture', sondern als 'Attitude' sehen." Nicht umsonst ist der Amerikaner darauf versessen, nutzerfreundliche Web-2.0-Techniken in seine Infrastrukturlösungen zu integrieren, die hinter der SOA stehen. Levy: "Auch Firmen werden künftig mehr von unten gesteuert und nicht mehr nur von einem Ober-Zampano, der allen anderen erklärt, wie sie zu arbeiten haben". Entsprechend solle auch an die Implementierung von SOA-Software herangegangen werden.
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Quelle: http://www.testticker.de/news/professional_computing/news20070110011.aspx

Microsoft has launched (60 days ago) a message about their “Real World SOA” at the SOA & Business Process conference . Their practical vision for service orientation was a clearly contrast against the “top-down” SOA messages that their competition provides to their customers and should demonstrate their "greater" development productivity and alignment with clear business priorities.

Some key "momentum" they've had since their initial launch, were:

• a new MS SOA solution center for BDM and TDM audiences: www.microsoft.com/soa  (useful links, business value and technical information),
• a  SOA page on MSDN  (Articles, Webcasts, Case Studies),
• new product launches: .NET Framework 3.0  (which includes the Windows Communication Foundation RTM), BizTalk Adapters for Host Systems (which provides interoperability with host and mid-range systems), and the 2007 Office System .