Top 5 Reasons for Building Governance Into the Cloud

Our topic this week centers on governance as a requirement and an enabler for cloud computing. We’re going to talk not just about IT governance, or service-oriented architecture (SOA) governance. It’s really more about extended enterprise processes, resource consumption, and resource-allocation governance.

Here to help us understand the need for governance as an enabler or a roadblock to wider cloud adoption are our analyst guests this week. We’re here with David A. Kelly, president of Upside Research; Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst from ZapThink; and, Joe McKendrick, independent analyst and ZDNet blogger.

Let’s start with you Ron. You’ve been involved with SOA best practices and methodologies for several years. Before that, you were a thought leader in the Web services space, and governance has been part and parcel of these advances. Now, we’re taking it to an extended environment, a larger, more complex environment. Tell me, if you would, your top five reasons why you think services governance is critical or not for this move to a larger services environment.

Ron Schmelzer: You’re making me count on a Friday before a long weekend. Let me see if I can do that. I’m glad you brought up this topic. It’s really interesting. We just did a survey of the various topics that people are interested in for education, training, and stuff like that. The No. 1 thing that people came back with was governance. That’s indicative and telling at a few levels.

The first thing people realize is that simply building and putting out services — whether they’re on the local network or in the cloud or consuming services from the cloud — don’t provide the benefit, unless there’s some control. As people always say, nobody really wants to be ungoverned, but nobody wants to have a government. The thing that prevents freedom from going into chaos is governance.

I can list Click here to get the Free Email Design No-No’s Guide from Lyris — includes the top 10 things you need to know. the top five reasons why that is. You want the benefit of loose coupling. That is, you want the benefit of being able to take any service and compose it with any other service without necessarily having to get the service provider involved. That’s the whole theory of loose coupling. The consumer and the provider don’t have to directly communicate.

But the problem is how to prevent people from combining these services in ways that provide unpredictable or undesirable results. A lot of the efforts in governance from the runtime prevents that unpredictability. So one, preventing chaos. …

Read more at: eCommerce Times

ZapThink Announces Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Training in Singapore

ZapThink Announces Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Training in Singapore

Licensed ZapThink Architect (LZA) Boot Camp to Run August 11-14, 2009

BALTIMORE, MD June 24, 2009 — ZapThink today announces the opening of registration for its four-day Licensed ZapThink Architect (LZA) Boot Camp, providing in-depth, hands-on training and certification on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and taught by notable SOA expert Jason Bloomberg. The LZA SOA Boot Camp will run from August 11 to 14, 2009 in Singapore.

“Companies are tired of all the hype surrounding Web Services and SOAs, and are finding it difficult to learn what they really need to know from vendor-centric conferences and training,” said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink, LLC. “IT professionals want to learn from their peers about what it really takes to put together a well-designed SOA, and desire third-party credentials to assert their SOA knowledge. The Licensed ZapThink Analyst boot camps give Enterprise Architecture practitioners the SOA education and credentials they’ve been waiting for.”

In this four-day SOA training course, attendees will get hands-on experience and expertise in how to implement the latest SOA best practices and methods. Learn about Service modeling, Service domains, SOA infrastructure planning, SOA testing, SOA Quality, Governance, and Management, developing a SOA Roadmap, SOA ROI and Business Planning, SOA Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and metrics, SOA security and performance optimization, SOA policy management, Composite Services and Business Process, Service-Oriented Business Applications (SOBA), and Mashups. Hear about notable SOA security case studies and get hands-on guidance in making SOA work. And, once you complete this course you will become a credentialed Licensed ZapThink Architect.

The LZA SOA training program in Singapore offers the following benefits:

• An annual credential that allows ZapThink to endorse individual enterprise architects as having specific SOA skills
• Posting onto an LZA Directory that enables companies to research and locate architects to assist with their SOA-specific needs
• An optional listing in ZapThink’s Architect Resource Center (ARC), an online resource promoting architects available for hire or consultation by end-users
• Opportunity to contribute to ZapThink’s online research and content
• Participation in exclusive annual LZA-only conferences, events and activities.

Increasingly, individuals like are looking to get the backing of a qualified third-party organization that can endorse their existing SOA skills as well as enable continuous improvement, enhanced networking with those looking for architecture resources, or enhance their current SOA-enabled careers. Through its LZA program, ZapThink is filling the unmet need for knowledge and credentials in this area.

For more information and to register for an LZA Boot camp, visit http://bit.ly/osHrY. Early bird discounts are available for a limited time. Seats are limited to only 45 people per LZA boot camp, and ZapThink expects certain boot camp dates and locations to sell out.

Read more at: ZapThink

Lightweight SOA in a Down Economy

The current economic downturn has shifted the focus of most organizations from business growth to a simple survival mode. Chief Information Officers are spending more time on difficult cost-cutting decisions than on being more competitive and responding to business change. At the same time, these same businesses predict that Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a critically important tool for helping companies deal with the crisis, since it helps avoid redundant capabilities, reduce IT costs, improve time to market, and position the organization for success once the economy improves.

The question then is what should companies focus on to survive these times while at the same time make the right IT investments to become more competitive when the good times are back. These practices include transparency, a ruthless focus on return on investment, and increased emphasis on governance. Choosing the right tools for SOA Governance that enable organizations to manage assets, promote systematic reuse, and maintain quality in a cost-effective manner is an essential part of not just surviving the downturn, but positioning the organization for long-term success.

The Business Potential of Integration Based on SOA

Wrong, wrong, wrong! Service-oriented integration is definitely NOT the same thing as using Web services, or, God forbid, an ESB for integration.

That’s more or less what a recent ZapThink column is saying this week, responding to this year’s on-and-off again discussion about service-oriented integration. But to be fair, from ZapThink’s perspective, everybody else is just now following up a discussion they first started seven years ago.

Why would you, a busy IT Business Edge reader, revisit this somewhat pedantic issue of SOA and SOI?

To be honest, I get a little sick just thinking about it, too, but, like Paul Harvey, ZapThink has “the rest of the story.” And if we’re all going to make informed decisions about SOA and its potential for saving your company time and money on integration — you need to know the full story. Bottom line: We’ve both got a duty to follow through.

The facts, according to ZapThink, are these:

First, a minor correction, but with a significant point: ZapThink — not Anne Thomas Manes, as I had believed – first introduced the phrase service-oriented integration. They coined the term in 2002 — as a means of — and here’s the key point — differentiating integration by loosely coupled services from Web services adapters. It’s also different from using an ESB for integration.

In fact, they see SOI as requiring a service-oriented architecture:

Read more at: IT Business Edge

Free Webinars Focus on SOA Cost Savings, Integration Strategy and Going Green

Finally, for those of you struggling more with SOA than data integration, the SOA research and advisory firm, ZapThink, is offering a free webinar this week on “Lightweight SOA in a Down Economy.” Analyst Jason Bloomberg will look at how an iterative, process-driven approach to SOA can help companies reduce costs while increasing agility. He’ll also discuss moving ahead with SOA “on a super-tight budget” and lightweight SOA governance.

Read more at: IT Business Edge

Video: Must-Have Policies: Structuring & Scaling SOA Adoption

Video of ZapThink’s presentation at Software AG’s SOA Summit.

Understanding policies in the SOA context and how to create, communicate, and enforce them is critical to SOA success. In particular, architects must understand which policies are relevant across the Service lifecycle from design time to run time to change time. This session provides practical advice on how to handle policies as part of a SOA governance initiative, and provides an in-depth look at a case study that exemplifies key SOA governance best practices.

Read more at: Software AG

Video: The Data Services Layer: Building a Solid Foundation for SOA

Video of ZapThink’s presentation at Software AG’s SOA Summit.

If implementing SOA is like building a house, then data are the foundation. Without key best practices for accessing, abstracting, and managing data, the business Services and the processes that depend upon them can come crashing down. Furthermore, the essential Service design best practice of selecting the proper granularity of a Service interface depends in large part upon the underlying data as well. This session outlines the data issues all SOA architects must be aware of as they plan their SOA implementation, as well as a look at the semantic challenges that SOA brings to the fore.

Read more at: Software AG

Video: The Art & Science of Service Design

Video of ZapThink’s presentation at Software AG’s SOA Summit.

The word “service” has numerous meanings in the English language. Even in the context of SOA, the word “Service” could mean a Service implementation, a Service interface, or a Business Service. The core technical challenge of SOA, however, is creating and maintaining the Business Service abstraction, because Business Services are the central enabling principle of SOA. This session explains these differences of meaning in detail, and illustrates some essential techniques for buuilding the Business Service abstraction, including the critical role of the Service contract.

Read more at: Software AG

SOA: Integration vs. Business Process?

At the Integration Consortium’s recent Global Integration Summit, I sat next to a fellow at lunch who had been in the integration business his entire career. He began his career hand-coding integrations to IBM mainframes, and over the next twenty years, had connected one system to another using sockets, …

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Networking Event Hosted By ZapThink In Washington, DC: October 1, 2009

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Networking Event Hosted by ZapThink in Washington, DC

ZapThink Evening Networking Event in Washington, DC — October 1, 2009

BALTIMORE, MD June 22, 2009 — ZapThink today announces the opening of registration for its ZapForum evening networking event in Washington, DC on October 1, 2009. At ZapForum DC, dozens of experts, pundits, and influential guests will gather 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 ZapForum events provide a way to encourage dialogue, networking, and communication within the SOA and EA communities.

“The enterprise architect and SOA communities needs more opportunities to communicate and network in a face-to-face, low cost, low pressure environment,” said Ronald Schmelzer, Managing Partner with ZapThink, LLC. “ZapThink’s ZapForum events provide an excellent venue and opportunity for practitioners, experts, pundits, advisors, consulting firms, vendors, and influencers to network and interact and help grow the EA and SOA industry.”

ZapThink is hosts its evening ZapForum networking events throughout the world. At this upcoming ZapForum event on October 1, 2009 in Washington, DC, ZapThink expects a wide range of guest experts and pundits to debate the future of SOA and emerging SOA / EA patterns and trends, including JP Morgenthal (QinetiQ), James Kobielus (Forrester), Ronald Schmelzer (ZapThink), Jason Bloomberg (ZapThink), and a special surprise guest expert.

Details of the upcoming ZapForum event in Washington, DC:

Date: Thursday, October 1, 2009, 5:30PM-8PM ET

Location:

Vidalia

1990 M Street, NW

Washington, DC 20036

More info: http://bit.ly/19Ghit

Information and registration is available at www.regonline.com/zapdc09. Cost for attendance is only $29 and includes food and drinks.

Other planned ZapForum events worldwide include:

• ZapForum Boston: July 23, 2009
• ZapForum DC: September 29, 2009
• ZapForum Frankfurt: October 8, 2009
• ZapForum London: October 15, 2009
• ZapForum Sydney: November 26, 2009

For more information and to register for ZapForum events, visit www.zapthink.com/eventreg.html (http://bit.ly/ctIJ).

Read more at: ZapThink