Kyield: Incentive-Based, Predictive Knowledge Management

At its core, Kyield offers a knowledge management system that accommodates multiple file types from fully structured (spreadsheets, databases) to fully unstructured (video and audio files).

AccelGolf: Crowdsourcing an Upscale Demographic

Perhaps the most innovative part of the AccelGolf offering is the crowdsourcing capability: how customers use the AccelGolf platform to both create and curate the data that AccelGolf manages on behalf of all customers.

Baydin: Email & Collaboration Productivity Enhancer

Baydin (www.baydin.com) targets the information overload problem so prevalent in organizations today by helping individuals manage the information in their email inboxes and on their corporate portals.

ZapTake: The Inadequacy of Microsoft’s SOA Message

Today, ZapThink sat on a briefing on Microsoft’s SOA messaging, and we’re astounded by the inadequacy, inaccuracy, and tone deafness on their SOA message. Bottom-line: the official message coming from Microsoft about SOA is that SOA is just Web Services-based integration. What is particularly disappointing is that Microsoft has coined their own definition of the term “SOA” in defiance of what is increasingly becoming accepted as the understanding that SOA is an aspect of Enterprise Architecture, not a technology focused on standards-based integration.

Build Grass-Roots Acceptance for SOA

The movement toward Service-Oriented Architecture represents a broad set of technical and organizational changes for the enterprise. In fact, most of the technical challenges in making the transition to loosely coupled Services are simpler for most companies than the organizational and human management changes businesses need to leverage shared Services effectively.

For developers and other technical specialists, the burden of change is doubly difficult, because these people must adjust to the new technical as well as organizational realities of SOA. Often, the best approach an enterprise architect can take to build acceptance for SOA among the technical staff is to work one-on-one with technology specialists to educate them on the details of SOA, while simultaneously building acceptance for the architecture at the highest levels.

Using Industry Information Models to Guide Service Definition

One of the greatest challenges that companies face as they implement SOA is deciding which Services to build. Companies can take advantage of either general-purpose or industry-specific information models to act as a starting point for their Service definition and business vocabulary efforts as part of an SOA initiative. However, they must resolve the issues of excessively broad and ambiguous models in order to specify Services adequately.

ZapTake: Service-Oriented Architecture

ZapThink’s concise definition of Service-Oriented Architecture.

ZapTake: Web Services

ZapThink’s concise definition of Web Services.