Service Orientation Market Trends

While Web Services have been getting the attention through 2003, in 2004 the IT computing story will be focused squarely on Service Orientation. Offering an evolutionary approach to distributed computing that provides greater business agility while enabling companies to use heterogeneous resources more efficiently, Service Orientation, based on established Web Services standards, is set to fundamentally change many different IT markets as enterprises transition to Service-Oriented Architectures.

In particular, the markets of application security, security appliances, system management, application integration, data integration, and business process management are six key markets that will become transformed as vendors in those markets Service-enable their products. Furthermore, there is a window of opportunity for new entrants in each of these markets to build Service-oriented offerings. Those windows will soon close, however, as the established, incumbent vendors in each space consolidate their respective markets.

These consolidation trends will continue through the rest of the decade, as large vendors round out their suites of software that support Service Orientation, resulting in a combined market consisting of vendors offering a full-function SOA Implementation Framework. These frameworks will offer enterprises all the functionality they need to build, run, and manage SOAs. The market for SOA Implementation Frameworks is still nascent as of 2004, but will dominate the distributed computing arena by 2010.

Oak Grove Establishes BPM Reseller Channel

“They fundamentally believe, and I think they’re correct, that a lot of this business process stuff is going to be embedded,” Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst for Web services research firm ZapThink told internetnews.com.

Read more at: Internetnews.com

Will BPEL and WSCI Come Together?

“There’s nothing at all surprising about Sun’s changing their mind, as their software strategy has been rudderless for over a year now. When you put this week’s change of direction in the context of all the zigzags Sun has been making since Web Services got off the ground, it might look like Sun is desperate — and maybe they are,” said ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg.

Read more at: Internetnews.com

Service-Oriented Process

Download File

Service-Oriented Process to Cannibalize Integrators

As Web services support for business processes matures, companies may be able to throw out expensive and complicated integration systems through a “Service-Oriented Process” approach, according to a new report by XML research firm ZapThink.
“A process is a set of activities that are linked together into a logical flow that meets business requirements,” Ronald Schmelzer, ZapThink co-founder and senior analyst, told internetnews.com.

Read more at: Internetnews.com

Service-Oriented Process

Business processes have always been an important, if understated, asset of enterprises. The nature and methods by which a company runs its business changes on a daily basis at various different levels in the company — from high-level strategic changes to lower-level implementation details. As a result of these changes, enterprises constantly struggle to make their businesses more responsive to business changes by connecting their business requirements to their IT and human capabilities.

However, automating business processes has historically been a difficult-to-achieve goal for most enterprises due to the flexibility of their IT infrastructure. Fortunately, businesses have a solution in Service-Oriented Process: a separate abstraction layer for business process definition and execution that leverages the capabilities of Service-oriented Architectures. Service-Oriented Process provides businesses an approach to tying business requirements to the Service model represented in the SOA metamodel, thereby providing a flexible approach towards implementing architectures that promote business agility.

ZapNote: Oak Grove Systems

Download File

All Aboard for Commerce One’s Conductor

ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg, who spoke with Commerce One recently, said he got the idea Commerce One is betting the company on Conductor.

“The company has been through too many ups and downs and has been in the red for too long,” Bloomberg told internetnews.com. “That being said, Conductor looks like a strong, comprehensive offering in the Service Orientation space. Commmerce One’s strengths in the CPG, retail, automotive, and discrete manufacturing verticals gives them a great niche to build out their offering, as many other vendors are focusing on financial services, government, and healthcare.”

ZapThink Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer said Commerce One is entering new ground, one fraught with heavy competition.

Read more at: Internetnews.com

Service-Oriented Process

Business processes have always been an important, if understated, asset of enterprises. The nature and methods by which a company runs its business changes on a daily basis at various different levels in the company — from high-level strategic changes to lower-level implementation details. As a result of these changes, enterprises constantly struggle to make their businesses more responsive to business changes by connecting their business requirements to their IT and human capabilities.

However, automating business processes has historically been a difficult-to-achieve goal for most enterprises due to the flexibility of their IT infrastructure. Fortunately, businesses have a solution in Service-Oriented Process: a separate abstraction layer for business process definition and execution that leverages the capabilities of Service-oriented Architectures. Service-Oriented Process provides businesses an approach to tying business requirements to the Service model represented in the SOA metamodel, thereby providing a flexible approach towards implementing architectures that promote business agility.