ZapThink: SCA and JBI bring nothing to the SOA table

Despite being positioned by vendors at standards for service-oriented architecture, Service Component Architecture (SCA) and Java Business Integration (JBI) will have little or nothing to add to SOA development, argues Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with ZapThink LLC. In this Q&A, he explains the ZapThink view that SCA and JBI are mostly about vendor politics and hype and can pretty much be ignored by architects and developers working on SOA implementations.

Read more at: SearchWebServices

Tie that binds Sun, NetBeans and Java criticized

Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with ZapThink LLC., strongly supports the criticism, saying, “Bill Roth from BEA is right on the money.”

ZapThink’s Bloomberg agrees. “Sun is bowing to customer pressure to open Java,” Bloomberg said, “but still wants to maintain more control than they would be comfortable letting other vendors have. In fact, Sun is somewhat of a loose cannon in the Java world from the perspective of many of the other Java-centric vendors. You could say that one of the political motivations behind SCA (Service Component Architecture) that folks like BEA and SAP are driving is an example of these vendors trying to build a Java infrastructure for SOA independent of Sun.”

Read more at: SearchWebServices

Salesforce moves into hosted SOA

However, Salesforce might have a challenge in attracting an audience to the software, according to Ron Schmelzer, founder of analyst firm Zapthink.

CRM software is traditionally sold to salespeople looking for a suite that requires minimal set-up. The company has attracted some developers with its Apax hosting platform, but has limited traction in the application integration field.

“Salesforce could do it, but it remains to be proven. But the model is pretty interesting,” Schmelzer commented.

Read more at: VNU Net

Podcast: Security360 – SOA, Web Services Security

SearchSecurity.com’s Security360 podcast offers fresh perspectives — from vendors, experts and infosec pros — on a variety of complex information security issues. In our debut episode, we examine the state of security for service-oriented architectures and Web services. ZapThink analyst Jason Bloomberg offers an overview of the security issues unique to SOA environments, while executives from SAP and Oracle discuss how they address SOA security in their software. (Runtime: 29:45)

Read more at: SearchSecuirty

HP, SAP Further Bind Their SOA Ties

One trend in the SOA space for 2007 will likely be a shortage of experienced IT professionals who can oversee SOA implementations, SOA-focused research firm ZapThink said in a recent report.

Still, ZapThink predicts a strong year for SOA, with the strength of the approach “further reinforced and expanded,” according to analyst Ronald Schmeltzer.

Read more at: e-Commerce Times

Special report: Java EE 5 faces the SOA test, part 3

However, Bruce Snyder, co-founder and developer for the Geronimo project and a senior architect at open source provider LogicBlaze Inc., said he is still seeing “people going outside of Java EE to look for solutions. That’s why customers are coming to us, why open source projects are there. The upgrade from 1.4 to Java EE 5 is a major shift from RPC-style Web services to annotated Web services. That’s good, but it’s just following what the open source community was already doing. And there are still a lot of organizations out there that run Java 1.4. Java EE 5 requires an upgrade to Java 1.5.”

Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink LLC, said he’s “not seeing anybody interested in JAX-WS and JAXB. The Java world is getting very diverse, both on the commercial side and open source. It’s also getting noisy, which is an opportunity for Microsoft.”

Read more at: SearchWebServices

Special report: Java EE 5 faces the SOA test, part 2

Vendors that are part of the EE 5 ecosystem like SAP and JBoss are offering broader capabilities than just Java EE 5, said Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst with ZapThink LLC. “You still need scalable, transactional Web sites, and if you want [IBM] WebSphere or [BEA] WebLogic that makes sense, but if you’re looking to do SOA you’re not going to focus on the same priority. It’s what BEA is struggling with as it moved to SOA 360 º, for example. [Vendors] are rethinking what it means to provide a SOA platform.”

Read more at: SearchWebServices

5 Business Reasons to Service-Orient

Service orientation offers real business benefits in five key areas: reduced integration costs, automated business-to-business interaction, easier regulatory compliance, user empowerment, and the ability to react to change more quickly.

Service orientation is a business philosophy – a new way of thinking about organizing your business and its processes. Both service orientation and its related technology concept, service-oriented architecture (SOA), enable business to use technology in a flexible, agile manner.

Read more in the special article in SAP NetWeaver Magazine.

Read more at: SAP NetWeaver Magazine

ZapForum Podcast: Exploring the Relationship between Enterprise Applications & SOA

ZapForum Podcast for October 31, 2006 features

Guest Expert Raghu Mahalingam, Vice President, Global SAP Practice, Patni.

Listen to this Podcast and you will:

• Learn how the major enterprise application vendors, SAP and Oracle, are leveraging SOA in their product lines
• Familiarize yourself with the SOA roadmaps of the leading enterprise application vendors
• Explore how companies are implementing Service-oriented integration in the context of their enterprise applications

IBM making $1 billion bet on SOA

LogicLibrary, although still independent, announced a worldwide reseller agreement with IBM Global Services last week that will allow IBM Global Services to resell and provide services for LogicLibrary’s Logidex registry/repository and design time governance product.

In time, the company could be a natural acquisition target for Oracle, said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink.

IBM’s other main SOA competitors — notably BEA Systems, HP, and SAP. — are, like Oracle, software vendors with a strong presence in middleware.

HP’s SOA offerings appear more focused on a subset of SOA around management and governance, Cearley said. It’s not clear what SAP will do — adopt IBM’s approach and build its own registry/repository or, less likely, acquire one, Schmelzer said.

With IBM’s reaffirmation to SOA, Schmelzer sees echoes of the company’s wholehearted embrace of e-business in the mid-’90s, which manifested itself across every segment of Big Blue’s business.

“It’s the same level of commitment,” Schmelzer said, pointing to the more than $1 billion IBM is investing in SOA-related areas this year.

“Clearly, IBM’s expecting a multibillion dollar return on its investment,” Schmelzer added.

Read more at: InfoWorld