SOA Equals Integration?

Mike Nibeck quoted Zapthink to explain the differences between integration and SOA:

Zapthink has a very specific take on SOA and integration. They state the following:

* One goal of SOA – Integration as a byproduct of Service composition.
* One Goal of legacy integration: building Services to support this goal, NOT connecting systems to address a particular business need.

Their primary point being that in a SO architecture, integration is simply one of the steps or parts of a composition, and it no longer gets seen as a distinct and separate set of processes or technologies. In most cases, integration efforts are designed to somehow “join” two or more disparate systems. If however the point of interaction is a higher level business service contract, the individual integration points become less relevant. You will always have the need to interact with remote systems, and the lower level details will still be very similar to traditional integration efforts, but these efforts will exist in a larger context, the service model that will hopefully not be directly impacted by the individual integration efforts.

Read more at: InfoQ

New Group Promotes Web Services Interoperability

Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink, said he wonders why the WS-I wasn’t enough. Said Schmelzer:

In some ways the efforts of the WSTF is redundant with the efforts of the WS-I, but then again, the WS-I hasn’t been doing much in the past few years. In fact, it’s pretty notable how absent the WS-I has been from SOA efforts in the past few years. The fact that we would need a new organization to focus on interoperability scenarios says much about the inability of the industry to come to any long-term agreement on these things. Also, the fact that it is always the same group of vendors rearranging the deck chairs on the interoperability question really makes one wonder whether the vendors will ever be able to champion the task of interoperability on their own. Perhaps a consortium of the largest IT buying end users should be in charge instead?

Read more at: eWeek

Software AG Sponsors Publication of SOA Adoption for Dummies®

Software AGs SOA experts have made a timely contribution to SOA Adopters with this clearly-written guide. Their SOA Rocket Science is a pragmatic approach that clearly comes from the authors strong foundation in real-world SOA engagements. Ronald Schmelzer, Senior Analyst of ZapThink LLC.

Read more at: Arriva.DE

ZapThink SOA Implementation Roadmap 3.0

Download or purchase ZapThink’s popular “ZapThink SOA Implementation Roadmap” poster!

ZapThink Announces Major Update to Popular SOA Implementation Roadmap Poster

ZapThink, the industry’s foremost experts, advisers, and educators in the field of Service-Oriented Architecture, is responding to customer demand with today’s publication of the third version of its popular “ZapThink SOA Implementation Roadmap” poster. The company distributed over 100,000 copies of its first two versions of the poster, the first in 2003 and then updated in 2005. The latest version adds cutting-edge thought leadership in SOA, includes detail on architectural artifacts, and expands coverage of SOA Quality, Enterprise Mashups, and more.

Read more at: Emediawire

Filling Holes in the SOA Stack with Runtime Governance

ZapThink considers runtime SOA governance a requirement of successful SOA, greatly increasing the chances that the SOA implementation will have business value. Indeed, the lack of adequate runtime SOA governance greatly reduces the chances of success. The ability to create and monitor policies, manage performance, secure the system, and provide self-healing mechanisms means the SOA implementation will provide ongoing value through productivity benefits.

However, most SOA stack vendors do not address many of the key requirements of SOA, including solution patterns around runtime SOA goverance. Considering this limitation, it’s important to address these issues with the proper technology, leveraged in the proper way. Thus, the purpose of this paper.

Reaching the SOA Tipping Point

The core benefits that Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) promises–cost reduction, increased business visibility, business empowerment, and greater business agility–are becoming increasingly understood and sought after, but the fact remains that many organizations are still struggling with various challenges in the early stages of their SOA initiatives. Many such challenges are organizational and political, and as a result, many well-meaning SOA initiatives have devolved into stopgap measures and political compromises. Such projects risk failure, delays, and cancellations.

To avoid such pitfalls, it’s increasingly important for organizations to take a pragmatic approach to SOA adoption that achieves business goals under the radar, building momentum and business value iteratively. For architects who are fed up with the status quo of IT and can see the big picture of the SOA value proposition for their organizations, taking such a pragmatic approach can be the most effective way to achieve the SOA tipping point, where the organization as a whole comes to accept and value SOA as mainstream across their organizations.

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.

If Integration Feels So Right, How Can It Be Wrong for SOA?

Ronald Schmelzer of ZapThink contends most SOA integration projects aren’t actually SOA at all. He contends most companies are really buying repackaged enterprise application integration (EAI) solutions.

Read more at: IT Business Edge

Practical SOA: Insurance

Presentations from ZapThink’s Practical SOA for Insurance event on May 16, 2008. Presented as a 232-slide PowerPoint in pdf format (large file). Agenda as follows: