Application Modernization with SOA

Supporting the Business Service abstraction with legacy capabilities, and the role of reuse.

Presentation for Practical SOA event in Pittsburgh, PA on October 22, 2009, sponsored by Summa Technologies.

30 slide ppt in pdf format.

The Future of SOA

ZapForum Podcast for October 12, 2009: The Future of SOA: Does the Cloud Have a SOA Lining?

With guest experts

Jason Armstrong, Practice Manager for Strategic Solutions, Summa Techologies

Ed Horst, Chief Marketing Officer, AmberPoint

Brad Wright, Data Services Product Manger, Progress DataDirect

JP Morgenthal, Senior Principal Architect, QinetiQ

David Linthicum, Author, Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise: A Step-by-Step Guide

James Kobielus, Senior Analyst, Forrester Research.

Summa Hosts Industry Analysts ZapThink for Event on Application Modernization with SOA

Pittsburgh — Summa, a provider
of IT consulting and software solutions, is pleased to bring industry experts
ZapThink to Pittsburgh
for a special breakfast session focused on Application Modernization with Service
Oriented Architecture (SOA) on October 22, 2009.  ZapThink, along with Carnegie Mellon
University and Highmark, will be sharing their experiences on taking an SOA
approach to legacy modernization efforts. 

Founded in October 2000, ZapThink, LLC
(http://www.zapthink.com) is an Enterprise Architecture (EA), Service-Oriented
Architecture (SOA), and Enterprise Web 2.0 (EW2.0) training, strategic advisory
and analysis firm. As a recognized authority and master on SOA and EA, ZapThink
provides its audience of IT practitioners, consultants and technology vendors
with training, practical advice, guidance and mentorship to assist in
leveraging emerging EA and SOA approaches to meet their business needs.
ZapThink is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. Its customers include Global
1000 firms and emerging businesses

“We are excited to invite ZapThink, Carnegie Mellon
University and Highmark  to share their insights on SOA,” said
Audrey Dunning, CEO of Summa. “This event provides a great opportunity for
business and IT executives to hear best practices from industry leaders and case
studies of how companies have successfully implemented SOA modernization solutions.”

When:  Thursday,
October 22, 2009

Time:  7:30 — 11:00 AM

Where:  The Doubletree
Hotel Pittsburgh City Center, Downtown Pittsburgh

For more information, please contact Karen Colson at
412.258.3294 or karen@summa-tech.com.  To register online, visit https://www.regonline.com/practicalsoapit09. 

Read more at: dBusiness News

ZapThink: Enterprises Not Buying Service-Oriented Architecture by Name; Consulting Firms Integrate SOA Best Practices with Business-Focused Offerings

BALTIMORE, Md.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Sept. 6, 2006–ZapThink released a report today showing that few enterprises are specifically budgeting for or requesting Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) by name. Instead, business buyers budget for specific solutions to their business problems, and more consulting firms than ever before leverage Service Orientation best practices to provide those solutions. The main buyer of such initiatives has shifted toward the non-technical, business part of the enterprise.

“The clear pattern with today’s SOA projects is that they are increasingly business-focused,” said Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst with ZapThink. “Many consulting firms are integrating SOA best practices into a broad differentiated offering that is not necessarily specific to SOA.”

ZapThink expects the percentage of IT projects overall that leverage Service Orientation best practices to continue to grow over time, and those best practices will soon become ubiquitous. ZapThink also expects the percentage of IT projects that are named, SOA-specific projects to peak in 2007, with Service Orientation best practices increasingly subsumed within the expected, routine part of IT projects more broadly after that date.

Key findings of the report include:

• Breaking up a large SOA initiative into multiple, discrete projects is an effective way to manage the risk of architectural change.
• Integration-centric offerings and technologies are taking a back seat to organizations’ need to improve their overall approach to enterprise architecture.
• Many SOA consulting providers are confused by product vendors who often distort the true message of SOA to best fit their product offerings.
• Many SOA consulting firms confuse architecture with implementation, causing significant issues in short-term SOA adoption.
• Average deal sizes for SOA projects range from an average of $150,000 for integration-focused efforts to several million dollars for enterprisewide and compliance-focused initiatives.

The report, available on ZapThink’s Web site at www.zapthink.com, features several firms offering SOA consulting services, including Accenture (NYSE: ACN – News), AgilePath, Alphacourt, Anexinet, Arc Aspicio, Avanade, BEA Systems (NASDAQ: BEAS – News), BearingPoint (NYSE: BE – News), Bouvet, CapGemini (Paris), CherryRoad Technologies, City Practitioners, D. Callingham & Assoc., Daugherty Business Solutions, Definition 6, e-Brilliance, eSigma, gen-i, Geniant, Hitachi Consulting (NYSE: HIT – News), HP (NYSE: HPQ – News), IBM Global Services (NYSE: IBM – News), Infosys (NASDAQ: INFY – News), innoQ, IPT, Kanbay (NASDAQ: KBAY – News), Keane (NYSE: KEA – News), Lydian Technology, MITRE, Modhelus, Momentum SI, MphasiS, MW2 Consulting, Network Effects, Online Business Systems, PricewaterhouseCoopers, ProSolveIT, Satyam (NYSE: SAY – News), Schumacher Partners, Semantic Arts, SentientPoint, SilverTrain, SOA Software, SOA Systems, Software AG (Frankfurt), SRL Group, Statera, Summa Technologies, Synergy International, Systemiclogic, TasmanAve, TeamSOA, Tier1 Innovation, Voyant Group, Wipro (NYSE: WIT – News), WM-Data (Stockholm), and XWebServices. The report also mentions the following vendors: AmberPoint, Composite Software, Fiorano, Forum Systems, Infravio, LogicLibrary, Mercury (OTC: MERQ – News), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT – News), Mindreef, Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL – News), Reactivity, RedHat (NASDAQ: RHAT – News), SAP (NYSE: SAP – News), Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: SUNW – News), WSO2, and WebLayers.

Read more at: ZapThink Press Release

SOA Consulting: Current Market Trends

As the practice of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) matures, professional services firms that offer SOA-related services continue to lead the market in the creation and application of best practices for SOA. For this report, ZapThink surveyed 58 consulting firms who identified themselves as offering SOA consulting services in order to assemble a detailed, global picture of the state of the market for SOA consulting worldwide. ZapThink found a substantial maturation of SOA consulting offerings across the board, with an increased focus on the business value that SOA can provide. While there still remains some confusion over the nature and applicability of SOA, methodologies, engagements, and understanding of the SOA value proposition have all dramatically improved in the last few years to the point that SOA best practices are increasingly being taken for granted as the standard approaches for solving a broad range of business problems in organizations around the world.