Make way for ‘Guerrilla SOA’

Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with ZapThink LLC., said the basic concept of Guerrilla SOA was something his firm was already advocating.

“ZapThink has long espoused taking an iterative approach to SOA that focuses on delivering business value with each iteration,” Bloomberg said when asked about the new term. “In many ways, that’s the same approach as Guerrilla SOA.”

However, Bloomberg had a warning for developers thinking of trying the guerrilla style approach.

“If all you’re doing is Guerrilla SOA, without an overall plan and governance in place, then you run the risk of building incompatible or redundant services,” he said. But despite that caveat, he didn’t want to scare coders away from the concept. “By all means, tackle high-value, low risk SOA projects first and build up to more complex ones, as long as they’re part of an iterative roadmap.”

Read more at: SearchWebServices

IT companies are hooking up like divorcees at a Vegas wedding chapel

The ZapThink guys have it right that this is only the second inning (given the weather, it can’t be too soon for baseball metaphors) of a nine-inning outing of SOA components and supplier consolidation.

Read more at: ZDnet

ThoughtWorks: Focusing on the Technology of Web Services & SOA

ThoughtWorks is a midsize global IT consulting firm that offers custom software development, integration services, Web Services development, and enterprise architecture consulting. Rather than providing high-level business consulting, the company focuses its resources squarely on providing technology solutions to problems companies face. However, despite the seemingly narrow focus of the firm, the company offers true thought leadership, in particular in the area of distributed development using a global delivery model and agile methodologies, which both lowers their clients’ risk and helps them attract top-notch technical talent.

Specifically, ThoughtWorks has completed several Web Services and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) projects over the last few years, focusing on projects that involve legacy integration, leveraging their expertise with both the .NET and Java environments. ThoughtWorks’ technical depth, expertise with agile methodologies, and experience building SOA implementations positions them as a significant player in the SOA consulting marketplace.

Service at Your Discretion

The market for SOA products and services will reach a total value of $4.5bn by 2005, and $43bn by 2010, according to ZapThink, the Waltham, Massachusetts-based analyst company that specialises in tracking web services and SOA.

Read more at: Computer Business Review

App-Dev Game Changer

Bloomberg predicts that SOAs will “shake the systems-integration industry to the core.” As more companies implement SOAs and Web services, he says, the need for integration decreases dramatically, forcing systems integrators to rethink their own business models. “A big part of what SOAs and Web services do is enable software to integrate automatically, so it changes the whole systems-integration business because it makes it easier for applications to talk to each other,” he says.

Bloomberg and ZapThink view SOAs as a much more deeply executed endeavor than Web services, including architectural guidance at the enterprise level which, in Bloomberg’s words, “provides a framework for building services within the context of the SOA.”

Read more at: VARBusiness

ZapNote: ThoughtWorks

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Service-Oriented Architecture Consulting Partnership Landscape

Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) represent an evolutionary approach to distributed computing that promises a flexible IT environment that leads to business agility. As companies look to leverage the business advantages of Web Services to address strategic business needs, they are increasingly looking to build SOAs. However, SOAs require special skills and expertise. When companies do not have such skills in-house, they turn to consultants, system integrators, and other professional services organizations.

The movement to SOAs present both opportunities and threats to consulting firms: on the one hand, there will be an increased demand for architectural consulting, business process consulting and the implementation tasks associated with building SOAs. On the other hand, as SOAs take hold and Service-oriented process solutions supplant integration solutions, the market for system integration will dry up, requiring system integrators to change their business focus.

This report analyzes the market for SO

Service-Oriented Architecture Consulting for Professional Services Organizations

Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) represent an evolutionary approach to distributed computing that promises a flexible IT environment that leads to business agility. As companies look to leverage the business advantages of Web Services to address strategic business needs, they are increasingly looking to build SOAs. However, SOAs require special skills and expertise. When companies do not have such skills in-house, they turn to consultants, system integrators, and other professional services organizations.

The movement to SOAs present both opportunities and threats to consulting firms: on the one hand, there will be an increased demand for architectural consulting, business process consulting and the implementation tasks associated with building SOAs. On the other hand, as SOAs take hold and Service-oriented process solutions supplant integration solutions, the market for system integration will dry up, requiring system integrators to change their business focus.

This report analyzes the market for SO

Service-Oriented Architecture Consulting for Enterprise End-Users

Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) represent an evolutionary approach to distributed computing that promises a flexible IT environment that leads to business agility. As companies look to leverage the business advantages of Web Services to address strategic business needs, they are increasingly looking to build SOAs. However, SOAs require special skills and expertise. When companies do not have such skills in-house, they turn to consultants, system integrators, and other professional services organizations.

The movement to SOAs present both opportunities and threats to consulting firms: on the one hand, there will be an increased demand for architectural consulting, business process consulting and the implementation tasks associated with building SOAs. On the other hand, as SOAs take hold and Service-oriented process solutions supplant integration solutions, the market for system integration will dry up, requiring system integrators to change their business focus.

This report analyzes the market for SO

Service-Oriented Architecture Consulting

Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) represent an evolutionary approach to distributed computing that promises a flexible IT environment that leads to business agility. As companies look to leverage the business advantages of Web Services to address strategic business needs, they are increasingly looking to build SOAs. However, SOAs require special skills and expertise. When companies do not have such skills in-house, they turn to consultants, system integrators, and other professional services organizations.

The movement to SOAs present both opportunities and threats to consulting firms: on the one hand, there will be an increased demand for architectural consulting, business process consulting and the implementation tasks associated with building SOAs. On the other hand, as SOAs take hold and Service-oriented process solutions supplant integration solutions, the market for system integration will dry up, requiring system integrators to change their business focus.

This report analyzes the market for SOA within professional services organizations from three perspectives: from the point of view of the consulting firm, who must understand how its business must change; from the perspective of the enterprise user, who must select and manage a consultant; and from the point of view of software vendors who wish to work with consultants to help them meet the needs of their customers.