SOA Case Studies

This is a 21 slide presentaiton that outlines some of the key Case Studies in making SOA work. Specfifically, Verizon, DFAS, Aeroplan, Merrill Lynch, The Hartford, and some conclusions are covered.

Web Services Management

Of all the markets that the rush to capitalize on Web Services and Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) spawned, the space known as Web Services Management (WSM) is likely the most turbulent. Marked by a large number of new entrant vendors and cutthroat competition for a steadily increasing number of customers, WSM products have come to offer a core set of functionality as well as many of the key capabilities necessary for companies to build and run SOAs.

In spite of significant press and early adopter attention to the vendors in this space, there have been too many vendors chasing too few deals, and as a result, most WSM vendors have reconfigured their product and marketing strategies at least once, as they seek the right niche to build the customer traction so critical to their survival. As a result, the WSM market is filled with short-term fragmentation, as vendors jockey for position, and longer-term consolidation, as incumbent vendors make strategic acquisitions and build their WSM capabilities as the market matures.

This report provides WSM vendors with the perspective they need to focus their market and product strategies for the next one to two years, and it illustrates the complete WSM landscape for end-users, enabling them to understand which vendors will be able to provide the capabilities they require, both now and as they build out their Service-Oriented Architectures.

ZapThink: Web Services Management Market Set To Expand Dramatically; Growth Tempered by Fragmentation of Market Leading to Dominance by Incumbent Vendors

“Companies are coming to understand that Web Services Management is critical for both the operation of Web Services as well as SOAs,” said Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst with ZapThink. “As a result, vendors in this space are finding customer traction by offering a range of different capabilities, from monitoring, to SOA enablement, to metadata management.”

Read more at: BusinessWire

Web services lockdown

“Passwords only get you so far. To take that extra step, whether it’s a PKI token or Kerberos ticket or a smart card, a lot of companies need to make that move for business requirements for [ Web services] security,” said Jason Bloomberg, a security analyst at ZapThink, a Boston-based Web services research company.

Read more at: InfoWorld

“Speech Web Apps Gain Boost from VoiceXML”

The back end is built just like any other server-side application, using Perl, CGI, Java Server Pages (JSP), or Active Server Pages (ASP). “Just as HTML specifies how a Web page is displayed but doesn’t specify a particular browser or server, VoiceXML lets you build voice-driven systems without knowing what’s on the front and back ends,” said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink.

Read more at: XML and Web Services Magazine