Enterprise Mashups & SOBAs: Which is the Tail & Which is the Dog?

Defines a Service-Oriented Business Application (SOBA) in the context of SOA, and a Mashup in the context of Web 2.0. Then explains how the overlap is an Enterprise Mashup, which is part of the Enterprise Web 2.0 story. Enterprise Mashups require the loose coupling and management provided by SOA, as well as governance, to be appropriate in an enterprise environment.

36-slide PowerPoint in pdf format. Originally presented at SOA World on June 25, 2007.

Software Architects, System Integrators, and End Users to Benefit From Breakthrough User Proxy Extension to the Service-Oriented Architecture Mode

“The software industry, and the enterprises it serves, are in the midst of a massive transformation,” said Ronald Schmelzer, Senior Analyst, ZapThink, LLC. “In recent years, IT has become so complex, yet so vital to the running of the enterprise, that human activities have been re-organized around systems, rather than the reverse, and business processes have become carved in code — if not in stone.” The result, said Schmelzer, is that the very systems that were designed to facilitate business have become the largest inhibitor to change and agility. “In today’s environment of demand-driven business, markets of one, and the ‘customer as CEO,’ this is deadly.”

Leveraging the emerging Service-Oriented Architecture software paradigm, applications that require human interaction and are task-oriented increasingly are being delivered over the Internet as “Web services” — distributed applications available when and where needed in order to cooperate in supporting complex business processes. “Because of the significant levels of functionality and flexibility that this architectural approach to integration can deliver, SOA is rapidly emerging as the preferred architecture for modern software applications,” says Schmelzer.

But there is a weakness in the SOA model in regards to the end user: “Notwithstanding the fact that the user may choose — or be required — to interact with business applications delivered through a wide variety of systems and mobile devices,” Schmelzer said, “companies need to avoid the chaos that could result from thousands of developers independently implementing their own view of the user and user interface. There’s a missing link between users and (Web) Services, and organizations are just beginning to recognize it.”

Read more at: Webalo Press Release

Webalo: Enabling User Interactivity as a Service

Once companies successfully address the challenge of Service-orienting their critical systems, they are still faced with the challenge of delivering those Services to the widest set of Service consumers. It is clear that at some point all organizations will have to grapple with handling heterogeneous Service consumers as well as Service producers.

Webalo’s User Proxy Server (UPS) focuses on solving this problem by providing a user interface abstraction layer that intermediates between task-oriented processes requiring human intervention and user interface devices. The UPS enables companies to deliver the value proposition of Service-Oriented Architectures to disparate, heterogeneous consumer devices through a user proxy that abstracts user interface capabilities as Services and provides a user context across multiple Service interactions.