Service technology -- from SOA to cloud to IT service management -- promises many "-ilities": greater agility, flexibility, and reusability. Joe McKendrick explores the challenges and opportunities with service orientation, and how to capitalize on these emerging computing philosophies.
Joe McKendrick is an author, consultant and speaker specializing in trends and developments shaping the technology industry.
Microsoft just announced a new roadmap for the centerpiece of its Web services strategy, BizTalk server, as disclosed in ENT Online. Microsoft has shifted direction with the integration platform several times since its introduction in 2000.
Enter the Chief Architect, an "emerging executive role in corporations tasked with bridging the gap between IT and business management," states Blue Titan CEO Frank Martinez. "The Chief Architect is a trusted resource to both executives and technologists, championing IT innovation for increased business responsiveness and profitability.
At a corporate communications seminar I attended a few years ago, the topic was all about the loss of the human touch when attempting to phone a company, that many customers or callers were getting trapped in "voice mail jail." But someone else observed that it was far more annoying when someone did not have voice mail.
An excellent pieceappears in the latest issue of CMP's Network World that provides somesobering insights on the XML performance problem, and what IT professionals can doabout it until standards, specifications, and methods are wrung out of committees.
In a recent commentary, Grady Booch, an IBM Fellow and software architect's architect, says the failure of the FBI's multi-million-dollar Virtual Case File project provides a lesson that extends to all big-budget projects. The issue is that such projects try to do too much in one big bang.
Some people continue to wonder whether Web services is what management author Clayton Chistensen calls a "disruptive innovation" -- one that utterly transforms an industry or an economic environment. True, Web services promise to dramatically change the way applications, systems and machines interact -- much as the Internetand the World Wide Web have changed interactions among people.
George Goodman, newly installed president of the multi-vendor Liberty Alliance, was recently interviewed for his take on the waning acceptance of Microsoft's Passport model, and what his organization will be doing for federated indentity management going forward.
When it comes to Web services security, I've heard this analogy: Right now, it's like having to get 50 separate drivers' licenses to drive across all fifty states in the United States. But, nobody's at the point yet where he or she is doing a lot of driving outside of their own jurisdiction.
Redmond is revving up. This year, the folks from Microsoft intend to launcha new version of their customer relationship management software, Microsoft CRM, based on the principles of service-oriented architecture.
Ok, ok, Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) may have "issues," asmy skeptical co-blogger has just pointed out. It mayeven be quite a while before it enables business analysts to simply draw up new IT-enabled business processes on the fly with cool visual tools.