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.
The insurance industry may be a conservative lot, but I've noticed they have been ahead of the curve with Web services. The industry's big challenge is that carriers rely on networks of independent or semi-independent agents up front, but run a lot of mainframes in the back.
Earlier this year, we saw Microsoft and Sun Microsystems settle their legal disputes, and stop the bickering. Now, it looks like the two infrastructure giants will spend the holidays together, with some interesting ramifications for Web services and SOA.
More interesting news out of Big Blue. IBM has just introduced a new version of its 35-year-old Customer Information Control System (CICS) transaction server to support Web services.
A couple of months back, Radicati Groupput out an estimate that the Web services market would be worth about$950 million in 2004. Since it's now December, we can assume we're onthe verge of reaching that first billion-dollarmilestone.
Score a big one for Web services and SOA. A major deal is brewing between IBM and the New York Stock Exchange, made possible, to a large degree, by Web services.
ZapThink, an analyst firm focused on SOA and XML, has offered some pioneering insights on the talent necessary to usher in a new era of Web services. Central to the movement will be skilled consultants, according to the firm.
One more thought from the software patent front. There is hope yet that bad or obvious patents can be invalidated or withdrawn.
It is estimated that there are currently 100,000 software patents inexistence, according to Gregory Aharonian, editor of the InternetPatent News Service and Bustpatents.com, quoted last month in Baseline.
Given the growing concerns about a new XML performance crisis that Joe discusses in a prior post, it's worth noting that some of the most impressive new entrants in the Web services field such as Amazon and eBay are playing without service guarantees. In a recent piece at Loosely Coupled, David Longworth notes that the absence of such guarantees isn't holding back new developments and innovations.