The Role of the Business Analyst in an SOA World

The Role of the Business Analyst in an SOA World
— Those of us that are part of SOA-related projects where traditional business analysts (BA) are involved often find ourselves frustrated by the incongruence between the analyst’s approach to requirements gathering and the SOA design. The problem arises because SOA models functionality of a business across multiple boundaries, whereas the business analyst wants to focus on a user’s needs. One focus is tactical and the other is strategic. However, more than this key difference, certain aspects of the tactical requirements overlap with the strategic requirements; specifically with regard to service boundaries. Thus, important business rules that are relevant to the definition of a particular service are buried among hundreds of irrelevant (to the SOA goals) requirements and the SOA architect is forced to mine these requirements like a miner mining for gold.[...]

Getting the Links Straight Between Cloud Computing & SOA

Getting the Links Straight Between Cloud Computing & SOA
— Want to know what gets my blood pressure up? It’s when there’s both a huge shift in thinking around how we should do computing, namely cloud computing, and at the same time, there’s a bunch of information out there that causes confusion. As cloud computing hype spikes to a frenzy, so does the number of less-than-intelligent things that I hear about it and its relationship to SOA.

Building Architecture For SOA Policy Management

Building Architecture For SOA Policy Management

Eight Gates to Great SOA

Eight Gates to Great SOA
— While there’s certainly no shortage of opinions on the future of SOA, the reality is that SOA is very much alive. The core principles of what SOA can do in terms of cost savings, increased productivity, and the virtual elimination of information and application silos won’t go away. However, the term “SOA” will likely evolve into something else, as it becomes more and more a part of the computing landscape.

Agile Methodologies Improve the State of SOA

Agile Methodologies Improve the State of SOA
— Recently industry analysts, press, and bloggers have been writing about the state of service-oriented architecture (SOA) and whether it’s “dead” or in the “trough of disillusionment." These discussions have been fueled by surveys that suggest a decline in the number of organizations considering SOA, or that organizations have evaluated, but decided to shelve SOA for the time being.

The Realities of Cloud Computing

The Realities of Cloud Computing
— I’m just finishing up a book on cloud computing and SOA, and found the process of writing the book to be a great catalyst for thinking through the issues surrounding cloud computing, as well as assisting my clients with their cloud computing strategies. As I found, there are a few issues to consider with cloud computing. But cloud computing is not “the end of IT,” nor is it a waste of time.

Cloud Computing and Your Enterprise Architecture and/or SOA

Cloud Computing and Your Enterprise Architecture and/or SOA
— Cloud computing is not the savior of IT. It's nothing but a way to deploy your enterprise architecture in such as way that has the potential to be more productive and cost effective. In essence, it's a tool, not a way of life. It's not magic, it's not even new, but if approached correctly, could be a path toward efficiency.

SOA World Expo: A Guide to Ensuring the Success of Your SOA Governance

SOA World Expo: A Guide to Ensuring the Success of Your SOA Governance
— SOA is continuing to gain widespread adoption and find success beyond pilot and project implementations, according to recent surveys. There is a steady increase in organizations moving to enterprise-wide SOA deployments. Those that have found success maturing to large-scale SOA have one thing in common: they all have effective governance practices to keep SOA on track with the business.

Key elements of an SOA governance strategy

One of the success factors in introducing and operating a service-oriented architecture (SOA) is governance of the architecture's components, such as services and processes. Effective SOA governance can be implemented by deploying a registry/repository for the entire life cycle of the components.

Zeus Technology to Present at Cloud Computing Expo Europe

Zeus Technology to Present at Cloud Computing Expo Europe
— The cloud is a viable and successful means of hosting web applications, but not every application runs comfortably there. What lessons have been learned about how the architecture of applications must change so that they run successfully, reliably and efficiently on a cloud infrastructure? This session will look at the ways that application architects and developers can use load balancers and application delivery controllers to scale and manage transactions within a cloud-based application, with several real-world, measurable examples of success.

The Five Pillars of Cloud Computing

The Five Pillars of Cloud Computing
— Cloud computing requires a dynamic computing infrastructure. The foundation for the dynamic infrastructure is a standardized, scalable, and secure physical infrastructure. There should be levels of redundancy to ensure high levels of availability, but mostly it must be easy to extend as usage growth demands it, without requiring architecture rework.

The Impact of Cloud Computing on Enterprise Architecture

The Impact of Cloud Computing on Enterprise Architecture
— We've discussed some best practices that can be used as the foundation to a cloud computing strategy. To ensure the success of cloud computing initiatives, it's important to discriminate between the hype and the reality but also realize the barrier to entry is low. Don't worry about mistakes, but make small ones first! With this strategy as a foundation, IT executives are able to revolutionize the consumption of enterprise applications within their business, while at the same time, significantly reducing the cost barriers to entry of new ideas. In short, cloud computing will manifest a streamlined business, focused on meaningful results, at a lower cost.

Development Trade-offs: Programming Languages

I get the right tool for the right job mantra. I've used it time and again in my analyses, but typically with regard to which components to use in a large-scale complex distributed system. I've tried to apply this mindset to programming, but just don't see it.
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While all software industries follows each one your own different directions, there will no any application that runs platform independent. This is part of the business. All wants a standard. Since the standard be that the enterprise is the owner. I can see the exactly same situation in networking world. MPLS, 3G, WIMAX, etc. Each company has your own standard and claim for convergence, since your pattern be the way for the covergence.

The Open Group upgrades enterprise architecture framework

The Open Group, a technology consortium focused on interoperability and "boundary-less information flow," on Monday is launching version 9 of TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework), which provides a framework and methodology for implementing enterprise architecture.