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At the recent Butler Group and OASIS conference on SOA standards and their impact on Public Sector organisations, one of the speakers described the initiative being taken by Japans government to use SOA to increase the number of Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) that conduct direct B2B electronic commerce. Some 99% of all businesses in Japan fall into the Small or Medium category, and currently only 8% of these have the capability to conduct B2B electronic commerce. The governments target is t
OpinionWire Articles - published 05/11/2007 - Rob Hailstone
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For the same reason that political parties hold their rallies around this time of year (squeezing them in between the end of the holiday season and the start of the Christmas wind-down), this is also the peak time of year for vendors to hold their user conferences, and to brief analysts on their past successes and future strategies.
Having been briefed by a significant number of SOA technology vendors, it is apparent that there is a remarkable consistency in the messages now being sent to the market: i
OpinionWire Articles - published 29/10/2007 - Rob Hailstone
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Since the start of the slow recovery from the dot.com crash of 2001, the assumption has been that new investments in IT would only be forthcoming if the resulting systems could demonstrate real additional value to the business. Underlying this is the need for better alignment of IT with business requirements, and a changing business and political landscape that inevitably means that systems must become more adaptable and interoperable. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) represents the architectural approacHC? Since the start of the slow recovery from the
OpinionWire Articles - published 20/09/2007 - Rob Hailstone
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Within a single organisation it would be possible (but not necessarily wise) to implement Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) without considering the relevant standards and which ones should be deployed. Once interoperability with customers or between partners becomes a requirement it is difficult to avoid the discussion of standards. For public sector organisations there is a huge demand for widespread interoperability, both within national boundaries (with constant pressure for more joined up governme
OpinionWire Articles - published 13/09/2007 - Rob Hailstone
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The financial services industry, and the banking sector in particular, is traditionally one where most organisations invest heavily in developing their own IT solutions (even down to the infrastructure in many cases); yet it is also one that some of the major enterprise applications vendors have had their eyes on for some time. There are strong drivers for lowering the cost of IT within the sector, and for improving operational efficiency. This latter concept will dictate designing a new banking platform
Butler Group Review Articles - published 06/09/2007 - Teresa Jones
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Analysing information in many organisations is carried out retrospectively transactional data is copied into large data warehouses, and then queried to gain insight into the recent performance of the organisation. This can deliver significant value and the results can then be used to guide future decision-making. However, in an increasing range of organisations, including the financial services sector to the defence sector, this ability to simply analyse historical data is likely to provide valuable in
OpinionWire Articles - published 16/08/2007 - Teresa Jones
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Last week, Sir David Varney, the former chairman of HM Revenue and Customs, was appointed to the new role of public service transformation adviser to the UKs Prime Minister. The appointment comes on the back of the publication of the Varney report in November 2006, which set out a vision for improving public services whilst reducing costs, enabled by modern technology. The report was commissioned by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and now the UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. Therefore, the new app
OpinionWire Articles - published 09/08/2007 - Sarah Burnett
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IBM announced last week that it will grant universal and perpetual access to some of its Intellectual Property (IP), particularly that which may be relevant when implementing some interoperability standards. This contrasts with a recent OpinionWire article from my colleague Michael Azoff entitled Microsofts actions on free open source software are revealed where Microsoft was shown to be persuading corporate users of certain Free Open Source Software (FOSS) to pay a licence fee for its use, whic
OpinionWire Articles - published 20/07/2007 - Teresa Jones
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Consolidation is an inevitable side-effect of market maturity. When a market is young and dynamic it shows a growth rate that is well above the industry average. Coupled with the fact that in the early market, no vendor has yet achieved a significant market share lead, this attracts a large number of market entrants both established vendors that wish to diversify, and start-ups that believe they have a unique capability that will be in demand.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 28/06/2007 - Rob Hailstone
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As each generation of IT matures and expertise in its deployment is gained, the industry inevitably develops a set of best practices and methodologies that provide guidance for those that follow the leading practitioners. Just occasionally, the best-practice guidance turns out to be not such a great idea after all.
Butler Group Review Articles - published 28/06/2007 - Rob Hailstone
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Achieving accurate and effective user identity management that is secured through strong, two-factor authentication techniques is a goal that many organisations still struggle to deliver across their operational systems.
Technology Audits - published 22/06/2007 - Andy Kellett
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Corizon is an established provider of service-enabling User Interface (UI) solutions. Utilising a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach to the delivery of its product services, the Corizon Platform provides a range of software tools and server modules that interact with legacy applications and SOA operations to improve the way that user-facing processes can be built to meet the business and operational needs of end-user groups.
Technology Audits - published 21/06/2007 - Andy Kellett
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SAP NetWeaver provides the infrastructure to support business functionality based on SAP applications, but extended to derive additional benefit from Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Business Process Management (BPM), Workflow, enterprise portal, and other related concepts. While the focus of SAP is on delivering business value from its applications, SAP NetWeaver has the ability to include non-SAP functionality, including business-to-business implementations.
Technology Audits - published 15/06/2007 - Rob Hailstone
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Microsoft has been quietly embracing the concept of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) for some time now, but is only just starting to make its strategy more public. It does not offer a SOA Platform as such, but it has been gradually developing existing products within its portfolio to provide support for SOA.
Technology Audits - published 15/06/2007 - Teresa Jones
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Progress Sonic ESB Product Family is a fully-integrated set of tools built upon the well-established Sonic ESB and its SonicMQ messaging backbone. It is designed to simplify integration within a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), whether deployed in a single department, or across security domains, firewalls, and wide-area networks.
Technology Audits - published 15/06/2007 - Roy Illsley
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Cape Clear provides a clearly-defined Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), built on industry standards and designed for rapid deployment, typically in a matter of days. Cape Clear 7 is the latest version of the vendors ESB. It supports the integration process from initial application and data integration, to the designing, integration, and orchestration of new aggregate business services to business activity monitoring.
Technology Audits - published 14/06/2007 - Roy Illsley
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InterSystems describes Ensemble as rapid integration software. Yet that simple phraseology does not adequately describe the range of functionality inherent within the product set. Ensemble has multiple layers and multiple levels; all contained within a single technology stack.
Technology Audits - published 14/06/2007 - Roy Illsley
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Sun Java Composite Application Platform Suite (CAPS) is a fully-featured suite that addresses the development and deployment of integration processes and composite applications. Many organisations today are facing the challenge of needing to integrate existing applications whilst wanting to consider how these may fit into a future Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).
Technology Audits - published 14/06/2007 - Teresa Jones
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Fiorano SOA 2007 Platform helps organisations to create and deploy composite applications. It is usually not easy to replace existing applications with modern, flexible ones (they are often business-critical) but organisations still need to find ways to reuse these existing applications in a more agile manner.
Technology Audits - published 14/06/2007 - Teresa Jones
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BEA Systems AquaLogic products address Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), providing a flexible means for governing, integrating, deploying, securing, and managing services, regardless of the platform on which they were created. BEA AquaLogic also provides an agile platform for creating and managing business processes, portals, collaborative communities, and composite applications.
Technology Audits - published 14/06/2007 - Teresa Jones
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webMethods Fabric is a suite of business process productivity solutions. Whilst integration remains a perennial problem for many organisations, the concept of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) brings the promise of still greater future flexibility by allowing services to be created and combined to meet new requirements.
Technology Audits - published 14/06/2007 - Teresa Jones
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From its inception, JBoss has been in the business of providing Java-based infrastructure technology under open source licenses, with its most adopted product being the JBoss Application Server. The JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite (JEMS) adds a number of products that have progressed from providing basic integration to deliver a sound set of SOA capabilities.
Technology Audits - published 13/06/2007 - Rob Hailstone
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The extreme number of SOA Platform vendors competing for market share means that consolidation will gather pace. There will still be scope for vendors with an incomplete portfolio to fill in the gaps through acquisition, but we will also see some of the larger vendors acquiring competitors simply to accelerate their market share growth.
Market Lifecycle Ratings - published 13/06/2007 - Andy Kellett, Rob Hailstone, Roy Illsley, Teresa Jones
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Oracle SOA Suite and Oracle BPA Suite 10g Release 3 are the currently available versions of Oracles SOA infrastructure. It has become one of the most comprehensive SOA platforms through an aggressive combination of internal development and acquisitions. Much integration of acquired products has already been achieved, with more promised for the forthcoming version 11 to absorb more recent acquisitions.
Technology Audits - published 13/06/2007 - Rob Hailstone
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TIBCO offers a comprehensive range of solutions to assist with the challenges of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Integration has not always solved the problems of flexibility that many organisations are faced with, and SOA is seen as a way that existing applications can be re-used and combined with new to deliver more rapid business value.
Technology Audits - published 13/06/2007 - Teresa Jones
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