There are articles, at least in the swedish IT oriented news papers and magazines, that SOA is declining in focus from the companies.
Maybe the reality got into the SOA think tank. You have to invest in documenting your current processes in order to take advantage of SOA. It is not The Salvation.
We knew that alreday. But some of the IT departments of major companies did not.
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
SOA and a conductor
I saw a conductor today on the very good and informative channel mezzo. He just showed the orchestra in short moves how to play a very complex piece.
I started to think about a word in the SOA realm. Orchestration.
Orchestration.
The conducter of a choir or an ensemble only shows the path to what there is to come. It relies on the fact that every single intstrumentalist knows what to do. And the pace is the key to success. The SAME PACE. The value in time of the notes have to be coordinated.
The pitch have to be coordinated, and the instrumentalists tune in before the piece starts. They even tend to tune in their instruments during the concert in some intermission or between parts in a mass, or a symphony.
Compare that situation with a software business installment with different web services, different platforms and different hardware. Trying to interact.
I mean, hey! Come on! It puts demands on the internal affairs of a business. The internal processes have to be defined before you can outsource anything, before you can web-servicify any part of any application.
In order to play the symphony every single part, every single trombone player, every single bass player and the little tiny flute has to be in synch. Has to agree on the tempo, on the pitch.
This is the case in software engineering too. You have to decide upon a standard platform, a common way of working and a culture that encourage knowledge exchange.
I started to think about a word in the SOA realm. Orchestration.
Orchestration.
The conducter of a choir or an ensemble only shows the path to what there is to come. It relies on the fact that every single intstrumentalist knows what to do. And the pace is the key to success. The SAME PACE. The value in time of the notes have to be coordinated.
The pitch have to be coordinated, and the instrumentalists tune in before the piece starts. They even tend to tune in their instruments during the concert in some intermission or between parts in a mass, or a symphony.
Compare that situation with a software business installment with different web services, different platforms and different hardware. Trying to interact.
I mean, hey! Come on! It puts demands on the internal affairs of a business. The internal processes have to be defined before you can outsource anything, before you can web-servicify any part of any application.
In order to play the symphony every single part, every single trombone player, every single bass player and the little tiny flute has to be in synch. Has to agree on the tempo, on the pitch.
This is the case in software engineering too. You have to decide upon a standard platform, a common way of working and a culture that encourage knowledge exchange.
Friday, September 12, 2008
SOA and the business
There are voices in our IT world saying that we have to go for low cost countries, we will earn money. Well it is not a matter of subtraction, that is for sure.
Cultural differences in the ways of working is making the profit not as profitable as it seems from the start. Note that there seldom - but it could be as well - lack of knowledgeable people in other parts of the world, it is just that the ways of working differ.
That gap has to be acknowledged and adressed.
If you have a business where you want to outsource some part of your internal business. That decision will put several requirements upon your inner process structure and documentation. It essentially say "you have to define them". That is the first obstacle. Are there heroes out there making the business run and you do not know it? Yes, probably. There is always a "phone Mr FixIt and he will take care of you" or "send a fax to Mrs IgoFigure and the order will be in place when you want it".
So you go document.
Then you go standardise the inner it landscape. That is the next step, of course every single person has to agree upon the technical road taken. Actually, we all sort of just accept the fact that we shall use Word as a word processing tool. Thou shalt use Word. OK, we say, we do not go in our chamber and make up a new word proceessing software. Do we? No, if we do anything we look for open source alternatives. That is a good thing. Or we look for software on the shelf solutions.
A SOA concept for your company could be the soulution and lift everyone. But it is a cumbersome task to achieve tru outsourcing capability. And it starts with Your company, not the outsourcing company.
Cultural differences in the ways of working is making the profit not as profitable as it seems from the start. Note that there seldom - but it could be as well - lack of knowledgeable people in other parts of the world, it is just that the ways of working differ.
That gap has to be acknowledged and adressed.
If you have a business where you want to outsource some part of your internal business. That decision will put several requirements upon your inner process structure and documentation. It essentially say "you have to define them". That is the first obstacle. Are there heroes out there making the business run and you do not know it? Yes, probably. There is always a "phone Mr FixIt and he will take care of you" or "send a fax to Mrs IgoFigure and the order will be in place when you want it".
So you go document.
Then you go standardise the inner it landscape. That is the next step, of course every single person has to agree upon the technical road taken. Actually, we all sort of just accept the fact that we shall use Word as a word processing tool. Thou shalt use Word. OK, we say, we do not go in our chamber and make up a new word proceessing software. Do we? No, if we do anything we look for open source alternatives. That is a good thing. Or we look for software on the shelf solutions.
A SOA concept for your company could be the soulution and lift everyone. But it is a cumbersome task to achieve tru outsourcing capability. And it starts with Your company, not the outsourcing company.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
SOA, absolut and the world.
So they say. SOA is The New Thing. It is just a new packaging.
I am not saying it is a bad thing, just that it is not new.
I am reading in Financial Times about lifestreaming, very interesting stuff to read in there. That is for sure, they state that the battle of the web (should be read the battle of the money that can be made on the 'net) is here. Google is not making it fully, they say, they have not found more ways of doing money on hits than adverts. Myspace got bad credit some months ago locking in their users and not allowing Google's Friend Connect.
A former employee of Google left Google and started Friendfeed, as in feed your friends with what is going on in your life. Well, OK, so, and what about texting. Friendfeed is The Application to set off the 'net (once again, heared that before too, but then again Skype did make a lot of money in the end). Well could be interesting but it did not make my day, at least not this very day.
People buy stuff or services. Machines seldom do, and when they do their algoritms was the same to parts of the fact that machines buy stocks made the October crash in the stock market in 1997. They had the same parameters and sold and sold, and then another program noticed that "everybody" did sell. Machines did sell. The crasch was a fact, my own theory but I have seen it elsewhere. The algoritms of today is, of course, better. Or are they?
Internet ads is just an electronic part of (almost) every people in the western world. To lifestream the mailestones (and that milestone can be "look at me at this bar in Thailand") of our social life is another electronic footprint of our selves. I am not sure where this will lead, and I share that uncertainity (even an english word?) with the Financial Times.
The good thing about the article is that it seems to me that commercial forces are now seeing that social networking really really is happening. Also, that social networking (virtual social networking) is here to Stay. I am not surprised, we people tend to like to chat, to just hang out, to just be amongst other human beings.
A swedish company called twingly is doing something completely different. They are weaving another web. Tangling other twisty little passages with their software. Twingly are building their business cases on mutual benefit. What they do? Well...if I scratch your back then you scratch mine. That is the essence of the business idea.
In Sweden the blogosphere is a internet based (of course) business area, a virtual business area with a virtual customer segmentation. Some of the swedish bloggers are important influencial bloggers, but twingly does not make any difference. If you put a link on your own blog to a news papers article and then ping the twingly server they will connect your blog to that news papers article.
Thus...a boost on your blog and a boost on the article in the news paper. Voilà!
Well, Twingly has taken this a bit further, they now started to make up contracts with companies to do the same thing. The first one is Lindex, a clothing company in Sweden.
This is risky but the companies are embracing the web as a virtual space for business. So, adopt to the rules. One of the new one's being:
If some blogger writes something bad about your product then so be it. The key to success here is to react and to react very very fast, at blogspeed. One example of when that did NOT happen is the Absolut commercial run in the Mexican "part" of the world. There are no borders on the web... And the americans, or at least not all of them, realized that this was an old map. So the "joke" did not make it. The absolut company had to stop the campaign. The US blogosphere spread the word around very very fast.
And do notice that even if the map was a replica of an old ancient map most people did not care. Created a lot of bad will for Absolut. Every excuse the responsible marketing person made was beaten up into internet bits and pieces by the raging blogosphere.
I am not saying it is a bad thing, just that it is not new.
I am reading in Financial Times about lifestreaming, very interesting stuff to read in there. That is for sure, they state that the battle of the web (should be read the battle of the money that can be made on the 'net) is here. Google is not making it fully, they say, they have not found more ways of doing money on hits than adverts. Myspace got bad credit some months ago locking in their users and not allowing Google's Friend Connect.
A former employee of Google left Google and started Friendfeed, as in feed your friends with what is going on in your life. Well, OK, so, and what about texting. Friendfeed is The Application to set off the 'net (once again, heared that before too, but then again Skype did make a lot of money in the end). Well could be interesting but it did not make my day, at least not this very day.
People buy stuff or services. Machines seldom do, and when they do their algoritms was the same to parts of the fact that machines buy stocks made the October crash in the stock market in 1997. They had the same parameters and sold and sold, and then another program noticed that "everybody" did sell. Machines did sell. The crasch was a fact, my own theory but I have seen it elsewhere. The algoritms of today is, of course, better. Or are they?
Internet ads is just an electronic part of (almost) every people in the western world. To lifestream the mailestones (and that milestone can be "look at me at this bar in Thailand") of our social life is another electronic footprint of our selves. I am not sure where this will lead, and I share that uncertainity (even an english word?) with the Financial Times.
The good thing about the article is that it seems to me that commercial forces are now seeing that social networking really really is happening. Also, that social networking (virtual social networking) is here to Stay. I am not surprised, we people tend to like to chat, to just hang out, to just be amongst other human beings.
A swedish company called twingly is doing something completely different. They are weaving another web. Tangling other twisty little passages with their software. Twingly are building their business cases on mutual benefit. What they do? Well...if I scratch your back then you scratch mine. That is the essence of the business idea.
In Sweden the blogosphere is a internet based (of course) business area, a virtual business area with a virtual customer segmentation. Some of the swedish bloggers are important influencial bloggers, but twingly does not make any difference. If you put a link on your own blog to a news papers article and then ping the twingly server they will connect your blog to that news papers article.
Thus...a boost on your blog and a boost on the article in the news paper. Voilà!
Well, Twingly has taken this a bit further, they now started to make up contracts with companies to do the same thing. The first one is Lindex, a clothing company in Sweden.
This is risky but the companies are embracing the web as a virtual space for business. So, adopt to the rules. One of the new one's being:
If some blogger writes something bad about your product then so be it. The key to success here is to react and to react very very fast, at blogspeed. One example of when that did NOT happen is the Absolut commercial run in the Mexican "part" of the world. There are no borders on the web... And the americans, or at least not all of them, realized that this was an old map. So the "joke" did not make it. The absolut company had to stop the campaign. The US blogosphere spread the word around very very fast.
And do notice that even if the map was a replica of an old ancient map most people did not care. Created a lot of bad will for Absolut. Every excuse the responsible marketing person made was beaten up into internet bits and pieces by the raging blogosphere.
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