elemental links

Elemental Links: 2010 Plans

Having already stated my sole 2010 prediction, I want to start the year (decade) by sharing my 2010 plans.   For context, I need to start with my firm, Elemental Links.  The elevator speech:

Elemental Links helps organizations develop business-technology strategies, architectures, and programs to increase business visibility and responsiveness, optimize capability delivery, and enable innovation.

This said, for 2010, my writing, services and workshop offerings will center on the technology strategies, architectural approaches, business-technology programs and techniques that contribute to increased business visibility and responsiveness, optimized capability delivery, and business innovation.

From a business-technology perspective, the above translates to these topical areas:

• Active Information Strategies
• Business Architecture
• Business-IT Integration
• Cloud Computing
• Enterprise Architecture in the 'New Normal'
• Event-Driven Architecture / Event Processing
• Services Architectures

The topic list maps to writings, services and workshops as follows.

Public writings and client-based advisory services will cover each topic, the topic interconnections, and the ties to business forces, actions and value. 

On-site workshops are available in the areas of cloud computing, enterprise architecture, event processing / event-driven architecture and services architectures. 

2010 WORKSHOP PROGRAMS

Cloud Computing:

• Cloud Computing Considerations for Enterprise Practitioners

Event Processing / Event-Driven Architecture

• Event Processing / Event-Driven Architecture Introduction
• Event Processing / Event-Driven Architecture Jump-start
• Event Processing Business Analysis, Flow and Network Design

Enterprise Architecture:

• Enterprise Architecture in the 'New Normal' Introduction
• Enterprise Architecture in the 'New Normal' Jump-start

Services Architectures:

• Business-First Service Analysis Techniques
• Sustaining Services Architecture Success

Consulting services concentrate on three specialization areas: enterprise architecture in the ‘new normal’, event processing / event-driven architecture, and services architectures. 

For more information on any of the above, visit the Elemental Links business site or contact me.

In addition to my current publication venues – elemental links, business-driven architect and elemental cloud computing – I’ll be writing for OMG’s Business Ecology Initiative. 

As well, I have another topical research offering in the works, and perhaps (finally) the first seeds of a book, more on those later.

I have a good feeling about 2010.  I hope you do as well. 

@ Gartner AADI: Val Sribar on Enterprise 2013

Session Abstract: “IT has undergone major change, but the pace of change that lies in the immediate future has never been experienced. New platforms driven by cloud computing, new sources of infrastructure and applications solutions, the changing technology stack and resulting impact on skills will provide significant challenges to IT over the next five years.

• What will the enterprise of 2013 look like, and what will be the business drivers for IT change over the next five years?
• What changes in technology and sourcing of solutions will impact IT strategies?
• How will IT adapt to absorb the incredible changes that are on the horizon?”

Val starts by setting up what Enterprise 2013 looks like, he is sharing the dimensions, but wants the audience to score themselves in each area, from minor to extreme change. 

Factors:

Macro level: Calibrating Executive Table and Core Lifecycle Changes: New Leadership, Changes in Strategy, Business Processes, Business Information, Metrics, Core Lifecycles (product, supply, customer etc).  [I would say: how does the business architecture / business design change]

Changes to user base: more online, broadband, mobile, social.  User base on mobile side will be dramatically bigger than those working on computer. 

IT Changes: Alternative delivery and consumption models, ie, Cloud Computing.  How many layers will you shift to cloud?  Servers, middleware, applications, information services, business services?  Extreme version is shifting the build of your apps to the cloud.  Staffing and sourcing.  Disciplines spanning IT: SDLC meets ITIL.

Applications Changes: methodologies; who does the work; what environment & tools will be used (Application architecture: SOA, SODA, SOBA, WOA, CEP, context aware, composition, orchestration, assembly)

Val is talking now about bringing things together via roadmaps, matching business roadmap, IT roadmap and vendor/provider roadmaps.

Asking the audience, most folks scored themselves in the extreme change realm, some in moderate change, none in minor change.

In discussing strategies for moderate change, Val is suggesting:

1. “hollowing & retiring legacy systems” – pull out value, remove waste (duplication)

2. hybrids of internal, cloud and BPO. There is an integration center to this picture.  First integration center box was ESB, B2B gateway etc.  Now, that integration box is replaced with a Business Process Platform.  Val is not suggesting buying BPM from one vendor.  He is talking about bringing together services you need, for your change and portfolio, to integrate the business services and information.

Extreme Change Strategies – Application Perspective

Val has referenced Proctor & Gamble’s Open Innovation program.  Suggests adopting that type of model for Open Applications Innovation.  Your organization consume services from cloud, and “plugs” services back into cloud. “Leading companies will offer an external service portfolio … that can be leveraged in many clouds”.

Val has put up a slide of an External Services Platform Strawman for the Public Sector.  In the center are business services, such as SSN, Citizen Information, etc. The right is Aggregate Information, non-PII.  Left is user experience.  Bottom was infrastructure (I think, slide moved).

Application 2013: Advanced Business Process Platform: “serious about BPM”, “serious about CEP & BAM”.  Also, the world gets more simple.  Val is calling out Salesforce.com, Twitter, iPhone.  Talking about application’s capability vs. value.  Excessive capability reduces an application’s value.

Applications 2013: Governance and Behavior: Business Alignment + Engagement and Accountability.  Current maturity of organizations is very low, just around repeatable.  Needs to be level 4 (think CMMI) quantitatively managed.

Enterprise 2013: Seek – Model – Adapt

Key Disciplines

- Pattern Seeking

- Performance Driven Culture

- Transparency

- Optempo Advantage: CEP comes into play.  Ability to slow down, speed up, or change direction as needed

Bottom line: where will innovation happen, at externally facing points; advanced business processing will be from complex event processing, simplify your apps, improve your maturity.

Cloud Computing Bull or Bear?

In February, as I began my cloud watching in earnest, I wrote the following:

“Only time will tell if my cloud watching is attention well spent.  If the cloud is indeed "the future of the Internet", then yes.  If the cloud is merely a repackaging of everything that we already do, then no.  Most likely, the cloud's promise falls somewhere in between, landing closer to the future than the past.”

Since then, of course, I’ve launched Elemental Cloud Computing, which some have interpreted as a now bullish position on cloud computing.  That would be a misinterpretation. Consistent with that that February post, my interest in cloud computing remains understanding the potential in terms of opportunity and risk, and the ties to my on-going work and interest areas:

“Added to this (more likely than not) significance, are parallels with my own writings, work and interest areas (current and past), including architecture realization through blending strategies, the power of service grids, the ceding of applications to business capabilities, the morphing of boxes to platforms, and (forthcoming) creating an active information tier.”

Over the weekend, I answered an email inquiry from a Financial Analyst at a Securities firm, who wanted my opinion on “clouds”.  My (unedited) response:

“As for cloud computing, it's very early.  The economics make cloud computing attractive, especially in tough economic times.  However, the savings need to be weighed against very real risks posed by security, compliance and overall stability.

Given the early stage and limited adoption stories, I find myself cautiously optimistic about the space.  However, there is a real risk that the industry loses itself in the rampant hype, forgoing necessary investment and innovation, and falling back on cloud-washing current products.  In that case, cloud computing will be nothing but the biggest hype wave (yet) to crash.

So, long winded way of saying, I'm neutral for now.”

Cloud computing bull or bear?  Neither yet.  Neutral for now.  But, I’m intrigued enough to increase investment of my attention.  You should too.

SOA, Cloud & Value Acceleration

Given my longstanding background in SOA and my current work in Cloud Computing, I’m often asked how the two complement each other, particularly from the business benefit perspective.  Briefly, here are my thoughts and observations.

From the SOA Side

The immediate benefit of combining SOA and Cloud Computing is time.  Reaching out to the cloud for business or technology capabilities, allows SOA initiatives to compress time to value. 

In the longer term, the benefits include improved collaboration, customer satisfaction and business growth.  By offering SOA based business capabilities to the cloud, businesses can improve interactions with business partners and existing customers, and/or generate new revenue streams.

From the Cloud Side

The immediate benefit of cloud computing is financial.  Delegating workloads to a pay-as-you-go cloud computing environment eliminates upfront capital expenditures, and allows organizations to pay only for utilized capacity, therefore spreading out operating expenditure. 

Workload appropriateness for cloud computing is tested against technical and business characteristics.  Minimally, from a technical perspective, the workload is evaluated in terms of usage, performance, latency, service level needs, codebase, execution environment and dependencies.  From a business perspective, the workload is minimally evaluated in terms of business critically, core functionality and data sensitivity.

Organizations with portfolios comprised of large scale, monolithic, tightly coupled applications face “all or nothing” decisions when evaluating cloud computing candidates. Despite passing a technical profile test, a monolithic application that contains core business functionality and/or sensitive data will probably fail the overall cloud candidacy test.  This represents a lost opportunity, especially if the core functionality and/or sensitive data only comprise a small portion of the overall application.

Organizations with portfolios based on well-defined services, with solutions assembled using service oriented constructs, are better positioned to take advantage of cloud computing’s financial benefits.  Instead of making decisions at the application or suite level, you can make decisions at the business capability level. 

For example, a monolithic order capture application might fail the cloud candidacy test due to the business criticality of the order process, or customer data sensitivity.  However, portions of the order capture application, such as product catalog, recommendations and promotion capabilities may be perfect cloud candidates.  If the order capture solution is service-oriented, or minimally, the product catalog, recommendations and promotions capabilities are delivered as services, then those capabilities can be delegated to a cloud computing environment, therefore realizing capital and operating cost savings.

From Your Side?

As I said at the top, this a brief take on the benefits of combining SOA and Cloud Computing.  I’m interested in hearing what other people think. 

• Are you seeing other benefits? 
• Is the thought of reworking your application portfolio untenable? 
• Is the price of not reworking your application portfolio even worse?

 

[cross posted from elemental cloud computing]

SOA Archives: The Evolution of SOA, from Integration to Business Scenario Development

For this post, I’m reaching deep into my archives.  In January 2005, I wrote a freelance piece published by the Patricia Seybold Group entitled The Evolution of SOA, from Integration to Business Scenario Development. 

Recently, it occurred to me that with rampant SOA hype, artificial boundaries and premature obituaries behind us, we are now on track for what I described almost 5 years ago.  Services and service-oriented techniques are the base for a new era of ‘mix and match’ business solution delivery.  More specifically, the term I floated was “business scenario development”. 

The report introduction:

“Service Oriented Evolution

Topping the list of must-have technology strategies in 2005-2006 is service-oriented architecture (SOA). Services and SOA are an important IT architectural strategy that will change how software is developed, used, and sold.

However, SOA is not new; leading companies have been employing services architectures for years to provide consistent multichannel experiences to their customers, to integrate with partners, and to reap IT efficiencies through reuse.

What is new is what you can do with SOA. We believe the current uses of SOA (integration, adding application functionality, building new service-oriented applications) are merely the first stages of the service-oriented evolution. In the longer term, SOA will be the springboard that propels IT organizations away from traditional application development toward delivering IT instantiations of business scenarios, or business scenario development.

In business scenario development, IT business solutions will be compositions of services, business events, and business processes matching the interactions of your business—with customers, partners, employees, and regulatory agencies—in the support of commerce, collaboration, and information exchange.

While the idea of business scenario development is intriguing, in order to get there, you need to start at the beginning. You need to establish solid service-oriented practices, a deep service catalog, and an extensible SOA environment.”

In the report, I share my SOA definitions, an early release of my service classification scheme, some truths about services and SOA, and some service catalog starter tips.  However, the report’s central focus is the SOA evolution business scenarios. 

Rather than excerpting the 15-page report, I’m once again focusing on the scenarios, via the report illustrations.  If you’d like to read the corresponding descriptions, the report PDF is here.

Keep in mind the illustration titles –- Now, Next, Future – reflect January 2005.

Using Services to Integrate (click on picture to enlarge)

Using Services to Add Functionality or Build New Applications (click on picture to enlarge)

Combining Services and Events (click on picture to enlarge)

[For more information on the Service and Event tie, see my Event Driven Architecture Overview]

Combining Services and Business Processes (click on picture to enlarge)

Combining Services, Events & Business Processes (click on picture to enlarge)

As the report wraps up, I offer two insights as relevant today as when I first published them in January 2005:

“As demonstrated by our examples, as your service catalog grows, so do the possibilities for your business.”

“It is easy to imagine how many of your business scenarios can be achieved by mixing and matching services, events, and business processes. It all starts with SOA—and so should you.”

Even though my term “business scenario development” never reached meme status, the underlying ideas are now at the forefront of IT delivery.  Our focus is no longer domain scoped and bounded applications, but rather solutions that match business intent and support business interactions.  The base for resolving these business scenarios is, and will continue to be, services and services architecture.