British Company Salamander Launches Business-Driven SOA Solution

CIMdata PLM Industry Product News, dated 7/4/07 http://www.cimdata.com/newsletter/2007/27/04/27.04.07.htm

Keeping with my theme of business need driving the system architecture, here is an interesting article on a new SOA tool that directly supports that goal. The British technology and consulting company Salamander has launched the latest addition to its Enterprise software suite – MooD Business Orchestration. The solution promises to unlock value from SOA initiatives and challenge technology-driven SOA providers.Salamander chief technology officer Dick Whittington points out that business have been struggling with SOA approaches as they are conceived and designed by technology providers. He believes that MooD Business Orchestration fills the void by ensuring that design an implementation of SOA technology platforms are driven and controlled by business strategy. It enables organizations to develop a business services architecture that aligns directly with business drivers and structures; what they call a “Service Ready Architecture”. With SOA driven from the consideration of achieving best business value, businesses can take control of the way things work, with agility to make changes at any level, and a clear common understanding of how it all fits together. Okay, that’s the hype. The article fails to provide sufficient detail on how the Salamander product actually works, so considerable more research would be required before I could provide an endorsement. However, I like the concept of a business-driven SOA architecture.

SOA Discussion Moves From IT Staff Roundtables to Executive Agenda

IBM Press Room dated, 7/10/07 http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/21844.wss

In this report IBM quotes a survey they had the Link Group do and says strategic decisions to adopt a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and what partners should be brought in to do it are shifting away from IT staff to C-level executives and business managers. At least that's what over 60% of the respondents told Link, enough for IBM to say that "business leaders not engaged in the SOA decision-making process will soon find themselves at a competitive disadvantage." Link also found a severe shortage of SOA skills in the market.

The results of this survey may be pointing toward an evolutionary maturity in how organizations approach SOA as an enterprise business solution.

Model-Driven SOA

This was a good article by Ian Thain in SOA World Magazine, dated 7/3/07 http://soa.sys-con.com/read/393681.htm

If you have been trying to nail down just what SOA is, Ian does a great job of explaining it in this article. He also lays out a good description of model driven application development. His message here is that "everything should start with a model" and that by doing a good job of managing the various models an organization can be agile in its ability to making changes that affect both IT and the business.

I like his theory but I'd really like to see a case study of an organization that pulled off his linked model management approach. Most of the places I've seen lack this kind of discipline.

SOA, RIA and the Human Factor

This was an interesting article by Yakov Fain in the SOA World Magazine, dated 6/29/07. http://soa.sys-con.com/read/396343.htm
He points out that there are three main reasons an organization implements an SOA:

1. The Chief Architect attends a conference and wants to enhance his resume.
2. The CIO attends a conference and wants to expand her resume.
3. You have money to burn and it sounds cool.

All in all, I like the way Mr. Fain thinks.