SOA Governance Book

Ever wondered about SOA Governance? Well according to this article AgilePath CEO Eric Marks has released the first ever SOA Governance book, and, it's free. Titled "SOA Governance for the Services Driven Enterprise", it is the third book that has been released by AgilePath discussing SOA topics of interest. As Eric Marks, CEO and author of the book remarked:

"AgilePath is pleased to once again lead the SOA industry forward with proven approaches to solving SOA challenges. This book is the industry's first SOA governance book, and that is no surprise. SOA governance is a challenging issue, and few SOA practitioners truly understand the subject's richness, complexity and depth. This book will provide much-needed guidance for the many facets of enterprise SOA governance."

Federal Government and EA

As reported here, the federal government has seen such success with their EA programs that they have decided to increase the standards by which they evaluate agencies on their use of EA. In the past, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would score agencies high if they simply had an EA program, whereas now, they will be evaluating EA success based off of overall agency performance. Kshmendra Paul, Chief Architect at OMB's Office of E-Government and Information Technology stated

"The framework features three broad areas of emphasis. OMB will assess agencies’ process integration and the degree to which the integration of processes produces results in the management chain. That’s linked to strategic planning."

New Tool From Sybase

The field of Enterprise Architecture has been gaining traction within the business community. To better the field, Sybase has released a new tool, PowerDesigner 15, as mentioned in this news item from MarketWatch. They are targeting specifically enterprise architects, IT professionals, as well as business managers. As Dan Lahl, director of Intelligent Enterprise for Sybase, stated:

"The rise of Enterprise Architecture is proof that organizations need to manage the impact of changes in competition, technology, and regulations across their enterprise."

The value proposition of this new tool by Sybase, as also mentioned by Lahl is:

"PowerDesigner 15's unique Link and Synch technology provides organizations the ability to implement an enterprise architecture solution from start to finish, removing business and metadata silos and increasing business agility."

MEGA Releases System Blueprint

According to this latest post on GCN, Mega is introducing MEGA System Blueprint, which is a software tool that links application design with business requirements for modern IT systems.

With this software tool users can define any specification, ranging from requirements analysis, system design, and SOA projects. The tool will allow application design metadata to be stored close to information on IT architecture and business processes. MEGA System Blueprint is priced at $4,000. It will be interesting to see if we will see huge improvements in EA with the release of this application in the enterprise.

Holistic Thinking and IT Professionals

In his latest post at Enterprise Architecture, James McGovern brings up this question “When was the last time you ran across a holistic IT security professional?” He mentions that holistic thinking, which requires technical leadership, is something that is missing from most IT professionals in the enterprise.

According to James, ‘technical’ enterprise architects that are familiar with coding must be brought into the security building process in the beginning stages and not later. Do you agree with this?

Information Architecture

Anton Venter takes a look at what the term Information Architecture actually contains in his latest post at the IT Knowledge Exchange. There are many models that relate to information such as Data Models, Business Intelligence, Knowledge Management, Content Management, Data Warehousing, Master Data Management, and so it can be a challenge to really put things in perspective.

Anton also mentions that organizations often bundle all of these models simply as “Enterprise Information Management”. Does it really make sense to define and scope them into separate workstreams?

In your own terms, what does information architecture contain?

2008 Survey Findings: Outsourcing of Enterprise Architecture functions

The findings of an annual Infosys survey taken on Enterprise Architecture were recently posted here. The survey was filled out by 207 people ranging from different cross-section industries. Here are some trends the survey indicated according to a preliminary analysis:

• Enterprise Architecture is enabling business transformation [Does this surprise me?]
• EA practices continue to mature with increasing use of metrics and processes [Again no surprises on this front]
• Outsourcing of activities focused at Enterprise Architecture is an opportunity that most EA teams have not seriously considered [Now, this is interesting]
  

Mohan Babu K seems to be surprised by the fact that outsourcing of activities focused on EA is a huge opportunity. Could this prove to be a driving factor in 2009? What are your thoughts?

EA is in Demand

This post on SearchSoa.com highlights how there is a huge demand for IT professionals with skills and certifications including project management and enterprise architects due to service-oriented architecture.

David Foote, CEO and chief research officer for Foote Partners mentions:

"SOA is a huge collection of skills. There's a lot to SOA so it's a very, very broad category."

This has caused companies to seek architects who not only understand SOA, but those who also have knowledge of business models and understand specific corporate culture.

Government's enterprise architecture still evolving

The government's enterprise architecture assessment framework is going to change. The changes that are occurring are good, but can't happen too quickly, as reported by FCW.com. Kshmendra Paul, chief architect at OMB's Office of E-government and information Technology recently outlined the plan which will include finalizing Version 3's framework.

They are currently deciding which direction to take the framework, as:

Under both the current assessment framework and the proposed revision, OMB considers the degree of completion, whether the agency actually uses the architecture, and its results. However, the proposed one lacks the emphasis on recent concerns such as IPv6 migration and change management, favoring instead factors such as performance management integration and the alignment between the agency's enterprise transition plan and its OMB Exhibit 300s, which make the business case for proposed investments.

They also pointed out that the new EA system will most likely not be changed by the new administration coming into the White House.

SOA -- Is it really a business problem?

Joe McKendrick at ZD Net recently pointed out that most businesses believe SOA is purely an IT problem. Jeff Schneider is one of those who agrees:

“Sure, I.T. problems, like HR or garbage collection, may bubble their way up to become a business problem, but at the end of the day I.T. has to figure out how to do their job and go do it. When the janitor picks up the trash in my office they do it in the most efficient way they know how. They don’t ask ‘the business’ if they should do it efficiently - they just do it. When did I.T. become such wussies?”

So how do we overcome this potential road block in implementing SOA into the enterprise? Offer solutions that include SOA for business problems. SOA as a be all and end all solution might not work well, but showing the value of certain proponents will work well for the enterprise.

Enterprise changes demanding different architects

VNU Net believes there are changes ahead for enterprise architects. This includes an adoption of a new skill set and new approach to their jobs. According to this article, they’ll need to conform to this new skill set to become a bigger value to the company while driving the real business value, as they are currently lacking business drivers. This is causing 50% of architects to fail. Other trends changing within enterprise architecture is the consumerization of IT and the complexity of business processes.

MapReduce moving into enterprise architecture world

MapReduce is a Google-inspired program looking to help enterprises clean up their databases and put them into the clouds. SearchSOA.com recently took a look at it here. This was a program originated by Google programmers who wrote programs for parallel situations, so data use was properly transferred from program to program. It also analyzes both structured and unstructured data.

Rich Seeley of SOA Situations can be useful in three situations:

- Text tokenization, indexing, and search

- Creation of other kinds of data structures (e.g., graphs)

- Data mining and machine learning.

EA Awards Results In

Exciting news for Joe Campbell, and Avi Bender, they both were honored at the 6th annual Enterprise Architecture Awards. The awards are determined by 1105 Government Information Group in conjunction with the Federated Enterprise Architecture Certification Institute, as this article notes.

Joe Campbell is a coordinator for the Human Resources Line of Business at OPM, and won the award for “Leadership in Enterprise Architecture Driven Results”, Avi Bender is director of enterprise architecture at the IRS, and won the award for “Leadership in Government Transformation Using EA”.

As Christine Condos remarked regarding the achievements of the nominees:

“This year’s nominees demonstrated innovative solutions via enterprise architecture to improve their agency’s efficiency and effectiveness to better meet mission requirements. The EA Awards highlight the best in the field, and I congratulate all the nominees for their skills and achievements.”

Making enterprise architecture strategic with business and information architecture

I found this slide show recently that discusses the importance and advantages of integrating EA as part of your business and information architecture. It also looks at how EA can improve agility throughout your network and the steps EA is allowing corporations to make.

Making Enterprise Architecture (EA) Strategic with Business and Information Architecture

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: enterprise architecture it)

MEGA Expands

As this article reports, MEGA Systems is entering into a new market space: Eastern Europe and Russia. They are being helped along with this venture by BPM International, a company that has headquarters in Budapest, Hungary. This announcement comes on the heals of a previous announcement by MEGA, where they introduced new partners in both the Middle East and Southeast Asia. As ArpAid Solti, a managing director for BPM International, stated:

"With economic development running at a fast pace in Eastern Europe in recent years, enterprises here have been seeking proven solutions and expert advice to help them quickly improve performance and optimize resources. MEGA offers unique and significant high-value process and risk management solutions that help companies take full advantage of business growth"

It has been interesting to note the worldwide expansion of Enterprise Architecture solutions and how quickly it has gone from being simply a buzzword. to commonplace and very necessary.

Putting the "E" in TOGAF: An EAdirections Webinar”

For those of you who missed the chance to view the EAdirections webinar “Putting the "E" in TOGAF: An EAdirections Webinar” last Thursday here’s your chance to view it at your own leisure. Some of the ideas discussed during this one hour session were enterprise-wide requirements that users of TOGAF struggle with and adjustments in Enterprise Architecture to changing markets and opportunities. Also, don’t miss your chance to meet the presenters Larry DeBoever, George Paras, and Tim Westbrock at the Enterprise Architectures Conference in Las Vegas November 10-13, 2008.

View the archived webinar by clicking on the following link:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/924415223

Case Study on EA Frameworks

I came across this great case study on CIOIndex.com that discusses the selection of enterprise architecture framework and how to implement processes. You have to be a member on CIOIndex in order to view the case study, so make sure to take the time and register for the site if you haven’t already. I’m sure you’ll find the insights discussed in the case study valuable.

What is WOA

This article from cnetnews.com states: Web-oriented architecture (WOA), a descriptive term for a subset of service- oriented architecture (SOA), has recently arisen as the next buzz-phrase to help further confuse the IT architect. So what is it? The article explains that WOA is an implementation of SOA that utilizes representational state transfer resources that permit data and services to be utilized through a uniform resource identifier. Another explanation comes from Nick Gall from Gartner:

WOA is an architectural style that is a substyle of SOA based on the architecture of the www with the following additional constraints: globally linked, decentralized, and uniform intermediary processing of application state via self-describing messages.

Appian and Mega Partner to Bring Together BPM Tools and Enterprise Architecture Software

eBizQ reports today that Appian, a provider of BPM techonology, and Mega, a provider of EA technology, have entered in agreement to join the BPA and EA capabilities of the MEGA Modeling Suite with the Appian Enterprise BPM Suite and the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-delivered Appian Anywhere platforms.

This new partnership is aimed to improving enterprise success in process innovation and building on existing deployments of software with joint customers such as Enterprise Rent-A-Car, AXA Investment Managers, General Dynamics, and the Department of Homeland Security. Users will be able to perform archectiture and process design on the Mega Suite and then export processes directly to the Appian BPM platform to map out direct management of operations.

Lucio de Risi, president and CEO of MEGA mentions:

"The combination of MEGA's powerful BPA, simulation, and optimization functionality with Appian's robust and scalable BPM platform will unite business users and analysts with enterprise, technical, and information architects in the common goal of creating adaptive, process-driven organizations."

Information Architecture within the Enterprise Architecture Context

Browsing the blogosphere I came across this post from Anton Ventor in IT Knowledge Exchange. Anton displays a diagram of how Gartner views Information Architecture within the context of Enterprise Architecture. The shaded region in the 2^nd column represents Information Architecture. He notes that the term ‘business’ is featured in the diagram, especially under the context of application architecture. Do you agree with the diagram?