Lustratus LiteBytes

Archive for January, 2007

IBM seems to be driving home its SOA message.

IBM’s latest results seem to show that the company really is driving its SOA message home. WebSphere middleware products, prime beneficiaries of the SOA drive, increased sales year-on-year by 22%, while services deals rocketed. Although the service deals may cover a wide range of needs, there is no doubt that IBM has really been pushing its array of SOA-based services, and with some success by the look of it.

I also do not think it coincidental that shipments and revenue from z-Series IBM mainframes have stubbornly refused to drop, despite the continual clamour that they really are on their way out this time. My recent post on the mainframe integration space generated a number of comments back to me that no-one really cares about them any more ‘because mainframes are so over’. Strangely, these comments all came from companies that do not have mainframe operations or practices….however IBM’s figures showing 5% or so growth in shipments and revenues reminds us all that mainframes are still relevant and will be so for a long time. I believe that the IBM SOA initiative helps to maintain this position, by bringing mainframe assets into the broader distributed world in an accessible and productive way.

The only hole I can see in IBM’s SOA portfolio now is a serious attempt to generate leadership in the BAM area – this is an area where it still lags behind other recognized leaders and innovators, although perhaps not quite urgent due to the fact that most companies are just not ready for real BAM yet.

Steve

Lots of companies have spotted something they like in SOA, but the next problem is, how to get approval for SOA investment.

This is a real problem – SOA has many different appeals, but apart from the reasonably concrete promise of cost reduction through code reuse and removal of rednundancy, most are somewhat intangible. Worse still, the benefits may be difficult to prove and will take time to accrue. And on top of this, it may be hard to establish a clear link between SOA and major business initiatives to get the necessary priority on the investment.

Somehow, over the years, the old “it’s the right thing to do, boss – honest!” approach seems to have lost its effectiveness. Tiresome CIOs and CFOs seem to want to see actual results – this year…..darn them!

So, IT staff are becoming quite smart about the tricks to get SOA in. This blog entry covers one of them – the viral approach.

Viral SOA sounds like something nasty that you might catch if you don’t wash your hands. But in a way, the idea is to let the company ‘catch’ SOA without really being aware of it. So, to get the pieces of the SOA Ecosystem in place, companies will slip different components into funded projects. For example, if messaging is not in place, a JMS could be introduced as part of a CRM project, to facilitate communications between regional sales offices and the corporate system. When new application components are needed, these could be written as web services, and perhaps an ESB could be brought in as a way to link them up at some nodes. A repository that is used to hold configuration information could be extended to start holding metadata related tot he various components.

Once the ecosystem is more or less in place, as new projects are developed the functionality can be built into hopefully reusable services – in essence slipping in SOA services in on a one-by-one basis. This is where (with luck) the virus really starts to multiply, until it is a fully fledged SOA strategy. The idea is to start showing proof-points for the SOA concept in isolated cases where some of the viral SOA implementation is starting to make new projects quicker, reduce maintenance costs etc. Also, the viral approach has now reduced the entry barrier to SOA by sneaking in a number of the licensed components and necessary skills.

Of course, this is not the only way of getting SOA in – more later…

Steve

SOA is popular everywhere, but mainframe shops would seem to be one of the most fertile areas for SOA adoption due to the potential to open up the value of mainframe investments to a wider audience, and truly leverage it.

But one issue faced by all mainframe organizations is how to get access to the mainframe applications and data sources, and make them available as SOA services.

From the extent of activity in the marketplace at the moment, it seems like others also see the potential here. A year ago, there were a number of companies playing in the mainframe integration space. Then NEON Systems was acquired by Progress Software, and more recently Seagull was bought by Rocket Software. At one fell swoop, two of the biggest players have therefore been snapped up – so what has been the effect on the mainframe integration market?

Looking at the NEON acquisition first, Progress has placed it in its DataDirect division, apparently indicating that it is the data access elements of NEON that are of most interest to it. It could have chosen to put NEON with the Sonic ESB business, positioning it more as an SOA integration tool for the mainframe, but it did not. Indeed, the announcement made it clear that Progress was trying to create ‘the unparalleled data connectivity leader’. This seems to make it pretty clear that the software will be more and more focused on purely data solutions, making it less and less suitable for general SOA needs.

As a company focused on OEM channels, Rocket is presumably going to try to hook the Seagull software into other SOA providers. Given Rocket’s history and the Seagull strengths, this will probably become a play to hook Seagull’s iSeries (AS/400) stuff into IBM – this would probably make sense to both companies, since support for iSeries is limited across the rest of the mainframe integration market. But it seems clear that Rocket’s focus will definitely not be on direct sales of Seagull’s SOA tools.

So where does that leave mainframe companies looking for integration solutions to bring the mainframe apps into SOA? One option of course is IBM – but in the case of CICS for instance, the real smart stuff is only available in IBM’s latest version, and many customers cannot move to new CICS versions with any great speed. Then there is the question of IMS connectivity as well as DB2 and of course batch.

It seems pretty clear that in the long run, IBM will provide comprehensive, easy-to-use answers to all SOA mainframe integration needs – after all, the company is totally dedicated to SOA. But for all those customers who cannot get to the new versions fast enough and yet who don’t want to be left behind in the great SOA rush, the third party choices have just become a lot more limited. Luckily, there are still some attractive and viable options in the market to choose from – at least for now.

Steve

I was amused by Steve’s blog item on why Integration didn’t seem to be cool (partly because I can’t honestly remember when it was cool).

When vendors discuss new ways of rebadging integration as something else I am reminded of the scene from Spinal Tap when Nigel Tufnel explains hat his amps are louder because they are labeled from 1 to 11 “Well, it’s one louder, isn’t it? It’s not ten.” Or to put it into the integration context: “It more agile isn’t it? It’s not slow to change “

To be fair the attraction of going for the new and cool terminology is understandable: Any explanation of an integration strategy can feel a bit like making a list of New Years resolutions. It tends to highlight all the bad habits you have (your mainframe can’t communicate with the Sun servers you bought 10 years ago etc) and may not put you in a good light. Worse still putting it all into a business plan to give to your CEO/CIO is like announcing your list of New Years resolutions to your spouse: He/she has probably heard all these resolutions last year and the year before that and noticed that you are not yet running 20 miles a day or spending quality time with the family goldfish.

So when your friend down the pub (the software vendor) explains that by buying these new running shoes you will be able to run further and keep track of the distance run, it is obviously tempting – analogies to business intelligence are purely intentional. We will have to wait and see if the CEO/CIO is any more convinced that the spouse!

Ronan

People keep telling me Integration is no longer cool. It’s a bad word, with poor connotations.

Tough challenges, mean deadlines, pain, anguish, lots of hard work, failed projects, and perhaps most importantly ‘boring’. I speak with a lot of vendors, and they tell me they are moving away from using the ‘integration’ word in their materials.

I wondered if this meant that companies are no longer interested in integration. But the more users I talk to, the more I am convinced that the need for business integration is real, as companies look to streamline processes, smooth out the value chain, leverage investments and cope with yet another up-swell in mergers and acquisitions. So why is integration no longer cool?

My own belief is that this stems from two main causes – ‘the marketplace’ (software vendors, analysts, media, etc) likes to have new causes to champion fairly constantly, and users have had so many difficulties with integration that they are suffering a Pavlov effect, wincing whenever the word is used.

I have heard many attempts to get around the use of the I word. One way is to latch onto the next technology advance (or retreat!) to emerge, such as Broker, Web Services, SOA and ESB. This is the approach generally chosen by the marketplace, since it gives a way to sound like you are discussing or selling something new and shiny. Another way is to try to describe user goals in some other way, like Interoperability, or common services.

But in the end, it seems to me the basic facts remain unchanged. Legacy systems are a reality. And not just mainframe systems, but packages, SQL Server-based warehouses, UNIX servers and so on. Autonomy is also real – different parts of the business will buy solutions that suit them, but efficient business is almost certain to demand interoperability with others systems. M&As do happen. Business get tired of always having to spend money and time building new things, when using bits that already exist is quicker, cheaper and competitively stronger. Functional outsourcing through Software as a Service can offer real cost savings.

So my conclusion is, although the fad may dictate that the integration word is out of fashion, the need is just as real as it ever was. I don’t care what people call it – it is a challenge that will be with us for years to come.

Steve