LiteBytes from Lustratus Research

Whoa WOA!

Sometimes I get tired of being the guy in front of the train waving my flag and hoping I can stop or divert it. I get called old-fashioned, blinkered, boring, misguided and a whole range of other names not suitable for printing here - but at the risk of getting another postbag of objections, I want to raise my flag again with respect to WOA (Web-oriented architecture).

I read Dion Hinchcliffe's excellent article on WOA, discussing whether WOA was the future for SOA. The argument was essentially that SOA has not delivered the expected benefits, but WOA can. Essentially, WOA is all about arranging information in terms of resources that are accessed through HTTP in the same way as URLs. You have GET, PUT, POST and DELETE commands just like in most message-based SOA solutions. The resources are manipulated by components such as browsers etc, and it is the responsibility of the component to understand the representation and state changes of the information.

I have no problem at all with this - sounds great. My problem is the suggestion that this is the future of SOA - the implication that in some way SOA has failed and WOA, close cousin that it is, is the natural evolution. I have a couple of major grumbles here.

Perhaps the biggest is that WOA is all about a connectivity / integration architecture - a technical network really. The fundamental change with SOA from what people have done before is that SOA services are on business boundaries, not technical ones. Hence a SOA service is something that makes sense in business operations terms - eg Get Customer Details. Perhaps the implication is that in WOA the resources are also synonymous to business ops, but then how are they defined when the responsibility for understanding their representation and behaviour lies exclusively with the browser or other component accessing them?

Another particular gripe I have is that whereas SOA is based on a messaging bus to do the transfers, such as an ESB or a reliable messaging pipe like WebSphereMQ, in WOA all comms are done using HTTP, presumably with reliable delivery being provided through WSReliableMessaging ha ha. In fact, doing once and only once delivery of messages is really hard, and as we all know from the number of times we receive duplicate emails or none at all, HTTP is not brilliant at it. As for WSRM, as is often the case with standards developed to try to counter a dominant market de jure standard, the lowest common denominator approach required to get agreement across a range of parties renders the standard very questionable in terms of maturity. 

Apart from that, I applaud WOA. As an analyst I am always delighted to see a new idea come to fruition, particularly with a new buzz word that has to be explained. After all, that is how analysts makes their businesses work! And to be serious, I see real value in WOA - but if people start looking at it as a replacement for SOA then I think users are in for a shock.

Steve

Secure mainframe SOA-in-a-box

I was reading the announcement from Layer7 about its 'SOA-in-a-box' for IBM mainframe users, and a number of things struck me. First, I am SO PLEASED to see someone remembering that CICS is not the only mainframe transaction processing environment in use today. A significant number of large enterprises, particularly in the finance industry, use IBM's IMS transaction processing system instead. With the strength and penetration of CICS in mainframe enterprises, it sometimes seems like these users have become the forgotten tribe, but investments in IMS are still huge in anyone's numbers and it is a smart move to cater to them. I am sure that the fact that this solution serves IMS as well as CICS users will be a big plus.

The other point that struck me was that I have felt for some time that, with the security/intrusion detection/firewall/identity management market seeing such a shift to security appliances, it was time vendors thought of piggy-backing functionality onto these platforms. Of course, one reason for having an appliance is to provide a dedicated environment to address issues such as security, but in truth these appliances are rarely used to anywhere near capacity. Therefore it makes a lot of sense to optimize the use of the available processing power rather than slavishly locking it away where it can;t help anyone.

Finally, I have to admit my first reaction to this announcement was to worry about how good connectivity would be to the mainframe. Dealing with mainframes is an arcane area, and I was not aware that Layer7 had any special expertise or credentials here, but I see that GT Software is apparently providing the mainframe integration piece. This makes me a lot happier, since this company has been dealing with mainframes for 20 years. In fact, Lustratus did a review recently on GT Software's Ivory mainframe SOA tool, which is apparently what is included in the Layer7 box.

Anyway, on behalf of all those IMS users out there, thanks Layer7!

Steve

Will TIBCO be next on the acquisition block?

So, now that BEA has finally fallen to Oracle, who will be next? My money is on TIBCO.

TIBCO Software has done extremely well since it came into existence from its origin as as Teknekron. Initially an EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) company, it quickly expanded to take on challenges such as Workflow, Business Process Management (BPM) and service-oriented architecture (SOA). More recently it added Business Intelligence and Analysis to its portfolio, strenghtened by the acquisition of Spotfire last year. TIBCO products are well-respected, and it has a strong and loyal customer base.

But with BEA going, and webMethods being taken out by Software AG, it is more or less alone as a pure-play middleware player left. In addition, anyone looking at the results for its 2007 fiscal year (ended Nov 30th 2007) will immediately realize that it is an attractive target. The question isn't really whether TIBCO will be bought, but by whom.

Names being kicked about include all the usual suspects - IBM, Oracle, SAP....but I reckon that HP might snatch the prize. It missed out on BEA, but perhaps on reflection TIBCO is a closer match to its needs.

Steve

Will mashups mash up your infrastucture?

One of the forecasts in the Lustratus predictions for 2008 Insight, available free of charge from the Lustratus web store, deals with the emergence and adoption of mashups. At this moment it is unlcear how fast mashups will be adopted, but Lustratus thinks that any serious adoption will place massive strain on enterprise infrastructures, causing the unwary to buckle and collapse.

Mashups seem great. The user is suddenly in a position to create his or her own page layout with all the business applications needed to carry out this user's activities. A great productivity boost, perhaps, but what are the impacts on the enterprise? Basically, as Lustratus points out, every desktop becomes an application. Instead of an IT department having to worry about 10 or 20 applications, all of a sudden there are 100s or even 1000s. Worse still, while traditional IT-controlled applications are usually controlled fairly rigorously with procedures, policies and management practices, the world of mashups could well be more akin to anarchy.

Fundamental to a productive mashup will be the need to drive the different business services required by the particular user, and therefore services will suddenly become tools used by hundreds in many different ways. All of this activity could create huge traffic increase as well as a generally uncoordinated style of operations, causing major difficulties for the infrastructure software trying to hold everything together.

Well, OK, maybe this is a little negative - but the point is, enterprise architects and management should start considering these issues now. Trying to sort this out when the genie is out of the bottle will be a lot more difficult.....

      Steve 

Tight times ahead for software industy will favor innovation

As it comes to the end of 2007, the dreaded market outlook surveys are starting to appear (Don't worry we will be putting out our own 08 predictions in the near future!).  According to IDC reported in Information Week, 2008 will show lower growth in IT spending than in 07.  In particular, there will be a lower rate of growth in the US (3%-4% compared to 6.6% this year).

InformationWeek's coverage highlights an interesting prediction: SaaS vendors may suffer more if the downturn is prolonged than license vendors as their fixed costs (infrastructure and support) are proportionately higher.  This may appear to be an ironic twist on the supposed resilience of the SaaS business model.  The downside of renewal business is that people may not renew or more likely downsize their commitment.  If SaaS companies do suffer, I suspect that it will be more to do with maturity than an underlying weakness in the model:  Recent SaaS entrants will need to get used to the business cycle and cut costs accordingly.

The article also reports the prediction of continued above average growth for Oracle.  I suspect that the other giants will also do well in 2008 as smaller vendors get squeezed between an increasing tendency among procurement to consolidate on a handfull of vendors and the downward pressure on software license pricing in general.  Start-ups in particular will be under pressure as there is likely to be a reduction in spending among the large banks resulting from the sub-prime issue and this is a sector that has traditionally fostered start-ups.  However, this sectoral tightening will simply reinforce the trend among start-ups to focus on the telcos and the government sector.

Surprisingly finally after all that doom and gloom, I am not actually pessimistic about the impact of a spending slow down if one occurs.  Tightened markets can also favor innovation over financial firepower:  As some customers become more interested in finding something different to get an increased return, those vendors who actually have something new and are capable of putting up with increased sales cycles will continue to sell and thus will be well placed when markets expand again.

Ronan

Jitterbit kick-starts an OSS solution marketplace

An article in ebizq alerted me to Jitterbit's just launched "Trading Post" for integration-specific solutions.  Jitterbit claims to the "World's most popular Open Source integration platform" - which surprised me as I had not heard of them before.

The idea of setting up sites to enable the selling of software components is hardly new (although rarely successful) and of course sharing is precisely what an OSS community is supposed to be about. What is more interesting about the "Trading Post" idea is that

- It focuses on solutions: i.e. not just source code for the bits of the puzzle but also the patterns and knowledge essential to deliverying the complete solution.  And directs potential users to the services provided by "Trading Post" providers who can help to deliver the solution and

- It focuses on both application specific solutions (such as JD Edwards) and industry specific solutions.  Again moving the emphasis away from raw technology towards problem solving.

- It provides an interesting revenue opportunity for OSS service providers/vendors who often struggle to drive revenue from support/maintenance alone.  This is because it crisply defines the value they (as Trading Post providers) can give around specific solutions.

While just launched, it is already 'pre-stocked' with 50 solutions which demonstrates a certain amount of apparent momentum.  Perhaps it is a model other OSS vendors should take a look at...

Ronan   

So what exactly is SOA governance?

If SOA is all the rage at the moment, then SOA Governance is the most frequently used term related to it as far as I can see. All the vendors, and many analysts, are talking about SOA Governance as the big issue, and tools are rapidly appearing to help with this governance issue.

I am wondering, however, if there may be an ulterior motive here. In business parlance, governance is an important word - it is definitely seen as more business than technical. So, is the word being hi-jacked by vendors keen to try to find yet another way to hook into the business world in order to secure the budget commitment to make product purchases? What is really meant by governance?

Governance seems to be all about defining expectations, controlling and granting powers, and measuring results. Funny that it is the root of the word Government, and a cynic might argue that these are three things that most Governments do NOT do well, but there you go. Anyway, in SOA tools terms this follows on to a number of different areas - project management tools / SLAs, security and management. Notice that these are implications at the tools level; some of the biggest aspects of governance are actually at the management process/procedure policy level.

If you now look at vendors claiming to play in the governance space, offerings typically fall into one or more of the following categories:

• Technical management tools - administration, systems monitoring, statistics
• Business management tools - SLAs, BAM, KPI management, dashboards
• Security tools - user authentication, authorization
• Project management tools - requirements management, policy enforcement
• Planning/education/training services to build the relevant knowledgebase and skills

In my view, the outcome of all of this is that it does not help to keep preaching about SOA governance, unless you offer answers to all these areas. I would find it much more helpful for vendors to say that they sell management tools, or business monitoring, or professional services, or project management assistance. The problem today is vendors are so desperate to hook into the business community that everything is lumped together as governance.

Is it any wonder users are confused about what they are being offered, and how it fits to what they want?

Steve

Can Enterprise Architects ever be "stratactical"?

I was introduced today to yet another new term - "stratactical", in a rather good ComputerWorld article. The definition is given as follows:

Stratactical is the word the enterprise architects at San Mateo, Calif.-based Con-way Inc. created to describe their work. “We use it all the time,” says Maja Tibbling, lead enterprise architect at the freight transportation and logistics company. “Our team takes into account both the strategic and the tactical.”

I confess I found the idea quite attractive - to reinforce the importance of building IT systems and related business and IT processes and procedures that take into account strategic goals while at the same time satisfying immediate needs. Indeed, I have long been an advocate of 'incremental strategies' where long-term vision and goals are set, and then day-to-day activities and tactical projects are put in place that at least do not exclude the longer term picture, and hopefully go another step in the desired direction.

However, I am not sure I can extend this to the idea of having individual architects who are charged with being 'stratactical'. This may sound like heresy, and I can imagine my good friends at IASA, the spiritual home of enterprise architects, having a fit over my assertion, but let me explain.

I absolutely think that architects can have the wherewithall to understand tactical and strategic issues. The question is whether it is practical to charge an architect with both duties. My own view is that the pressures brought to bear through tactical, often urgent, time-conscious, possibly localised projects is overpowering, and the danger is that no matter how well-meaning an architect might be, the need to design a solution fast is hard to withstand. Almost inevitably, short-term decisions will be taken that may actually go counter to the longer-term strategy.

Although confrontational, I prefer a split approach where there is a policing authority driven by architects charged with achieving the long-term benefits of the selected 'grand design' as well as other architects working to help tactical teams build solutions. Yes, it is irritating and time-consuming when the corporate architects raise an issue over some short-term solution, and indeed the agreed decision might be to ignore the long-term issues and go for the quick gain, but at least it will be a conscious decision achieved through some management-driven procedure. The alternative is to ask architects to make these sorts of calls in their own heads, with no 'protection' as can be afforded through the more formal approach - I think this is unfair on the poor architect.

So,my vote is for an architectural community that is 'stratactical', but a separate, management-backed body of architects charged with keeping the vision alive to balance others who are trying to address the demands of the tactical project and its drivers.

Steve

Why does SOA keep forgetting about data?

Every now and then, we all hit that point when we want to stop everything and say enough is enough. I guess I have just reached that point. I spend my time working with buyers, sellers and implementers of SOA, and just about every conversation is about applications. There is a myriad of tools and platforms that are focused on being able to turn existing code assets into SOA services, building composite service and constructing orchestrated flows.....but everything is discussed from the point of view of the application.

I guess what frustrates me is that when I talk to people about what they want their services to do, particularly when you get to composite services where functions are linked together, the answer is usually two-fold - I need to run the following applications or components, and I need to access the following data. When building an orchestration flow, for example, it is often very useful to be able to interrogate data to help determine the appropriate next step in the flow.

It seems to me that most SOA products don;t really consider this. At most, they allow database calls during flows, but this is hardly in the spirit of SOA. Surely, these calls should be allowed to any data source in the SOA network, whatever the data architecture or format. This would fit with the SOA theme about offering everything under a standard interface.

Come on guys - I know data might seem boring, but it is just as important as the applications themselves.

Steve

Is Open Source the next enterprise software giant?

Guy Nirpaz commented on my post about Oracle's potential BEA acquisition stating that he believed that OSS should be on my list of the big 4 (IBM, Oracle, SAP and Microsoft) if you consider middleware in particular.  I would agree that middleware is certainly an area which OSS is playing an increasingly important role. 

However, OSS does not necessarily represent the increase in choice you might expect as in many cases the big players either dominate or can dominate if they choose to (the investment in OSS by big players is excellently covered in a Harvard Business School working paper referred to here).  In those cases, there is a potential risk that the OSS becomes positioned as the entry level offering with the pay-per-license version containing the features required for serious use or used to reduce the level of choice available by putting pressure on smaller vendors. 

For smaller backers of middleware OSS, historically it has proven difficult to create a sustainable and scalable business model.  However, I believe that is a market maturity issue rather than an underlying weakness in OSS approach.  Already, we are seeing the emergence of some interesting business strategies which seem capable of sustaining a growing business.  If one or more of these work out, then OSS enterprise middleware players may emerge (or existing vendors successfully transition to Open Source business) which will challenge the hegemony of the big 4.

Ronan