HOA - Not just your homeowners association anymore.

While I'm not usually that excited about yet another acronym, I think the idea of HOA -- Human-Oriented Architecture -- is a fairly decent one. And, seeing as how one of my over-arching themes here is that talking to people about "SOA" isn't always the best way to get them jazzed up about SOA, the ideas from Joe McKendrick's recent blog post at ZDNet piqued my curiosity.

A couple good ideas there are 1)bottom-up pushing of enterprise initiatives is a difficult strategy, and 2)learning from the benefits of wiki-style mass collaboration might get us the mindshare we need to be successful.

I'll take that idea and run with it in the sense that I'd say we need tools that embrace that idea as well. If we need to have full involvement from business and IT to be successful in these kinds of initiatives -- and I'm fully convinced that we do -- then we need to give both constituencies the tools they need to collaborate effectively in the planning, design, implementation, and ongoing utilization and management of the resulting architecture. Further, I'd say that in an ideal situation all groups would even be able to use the same underlying tools...all via UIs that make the most sense to the way they conceive of the problem(s) they are trying to solve.

SOA and BPM Made Real - Take 2

Just a little more evidence that the concepts behind SOA and BPM can be put to great use in an almost "stealth" mode by presenting them in terms that the target audience understands, and not necessarily as "SOA" and "BPM."

In this podcast my colleague, Robb Duke over at Contact CenteRevolution, talks about how people in the contact center space can handle the underpinnings of SOA and BPM in a language all their own -- desktop unification/virtualization, multi-system integration, the universal agent, access anywhere, etc. In fact, Robb even has war stories of talking to the exact same person first in an attempt to "sell them" on SOA and BPM and failing miserably, but then talking to them about the exact same topics on their own terms and having great success.

Words to the wise: don't ever think one size fits all. Most people understand this adage when it comes to the solutions they deliver, but many fail to understand it when it comes to the positioning they use for those same solutions. You gotta make it real.

BlogRush

I just started using the BlogRush service and thought I'd give it a quick shout out here. It certainly appears to be a great tool for getting your blog noticed and for networking with other bloggers in you same thought-space.

If you're a blogger yourself, you might want to check it out.

SOA Assessment

In a recent podcast I did for my "real" job, I talked about the importance of doing a good job of laying the groundwork for embarking on an SOA journey before going on the journey. I won't re-post the entire contents of that podcast (especially since there's also a transcript available), but I'll whet the appetite a bit: basically, I think it's very important that organizations understand a bit more about why they want to do SOA, and what SOA is and isn't, before they get "talked into" trying to make it work in their organization.

An educated and willing pilgrim is going to make it a lot further than one who's being dragged along or setting out without first being aligned to the vision.

SOA and BPM Made Real

For a lot of folks out there, the concepts of SOA and BPM are just a tad bit "too much" for them. Not that they can't get them and not that they don't understand that the goodness they can provide is something they need, but because it's just not real for them. They don't see how it fits in with their business or within their IT environment.

In this podcast, you can hear me talk with a couple manufacturing industry experts about a strategy of working within concepts manufacturers already understand -- like ERP systems, "modules," and "making my systems talk to each other" -- to ease them into understanding how SOA and BPM can be real for them even if we never say SOA or BPM.

More and more, I'm finding it to be the case that except for the megacorps and/or very uniquely skilled smaller companies, SOA and BPM will really only work for people and be real for them if we practitioners find ways to meet them where they are. We need to package the concepts up especially for their reality, and we need to talk to them in a language they can understand...and that's usually not through saying things like "SOA this" and "BPM that."

SOA Packages Are Just Too Darned Confusing

OK, that headline might seem a little awkward coming from a guy who works for a company that makes an SOA package, but it's just gotta be said. By and large, what most companies put out there in the way of SOA packages are just too darned big, too darned cobbled together, and ultimately too darned confusing.

Take as an example this article about HP's "new" approach to SOA: it's all about "runtime governance." The interesting thing there, is that I actually agree with HP's philosophy to a certain extent (the good bits being about operations, monitoring, quality, etc.), but being the behemoth that they are, HP simply couldn't resist in making this yet another piece of OpenView. So what is that now, eighteen gagillion sub-applications in OpenView? And, how many of those came from acquisitions that are still so fresh (in big company terms) that they are only part of OpenView in name and branding only?

HP has the right idea here, but they aren't going to be able to execute to that idea, IMO. By the time you peel the onion of OpenView to get at the good bits, you've been forced into buying more than what you need, tying yourself to a consulting sub-industry that specializes in implementing it, and added yet more complexity to something that's already pretty darned complex: solving your problems with an SOA approach. It's too much, and for anyone other than megacorps that will throw tons of money, bodies, and time into it, it's almost certain to fail and/or cost more than the benefits it will yield. Great idea, bad execution.

So, as much as I try to stay non-salesy in this blog, I think it does bear stating that for a lot of the SOA consumers out there, that a solution like that of the Interactive Server suite which focuses on precisely what HP is preaching -- operations, runtime governance/management, technology agnosticism -- but also promises an easy to implement, easy to understand, and easy to manage package, is where they need to be looking. Most IT departments don't have the time or the personnel to have OpenView or WebSphere or WebLogic specialists in-house and/or can't afford a team of consultants. So, they certainly need to be looking at solutions that they can get up and running and day-to-day manage on their own...or like many other SOA pilgrims, they'll get left on the side of the road, never reaching their goal.

SOA Meets Gaming?

At their recent SOA-centric conference called "IMPACT 2007," IBM announced a new system called Innov8 -- a 3-D gaming environment aimed at teaching people the skills they need to intelligent deploy SOA and BPM initiatives.

Thumbs up for creativity (which is no surprise, really, since Innov8 came out of the IBM Case Study competition courtesy of some grad students at Duke and UNC), but I'm just not sure if this will really work. When you think about it, the very people who would be drawn to learning things via a gaming interface are also the kinds of people who probably don't need a lot of "re-education" about concepts such as SOA and BPM...they are already predisposed to "getting it."

This would almost be like creating a PlayStation game aimed at teaching your older relatives how to fix the flashing colon on their VCR's LCD display -- if they don't get the one, they certainly aren't going to get the other, and conversely, if they can figure out how to do one then they wouldn't need it to teach them how to do the other.

So, it's an interesting concept, and it certainly shows that SOA and BPM are getting so pervasive as a concept that people are trying to attack it from just about any angle, and it buttresses the idea that SOA and BPM really do go hand-in-hand. But, I'm just not sure if it will really have the kind of IMPACT (no pun intended) IBM is hoping it will have.

Here are some screenshots from IBM of the Innov8 interface:
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/photo/21564.wss
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/photo/21565.wss

Hilarious!

Ok, ok, it came from another SOA technology company, but I gotta give credit where credit is due: this is hilarious and all-too-accurate. Check out this funny YouTube viral marketing piece about SOA initiatives. (By way of my pal Robb over at Contact CenteRevolution).

http://contactcenterevolution.blogspot.com/2007/05/dolls-re-enact-soa-confusion-in-cute.html

Gee, Ya Think?!

Ok, ok, I'm going to try not to be too "I told ya so," on this one, but it's really hard not to. I'm seeing more and more titles like the one on the article here:

http://searchwebservices.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid26_gci1238154,00.html?track=sy80

that say basically "XYZ Sees SOA and BPM Going Well Together," and I just catch myself saying (aloud sometimes) "Gee, ya think?!"

This really could be a topic for an entire book, not just a blog entry, but it did seem worth jotting down that while I'm glad to see more and more analysts and experts coming around, it is a bit frustrating to see it having taken this long -- and maybe more frustrating to see each of them announcing it as if they were the first ones to come up with the idea. It just makes good sense, and it's about time!

More on this topic soon, guaranteed!

Let's Get It Started

Every blog has to have its first post, so here it is for FredOnTech.

The idea behind this blog is for it to be a place for me to highlight tech-related themes that are currently piquing my interest...and hopefully therefore might be of interest to others as well. Currently that consists of things like Service Oriented Architectures (SOA), Business Process Management (BPM), Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), and other enterprise-level approaches to getting things done intelligently.

While I happen to work for a software company which provides some really intriguing software targeting these areas of interest to me, I'm going to do my best to let this blog be much more general and thematic than to be about Interactive Softworks' products...I promise.