Posted by TomRose on February 6, 2010 under EA, Innovation, Virtualization | 
Cloud Computing is starting to mature, and evolve into something that brings tremendous value not only to companies but consumers. Amazon and Google have their offerings, then others like Cloud Foundry extending on Amazon’s cloud easing the deployment of Java, Spring, and Grails based applications.
Regardless of outsourced infrastructure or in-house organizations, Cloud Computing is the model to embrace. Setup, configuration, and deployments have to be compressed from months, weeks, days to hours and minutes. Configuration, utilization, as well as system and application monitoring has to be standardized instead of a one-off for every solution that is deployed. The technology designs that are deployed today are already complex, and making each one do the basics different every time, is just too costly in terms of setup, and ongoing support. So internal private clouds or outsourced private/public are where the world is evolving.
Now up through the infrastructure world, and into software applications. I have never embraced the Ruby, Rails, and now Grails models, as I felt the scripting languages loose typing and constrained development models could only work for a small set of applications, and fell apart on more complex applications. However, after working with Groovy and Grails for about a year now, I have to say I was wrong. Obviously, one can hack around in these dynamic tools and create a mess, but that can be said for just about any software technology. I like the ease of use in development, added capabilities like closures and GORM, and then having all of Java available anytime it’s desired or needed. Maven and Grails together is still a bit cumbersome, but its moving in the right direction.
Because of cloud computing and these new software tools, the complexity of solution development, deployment, and support is coming down significantly, this should give new ideas a quick path to availability. Getting new consumer services to market faster, and more importantly, on the downside, getting them to failure as quick as possible without significant capital expense. Finding out what does not work quickly, then being able to move on to what does at a much faster clip.
Take a good look at Grails and Cloud Foundry, it’s the future unfolding.
http://www.cloudfoundry.com/
http://www.grailspodcast.com/
http://aws.amazon.com/
http://code.google.com/appengine/
Cheers!
Tom
Posted by TomRose on August 5, 2009 under EA, SOA, Virtualization, XML |
As a follow-up to “XML Appliances – Strategic Shift or Tactical Technology Flash”, I’m leaning toward a flash. Having purpose built hardware appliances for very specific needs can make sense, but as general middleware integration devices, I’m not buying into it.
For instance, physically hardened appliances as application level perimeter security devices seems to make great sense, as they have a very specific purpose in terms of application level logic they perform (security), plus their physical security attributes. Quickly, vendors move beyond specific purpose and start to position these devices as general purpose devices for enterprise integration, by definition, it’s no longer specific purpose, and the benefit/cost curve starts heading in the direction of zero fast.
As an industry we have moved away from purpose built hardware in the enterprise for decades, as the support cost is high for this model. As we move to virtualized environments and cloud computing, we are actually accelerating our move away from purposeful built hardware devices. So if these devices start popping up in the general purpose integration space in support of SOA, think long and hard about where your organization is headed in terms of infrastructure virtualization, and where these devices would fit in that strategy.
Posted by TomRose on December 29, 2008 under EA, SOA |
XML Appliances for increased performance of XML based messaging protocols are the rage it seems. Forum Systems, Sarvega , Reactivity, Layer 7, DataPower are a portion of the players that have emerged over the last few years, and are being acquired as fast as they are created.
- Sarvega, acquired by Intel
- Reactivity acquired by Cisco
- DataPower acquired by IBM
Better XML processing achieved through XML/XSLT engines implemented in hardware, as opposed to software on a general purpose CPU. A bit oversimplified, however, it’s the general direction. Interestingly, the industry has spent 20 years ridding itself of special purpose hardware for everything, driving toward software solutions. Although, with the advances in programmable hardware it’s possible special purpose hardware is in the realm of possibilities for the large enterprise.
The products/appliances emerging are jumping on the SOA rocket sled, showing how the products could be utilized as an enterprise service bus as well as perimeter security devices. What is not emerging is a well thought out story of how an enterprise, with its vast inventory of overlapping software solutions can best take advantage of the special purpose hardware, how to manage it effectively; and then most importantly, is this technology really a strategic shift, or tactical technology flash?
I plan on diving into the subject to really understand where it plays. There is a steady stream of patents in the pipeline, but so far I find them empty of real innovation. Where is the rest of the industry headed? Is anybody out there having significant success with these products or others? As always your thoughts and comments are welcome.
Best Regards,
Tom
Posted by TomRose on November 12, 2006 under EA |
The elusive Business/IT alignment everyone wants and knows they need to achieve. One approach is placing IT in a completely separate organization (as it usually is), trying to run IT as an external company to the business, the business is your customer. I think this has value and does drive cost down as it optimizes the IT organization. However, what it can’t accomplish very well is drive revenue. Although most companies are focused on just getting IT to optimize operations to minimize cost that is really only part of what IT should be trying to accomplish.
Alignment, how to achieve it, well, I’m not sure it can be achieved with IT organizations as they are typically structured. I typically see the CEO, CIO, CTO line of management, then IT spread out underneath. Also some companies distribute IT and make them part of the line of business, however, that approach typically throws out most of the enterprise direction needed for IT optimization.
The solution, just like my previous post about technical and non-technical aspects of Enterprise Architecture, a company has to do both. Start with combining some of the CIO roles with the COO, then a CTO (seasoned technical leader) reports to the COO. Shared goals across business operations and IT are coming from a lower level than the CEO, and have a better chance for technology and business units to work towards the same shared objectives. Then ensure there is technology subject matter experts focused on key business areas that report into their assigned business unit, as well as enterprise IT.
As business and IT start to collaborate, IT will not only be optimizing cost through enterprise focus, but most importantly joining the business in directly driving revenues. Don’t be fooled, this is not a rant or some grandiose vision, it is happening. Start listening to the corporate investor calls, there are companies that are doing it. Regardless of the numbers, you will hear a confident CEO, COO/CIO all able to articulate business strategy, the technology that is going to make it happen, and how it’s happening today. As analyst beat them up over the spend, they will take a staunch stance to the strategy. Not that they will ride a bad strategy into the ground, but more importantly can stand the pressure to continue to duke it out with competitors with the current operating model, instead of jumping the curve to the next level. When a company is moving from OK, good, to great, this is the indicator the move is underway.
I see companies starting to make this move, so we will see how this plays out over the next couple of years.
Tom
Posted by TomRose on November 10, 2006 under EA, SOA |
There are a few posts about the Enterprise Architecture Conference (EAC), and the lack of discussion about SOA. I did not attend so I’m only getting the information second hand, and most of what I read seems consistent. Either the session was about SOA or EA, and the two were never really blended or a relationship clearly articulated. I have some thoughts on why that occurred.
Enterprise Architecture, well everyone has their own definition and no need to go there for the moment. Perhaps we can agree that SOA is part of a corporate EA practice. I think it’s also safe to say that Integration and Business Architecture are part of EA as well. SOA is an architectural approach that blends Business & Integration Architecture providing an agile integration and pallet of business services to enable business operations.
EA also contains application, infrastructure, and information architecture. Regardless of the definition and what name the architecture type is given, how many you have, etc, these are all in a category of Technical Architecture. Many times I think we stop here and just equate the two (EA = TA), instead of understanding TA is just a subset of an EA practice. From my experience it’s the easiest component of EA, and if all I had to do is define and create the enterprise technology portfolio to run the business, life would be grand!
Unfortunately, a successful EA practice also consists of strategy/planning, governance, portfolio management, program management, and education. Then strong ties with business strategy, strategic sourcing/vendor management/procurement, and an EA process to tie it all together.
This is where EA gets hard, focus on the non-technical critical success factors and nothing ever gets pushed out into the daily operations (ivory tower syndrome). Focus on the TA, and the effort is siloed where it began and never gets full enterprise reach. Only because of tactical cost reduction and functional needs of the enterprise such as, new ERP functionality, system/datacenter consolidation, identity management, federal and state regulation/legislation, web portal, etc, do enterprise initiatives get completed. Both have to be done, and the companies that can, will be the ones that move from good to great.
When looking at the scope of an EA practice, SOA is a very critical and small piece of the complete picture. The same can be said for the EA frameworks and models.
Cheers!
Tom
Posted by TomRose on September 14, 2006 under EA |
Customers Get Hip to System z Value Proposition
For the past five years I have been interested in doing a value study for consolidating distributed mid-range servers back to mainframe technology; however, I was always laughed out of the room. The server virtualization and provisioning along with the high utilization capabilities are very attractive. With some of the moves as noted in the article above, I expect there is some significant value here.
Grid computing allows the utilization of all computing resources, and absolutely is part of the picture. However, in large organizations where data center, server, and storage consolidation are paramount to driving cost reductions, mainframes seam to make sense. Moving back to the mainframe for mission critical services (and what isn’t today), seems to be something worth evaluating for your organization.
Tom
Posted by TomRose on September 4, 2006 under EA |
Very well articulated advice from a seasoned leader of enterprise architecture. The blog title Management Rants is a little misleading, as there are no rants. It’s a collection of vivid depictions about enterprise architecture challenges, and how to work through them while keeping your integrity intact. After reading all the posts, my first thought was that I need to read these again, as there is excellent advice and information in every post.
Tom
Posted by TomRose on August 31, 2006 under EA, Innovation |
Excellent article about the culture at Google by Thomas Claburn at InformationWeek, Google Revealed: The IT Strategy That Makes It Work . So if Google has the formula we all just imitate it, right? Unfortunately, it would just be an imitation, and not the real thing. What we can take away from Google is that their culture of innovation is tailored to attract and most importantly retain a target talent pool that will move the company in the direction of their corporate vision. Every company has a different tempo and vision, so finding the right culture to motivate innovation within those parameters can be difficult. When we are talking about a corporate vision requiring innovation to grow revenue, it requires a much different culture than the vision for an industry that is going through a consolidation phase. As corporations move focus from keeping the lights on to fostering innovation to grow revenues it requires a culture change. Given that fostering innovation may require a different culture, a part of the company may be different from the rest. Guy Kawasaki has some great advice in this area, “Don’t be afraid to polarize people.” Although he is talking about customers, I think the same can be said for internal talent. Having multiple sub-cultures, or changing it everywhere is going to alienate a percentage of the company. However, the alternative is the company stagnates because it can’t migrate to a culture fostering the innovation required for a new vision.
Joel Spolsky talks about some management styles, and The Identity Management Method seems to gel with what Google and Guy are talking about. Another note from James McGovern articulates the attribute of transparency, and I believe this management style depends on transparency. A culture centered on innovation seems best served by this management style.
It’s safe to say that the most successful companies will cycle through different cultures as they grow, and their industry matures. Those companies that cannot make the multiple transitions will disappear.