Arch2Arch Editor's Blog

Oracle's Arch2Arch Newsletter to Debut in August

Justin Kestelyn, Editor-in-Chief of the Oracle Technology Network (OTN), recently announced in the BEA Developers and Architects group on Oracle Mix that architects and developers who have an Oracle account can now subscribe to Oracle's new Arch2Arch Newsletter, which will debut in August.

To subscribe, log into your Oracle account and go to the Electronic Subscriptions section on your account administration page.

For people who were subscribed to BEA's Arch2Arch Advisor newsletter, no action is needed. Your Arch2Arch Advisor subscription will be automatically migrated to Oracle's new Arch2Arch Newletter.

Event-Driven Architecture Gaining Recognition

The latest Arch2Arch Poll suggests growing awareness and use of event-driven architecture (EDA). Among the people who chose to cast a vote, a strong majority of participants (79%) are already using EDA in their enterprise systems, or plan to do so soon.

Specifically, the poll asked:

Is event-driven architecture (EDA) a component of your enterprise systems?

Fourteen people participated in the poll, voting as follows:

• 43% (6 votes): Yes
• 36% (5 votes): Not yet, but we plan to implement EDA components soon
• 21% (3 votes): No

Visit the Arch2Arch Event-Driven Architecture Center for EDA-related articles and blog posts.

Also, if you search for "event-driven architecture" on the Oracle Technology Network, you'll find interesting results like:

• Building Event-Driven Architecture with an Enterprise Service Bus
• Oracle Beehive Collaboration Platform

Our latest Arch2Arch Article is Dain Hansen's SOA Integration: Service-Enable Your Business Logic for Greater Agility. Here, Dain talks about the necessity for businesses to implement practices that facilitate adaptation to change. Change indeed is the fundamental fact of business, but adapting existing systems to unpredictable change (for example, new government regulations) can be difficult and time-consuming. Dain illustrates the benefits provided by BEA's SOA Integration solution.

We've also continuing to feature Reza Shafii's recent article, Kaizen, BPM, and Agile Methodologies. In this article, Reza applies innovative thinking in presenting the similarities and relationships between the Japanese business philosophy Kaizen, Business Process Management (BPM), and Agile software development methodologies. The result is a vision for optimization of BPM strategies and evolution.

Browse the full archive of Arch2Arch Articles for more architect insight.

In the Arch2Arch Blogs, Bob Rhubart talks about the recent activity involving Oracle's acquisition of BEA in his post I Want My Arch2Arch. The pace of activity is indeed fast, and some of the details of how the transition will unfold are now becoming clearer. Read Bob's full post to find out what's happening and how you can participate.

Subscriptions: This blog is written by Kevin Farnham, and is available as part of the Arch2Arch Editor's blog. You can subscribe using our RSS feed or via the Atom feed.

Technorati Tags: EDA

Arch2Arch Transition Accelerates; SOA Integration

The transition of Arch2Arch related to Oracle's acquistion of BEA is gathering steam. Oracle Technology Network (OTN) Editor-in-Chief Justin Kestelyn is actively working with Arch2Arch's Bob Rhubart to keep the transition moving forward and minimize uncertainties.

Justin's OTN blog post Sunrise: The BEA and Oracle Developer Communities Come Together, and Bob's recent post, I Want My Arch2Arch, are must reads if you haven't seen them yet.

Equally important for BEA architects is the Oracle Mix group Justin created for keeping people informed about the transition, and providing a forum where questions can be raised. The group's name is BEA Developers & Architects. You'll need to get an Oracle Mix account in order to join the group.

Of course, a lot of other people are working hard to make the transition succeed. But Justin and Bob are in the foreground, engaged in the more public conversation, while many other Oracle, BEA, and also O'Reilly people are working on the technical issues of the transition.

From my somewhat objective vantage point, I'd say things are proceeding well, and quickly! Hence, there's good reason to keep in touch with what's happening in the BEA Developers & Architects group, and here in the Arch2Arch Blogs.

Late last week we published a new Arch2Arch Article, Dain Hansen's SOA Integration: Service-Enable Your Business Logic for Greater Agility. In this article, Dain talks about the necessity for businesses to implement practices that facilitate adaptation to change. Change indeed is the fundamental fact of business, but adapting existing systems to unpredictable change (for example, new government regulations) can be difficult and time-consuming. Dain illustrates the benefits provided by BEA's SOA Integration solution.

We've also featuring Reza Shafii's recent article, Kaizen, BPM, and Agile Methodologies. In this article, Reza applies innovative thinking in presenting the similarities and relationships between the Japanese business philosophy Kaizen, Business Process Management (BPM), and Agile software development methodologies. The result is a vision for optimization of BPM strategies and evolution.

Take a look at these, and browse the full archive of Arch2Arch Articles for more architect insight.

In the Arch2Arch Blogs, as I mentioned above, Bob Rhubart talks about the recent activity involving Oracle's acquisition of BEA in his post I Want My Arch2Arch. The pace of activity is indeed fast, and some of the details of how the transition will unfold are now becoming clearer. Read Bob's full post to find out what's happening and how you can participate.

This month's Arch2Arch Poll asks:

Is event-driven architecture (EDA) a component of your enterprise systems?

Please participate by voting on the Arch2Arch home page.

Our previous poll asked "Are you using business process management software in your enterprise architecture?" 39% of respondents (11 votes) said "yes"; 46% (13 votes) said "no, but I plan to"; and 14% (4 votes) selected "no, it's not necessary".

If you've got a suggestion for a future Arch2Arch poll, feel free to post your idea as a comment below.

Subscriptions: This blog is written by Kevin Farnham, and is available as part of the Arch2Arch Editor's blog. You can subscribe using our RSS feed or via the Atom feed.

Technorati Tags: SOA, Kaizen

BEA.Participate.08 Is Underway; Kaizen & BPM

BEA.Participate.08 is now underway, in Chicago, Illinois. The conference sessions and keynotes get started Tuesday morning, and run through Thursday morning. If you aren't able to attend, there are still ways to follow the activity. The BEA.Participate.08 Blog is a good starting point. You can also visit the Tracks & Sessions page, and download the full 20-page agenda (PDF).

BEA.Participate is "a celebration of innovation, exploring the marriage of technology and ideas. BEA.Participate.08 unites developers, architects, IT strategists, line-of-business leaders and executives in a unique business-oriented and technology-infused forum to learn, share and establish relationships with fellow practitioners." I wrote about the conference in some detail in my last Arch2Arch Editor's post.

I expect that we'll be seeing some interesting blog posts from BEA.Participate.08 attendees as this week proceeds!

We've just published a new Arch2Arch Article, Reza Shafii's Kaizen, BPM, and Agile Methodologies. In this article, Reza applies some innovative thinking in presenting the similarities and relationships between the Japanese business philosophy Kaizen, Business Process Management (BPM), and Agile software development methodologies. The result is a vision for optimization of BPM strategies and evolution.

We're also continuing to feature Quinton Wall's Rethinking Connectivity. In this article, Quinton describes how organizations can approach the problem of connectivity through defining four dimensions of connectivity: internal, external, industry, and hosted. Reorganizing our thinking about connectivity into these dimensions can lead to increased adaptability by the organization to changing trends.

Take a look at these if you haven't yet done so, and browse the full archive of Arch2Arch Articles for more architect insight.

In the Arch2Arch Blogs, Alex Toussaint continued his series on AquaLogic with his post AquaLogic BPM Suite 6.1 and AquaLogic Service Bus 3.0. In this post, Alex talks about the evolution of the AquaLogic BPM Suite (ALBPM) over the past 18 months, and provides screenshots that illustrate ALBPM 6.1 processes being published to the AquaLogic Service Bus (ALSB) server and a BPEL process being injected inside ALSB from ALBPM.

Peter Laird continues his investigation of Twitter as a business tool in Twitter Microfeed Covering the SaaS/PaaS/Cloud Markets for those without a Cognitive Surplus. Peter has crafted a Twitter microfeed for SaaS, PaaS, and Cloud Computing. You can view the current feed by going to http://twitter.com/ondemand. Peter also tells you how you can subscribe to the feed through your own Twitter account, if you'd prefer that method.

The highlight of the Arch2Arch Event Calendar is, of course, BEA.Participate.08, which is ongoing through Thursday morning this week (May 12-15) in Chicago, Illinois.

This month's Arch2Arch Poll asks:

Is event-driven architecture (EDA) a component of your enterprise systems?

Please participate by voting on the Arch2Arch home page.

Our previous poll asked "Are you using business process management software in your enterprise architecture?" 39% of respondents (11 votes) said "yes"; 46% (13 votes) said "no, but I plan to"; and 14% (4 votes) selected "no, it's not necessary".

If you've got a suggestion for a future Arch2Arch poll, feel free to post your idea as a comment below.

Subscriptions: This blog is written by Kevin Farnham, and is available as part of the Arch2Arch Editor's blog. You can subscribe using our RSS feed or via the Atom feed.

Technorati Tags: BEAparticipate, Kaizen, BPM,

BEA.Participate.08 Is Next Week

People in the Arch2Arch and Dev2Dev communities have been talking about BEA.Participate.08 for months. Now, it's about to happen (next week, May 12-15, in Chicago, Illinois). BEA.Participate is "a celebration of innovation, exploring the marriage of technology and ideas. BEA.Participate.08 unites developers, architects, IT strategists, line-of-business leaders and executives in a unique business-oriented and technology-infused forum to learn, share and establish relationships with fellow practitioners."

Registration for BEA.Participate.08 is still open. The agenda includes more than 60 business and technology breakout sessions, in addition to industry roundtables and birds-of-a-feather product discussions.

Alex Toussaint first wrote about this year's event in his BEA Participate 2008 - Social Computing, BPM, User Interaction, and more... blog post. Chris Bucchere talks about the unique social computing experiment that will be ongoing at this year's BEA.Participate in his Announcing the Launch of the Social Applications for BEA Participate.08 post.

BEA.Participate.08 looks to be an exciting event for the Arch2Arch community.

Quinton Wall's Rethinking Connectivity is our most recent Arch2Arch Article. Quinton describes how organizations can approach the problem of connectivity through defining four dimensions of connectivity: internal, external, industry, and hosted. Reorganizing our thinking about connectivity into these dimensions can lead to increased adaptability by the organization to changing trends.

In Measuring AquaLogic Enterprise Security Performance William Dettelback talks about performance aspects when AquaLogic Enterprise Security (ALES) is applied to handle visitor entitlements for a WebLogic Portal application.

Take a look at these if you haven't yet done so, and browse the full archive of Arch2Arch Articles for more architect insight.

In the Arch2Arch Blogs, Peter Laird has provides an excellent reference in his Understanding the Cloud Computing/SaaS/PaaS markets: a Map of the Players in the Industry post. Kent Dickson is also credited on the map of the market space that's included in the post. Peter even provides the map drawing file assets for your use, if you'd like to make edits or create your own vision of the Cloud Computing/SaaS/PaaS space.

Alex Toussaint provides a preview of the improvements in the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) capabilities in AquaLogic BPM Suite 6.1 in his post AquaLogic BMP 6.1 - BPMN. The post includes diagrams that illustrate the BPMN enhancements.

As you might expect, the Arch2Arch Event Calendar features BEA.Participate.08, which I discussed above. To recap, BEA.Participate.08 takes place next week (May 12-15) in Chicago, Illinois. This year's event will feature an experiment in social computing: registered conference attendees will be provided an iPod Touch to interact on-the-fly with the conference agenda, session speakers and content, and each other.

This month's Arch2Arch Poll asks:

Is event-driven architecture (EDA) a component of your enterprise systems?

Please participate by voting on the Arch2Arch home page.

Our previous poll asked "Are you using business process management software in your enterprise architecture?" 39% of respondents (11 votes) said "yes"; 46% (13 votes) said "no, but I plan to"; and 14% (4 votes) selected "no, it's not necessary".

If you've got a suggestion for a future Arch2Arch poll, feel free to post your idea as a comment below.

Subscriptions: This blog is written by Kevin Farnham, and is available as part of the Arch2Arch Editor's blog. You can subscribe using our RSS feed or via the Atom feed.

Technorati Tags: SaaS, CloudComputing, BEAparticipate

Web 2.0 Technologies and Business Information; Krugle

This week's Arch2Arch blogs have got me thinking about Twitter and, in general, Web 2.0 and business. Twitter is the social networking "platform" that lets people post messages of up to 140 characters in length. People can subscribe to other people's Twitter feeds. When Twitter first came out, it received a lot of attention. One of its advantages is that, given the 140-character message size limit, "twittering" is ideal for hand-held devices that are connected to the Internet. It's a way to spread news fast -- whether the news is trivial or important.

In the past couple years I attended two Web 2.0 conferences, and at these conferences there were many talks, presentations, and discussions about the opportunities Web 2.0 offers to corporations (as well as the challenges). Corporations spend lots of money trying to find out what customers and potential customers think about their products and services. The revolution that is termed "Web 2.0" has created an environment where anyone can publish anything they'd like, quickly and easily. The result? An overload of information publicly available on the Web. Most of this information is trivial, indeed. But not all of it. Here's where the potential value to corporations arises.

People who like doing things like twittering their latest activity or mood will sometimes post information that is of high value to companies. Consider, for example, this "tweet":

trying to get Product X properly configured. arggh! what a pain!!!

Now, if that was your company's product, wouldn't it be useful for you to have that information, and know that your product was considered a "pain" to configure by an objective user? But the person who posted that "tweet" probably isn't going to navigate your corporate web site to find the proper page for posting a professional message critiquing your product's configuration process, right?

At the Web 2.0 conferences I attended, I heard about technologies that mine Web 2.0 content for information like the above example tweet, that can be highly valuable for companies. The tools are getting increasingly sophisticated, too. Mining unstructured content has never been easy... Anyway, thanks to Peter Laird for reminding me of all this interesting stuff through his Twitter post.

In other news: there's an innovation happening at the CodeShare site that many architects will find interesting: code that is submitted to CodeShare can now be submitted to the Krugle code search engine, for cataloguing and indexing. Finding out what's available in terms of already developed open source components as you plan a software engineering project has never been so easy. Not that the work of architecting a project design is any easier, but at least we now have some powerful tools we didn't have before. See the CodeShare Krugle announcement.

Finally, I've put up a new Arch2Arch poll, asking about your organization's use of event-driven architecture (see the details below).

In the Arch2Arch Articles, we are featuring Quinton Wall's Rethinking Connectivity. In this article, Quinton describes how organizations can approach the problem of connectivity through defining four dimensions of connectivity: internal, external, industry, and hosted. Reorganizing our thinking about connectivity into these dimensions can lead to increased adaptability by the organization to changing trends.

Meanwhile, in Measuring AquaLogic Enterprise Security Performance William Dettelback talks about performance aspects when AquaLogic Enterprise Security (ALES) is applied to handle visitor entitlements for a WebLogic Portal application.

Take a look at these if you haven't done so already, and browse the full archive of Arch2Arch Articles for more architect insight.

As I mentioned above, in the Arch2Arch Blogs, Peter Laird's Mining Twitter for the Enterprise: Survey your Customers' Candid Thoughts using s Social Web 2.0 Service stood out for me, and has drawn also considerable interest from the community. As Peter says, Twitter provides a mountain of information, most of it useless from a corporate point of view. But the Twitter stream also includes valuable gems, such as when people post off-the-cuff remarks about a company's products and services. Should your company be mining the Web 2.0 datastore? See Peter's post and join the discussion.

In another interesting post, Alex Toussaint provides a preview of the improvements in the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) capabilities in AquaLogic BPM Suite 6.1. Alex's post AquaLogic BMP 6.1 - BPMN includes diagrams that illustrate the BPMN enhancements.

The Arch2Arch Event Calendar features the May 6 online event Synapse and the Path to Information Nirvana. In this webinar, Synapse Group's Paul Citarella and BEA's Anand Ramakrishnan will talk about innovative Information-as-a-Service (IaaS) strategies.

Also on the horizon is BEA.Participate.08, which will happen in Chicago, Illinois on May 12-15. Chris Bucchere posted a blog that includes a sneak preview video related to BEA Participate 2008 on the Dev2Dev Blogs site.

A new Arch2Arch Poll has just been posted. The poll asks:

Is event-driven architecture (EDA) a component of your enterprise systems?

Please participate by voting on the Arch2Arch home page.

Our previous poll asked "Are you using business process management software in your enterprise architecture?" 39% of respondents (11 votes) said "yes"; 46% (13 votes) said "no, but I plan to"; and 14% (4 votes) selected "no, it's not necessary".

If you've got a suggestion for a future Arch2Arch poll, feel free to post your idea as a comment below.

Subscriptions: This blog is written by Kevin Farnham, and is available as part of the Arch2Arch Editor's blog. You can subscribe using our RSS feed or via the Atom feed.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Web20, Krugle, BEAparticipate

Hello! (from the New Arch2Arch Editor)

Hi. As I mentioned in my first personal post last week, I am taking over for your original Arch2Arch editor-in-chief Jon Mountjoy, who has moved on to a new position. I'm excited about joining the Arch2Arch community. I wrote in some detail about my background in my first Dev2Dev Editor's post and my personal post, so I'll just provide a brief summary here.

I've been a professional software engineer, team leader, and architect for almost three decades, working on a variety of platforms and technologies (as pretty much everyone who's been in the business that long has). In the 1998-2003 period I did a lot of Java development and technical review of Java books. I also worked on a partnership between my small dot.com-ish company and BEA, where we would have used WebLogic as the basis for an online document archive and retrieval system, and bill payment systems. Unfortunately, changing conditions prevented the project from taking off...

Now, a quick summary of recent Arch2Arch happenings.

This past week we published a new article, Quinton Wall's Rethinking Connectivity. In this article, Quinton describes how organizations can approach the problem of connectivity through defining four dimensions of connectivity: internal, external, industry, and hosted. Reorganizing our thinking about connectivity into these dimensions can lead to increased adaptability by the organization to changing trends.

We are also featuring William Dettelback's Measuring AquaLogic Enterprise Security Performance. In this article, William talks about performance aspects when AquaLogic Enterprise Security (ALES) is applied to handle visitor entitlements for a WebLogic Portal application.

Take a look at these if you haven't done so already, and browse the full archive of Arch2Arch Articles for more architect insight.

In the Arch2Arch Blogs, Chris Tomkins' post titled AquaLogic Service Bus v3.0 - Getting started with Workspace Studio, which tells you how to add a server, create an ALSB project, create and deploy ALSB resources, and more, has drawn considerable interest and comments.

Irene Rusman posted her first blog, How to look at the ESB federations?, in which she talks about how ESB federations will transform IT infrastructure into an integral part of business structure. Welcome to Arch2Arch, Irene!

The number 5 is featured in two interesting blogs this week: Dain Hansen posted Going beyond the Silo: 5 Steps to Federation, about how to get your IT federated; and Michael Stamback posted 5 Tips for Buying SOA Governance, which talks about the ironic fact that, with governance, agility and simplicity comes at the cost of complexity.

The Arch2Arch Event Calendar features BEA.Participate.08, which will happen in Chicago, Illinois on May 12-15. Chris Bucchere posted a blog that includes a sneak preview video related to BEA Participate 2008 on the Dev2Dev Blogs site.

The current Arch2Arch Poll asks:

Are you using business process management software in your enterprise architecture?

Please participate by voting on the Arch2Arch home page.

Our previous poll asked "Do you have any real time or soft real time requirements in your enterprise architecture?" 70% of respondants (30 votes) answered "yes."

If you've got a suggestion for a future Arch2Arch poll, feel free to post your idea as a comment below.

That's it for today!

Subscriptions: This blog is written by Kevin Farnham, and is available as part of the Arch2Arch Editor's blog. You can subscribe using our RSS feed or via the Atom feed.

Technorati Tags: Connectivity, BEAparticipate, AquaLogic

SOA Reference Architecture; State of Portal Market

We've had a busy month here on Arch2Arch! Check out the Articles below for a wide range of interesting white papers and articles, covering everything from the a look at BEA's SOA Reference Architecture to blueprints for successful SOA integration and the state of portals and social software.

We've also made some changes to Arch2Arch to help you find relevant information a little more easily. In particular, we've introduced 6 architect centers - categories that encapsulate blogs and articles on particular topics. The centers are: SOA, Governance, SOA Integration, Enterprise Social Computing, Virtualization and Event-Driven Architecture. Each has a nice description that summarises our intent.

As you may have seen before, you can also subscribe to use using RSS or by email. Coming soon is an "Ask the Architect" feature - stay tuned!

In the Articles we have a Brobdingnagian selection starting with BEA's SOA Reference Architecture - A Foundation for Business Agility. BEA's SOA Reference Architecture offers an architectural framework for planning SOA-based projects that maximize interoperability and reuse, and a consistent vision throughout the enterprise.

Also check out State of the Portal Market 2007: Portals and the Power of Participation. CIOs are looking at portals for consolidating applications and introducing Web 2.0 capabilities. See for yourself: BEA Systems' annual report on the enterprise portal market includes survey data on deployment and adoption from more than 540 BEA portal customers, plus a synthesis of more than 100 analyst reports and industry articles.

We also have Blueprint for Successful SOA Integration. SOA Integration has emerged as the de facto standard for successful IT integration. Some architects mistake SOA Integration for the inclusion of an enterprise service bus or BPEL along with some adapters. There's more to it, and this article shows how it can be defined, what it solves, and some points to think about for your IT organization.

Two Gartner Magic Quadrant Reports for Portals & Social Software are also now available for download: "Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portal Products, 2007" and "Magic Quadrant for Team Collaboration and Social Software, 2007.

Finally, check out Measuring AquaLogic Enterprise Security Performance. AquaLogic Enterprise Security (ALES) extends the concept of entitlement policies beyond what is possible with WebLogic Portal alone. Learn about the performance aspects of using ALES as the entitlement engine for WebLogic Portal.

From our Event Calendar we have the following upcoming event:

• BEA.Participate.08 (Conference in Chicago, Illinois - May 12-15)

Subscriptions: This blog is written by Jon Mountjoy, and is available as part of the Arch2Arch Editor's blog. You can subscribe using this RSS feed or via the Atom feed.

Technorati Tags: integration, SOA, SOA Integration

WebLogic Operations Control for Managed Virtualization (New Product)

In case you missed it, BEA recently released (a beta of) a new product: WebLogic Operations Control.

• Beta download
• Docs
• Press release

It's described on the corporate site as "an enterprise application virtualization solution that allows for centralized governance and control over Java applications, including dynamic activation and scale-out to meet ever-changing mission-critical business demands."

It's pretty obvious that virtualization is a key to future IT agility. I wonder how the ability to dynamically and automatically allocate applications to virtual resources is going to change how we think about future architectures?

In the Articles we have a few supporting articles. BEA WebLogic Operations Control: Application Virtualization for Enterprise Java shows that WebLogic Operations Control is a management framework for virtualized and non-virtualized enterprise Java applications that addresses the key challenges involved in application virtualization. This white paper explores the framework and its use cases.

Also check out SOA and Virtualization: How do They Fit Together?. This white paper explores Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and virtualization, showing how aspects of virtualization can be seen as enablers for the flexibility promised by SOA. It also establishes the technical links between SOA and virtualization in enterprise computing.

In the Blogs, Gabriel Bechara asks What is a Reusable Service?. He provides some interesting guidelines, including constraints that the service should be stateless and composable.

Bob Rhubart, in an interesting exchange with David Linthicum, writes that Effective SOA Governance keeps the focus on architecture. He adds that "Technology isn't SOA governance—technology is a tool of SOA governance. Let's not forget that other mantra: SOA governance is something you do, not something you buy."

Suchin asks SOA, EA, RA: What do they mean?. He provides definitions for each.

Many folk are talking about Service Component Architecture (SCA), and Vijay Mandava blogs that WLS 10.3 Tech Preview supports SCA. For an interesting take on SCA and JBI, see Dain Hansen's JBI is still dead.

Finally, for a bit of fun, check out Dain's Look out Godzilla here comes AquaLogic, "SOA Field" hits the Theaters on YouTube.

From our Event Calendar we have the following upcoming event:

• BEA.Participate.08 (Conference in Chicago, Illinois - May 12-15)

Subscriptions: This blog is written by Jon Mountjoy, and is available as part of the Arch2Arch Editor's blog. You can subscribe using this RSS feed or via the Atom feed.

Technorati Tags: virtualization, SOA, vmware

Infrastructure as a Service ; Introducing Enterprise Portals too

Today we published an interesting white paper on SOA and virtualization today, by BEA and VMWare. We all know about SOA, which conceptually incorporates a modularization of an architecture in terms of services. Virtualization, according to the white paper, is a great way to implement some of the aspects of SOA. For example, dynamic provisioning of services.

In particular, it seems virtualization can help in the lifecycle of an SOA service - development (easy to build virtualized heterogeneous environments) and testing, deployment (including release management, performance management and the aforementioned dynamic provisioning).

An interesting term the white paper uses is Infrastructure as a Service. We've all heard of SaaS, well here we have hardware as a service (or rather, its generalization).

Though some folk think we're going a little too far with all the aaS's (there's DaaS now too), it kinda makes sense, and I imagine IT managers everywhere are having great discussions with architects about the many new ways in which an architecture can be manifested.

In the Articles we have Introduction to Enterprise Portals - Why they Benefit IT and the Business. Peter Laird introduces the enterprise portal space and the problems that portals solve. In an article aimed at CIOs, IT architects, and IT management, Peter discusses application integration, security consolidation, content aggregation, and collaboration.

Also check out SOA and Virtualization: How do They Fit Together?. This white paper explores Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and virtualization, showing how aspects of virtualization can be seen as enablers for the flexibility promised by SOA. It also establishes the technical links between SOA and virtualization in enterprise computing.

In the Blogs, Paco Gomez returns with yet another demo application for WebLogic Event Server. His Algorithmic Trading with WebLogic Event Server looks at an application of complex event processing. The source code for the project is up on CodeShare.

If you use AquaLogic Service Bus 3.0, you may want to check out Narendra Patil's blog where he talks a little about the upcoming product. Major themes include governance, advanced mediation patterns, better connectivity to legacy applications, and a unified Eclipse-based composition environment. For more on the product, also see Alex Toussaint's post AquaLogic BPM Suite - Looking ahead...

Alex also blogs about BEA.Participate.08, and writes: "This year, BEA.Participate.08 will feature a unique experiment in social computing. Registered conference attendees will be provided an iPod Touch to interact on-the-fly with the conference agenda, session speakers and content, and each other."

Take a look at these two archived webinars in Arch2Arch Live!:

• BEA SOA Solutions: Breaking Down the Barriers to Microsoft Interoperability
• SOA Governance: The First 100 Days

From our Event Calendar we have the following upcoming events:

• The Changing World of Application Platforms (Webinar - Feb 20)
• BEA.Participate.08 (Conference in Chicago, Illinois - May 12-15)

The current Poll asks "Are you using business process management software in your enterprise architecture?" Please participate by voting on the home page.

The previous poll asked Do you have any real time or soft real time requirements in your enterprise architecture?. 70% responded with "Yes!" For those, check out Paco's blog!

Subscriptions: This blog is written by Jon Mountjoy, and is available as part of the Arch2Arch Editor's blog. You can subscribe using this RSS feed or via the Atom feed.

Technorati Tags: virtualization, SOA, enterprise portals, vmware, complex event processing

Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0: Real or Imagined

The BEAWorld conference is just about to start. This was in my mind as I read an interesting blog today by Anne Truitt Zelenka writing about Hierarchies Plus: What Enterprise 2.0 Can Do for the Typical Big Business.

Anne talks about Enterprise 2.0 applications supporting the formation and deepening of ad hoc links across the organizational hierarchy, and allowing for social problem-solving across these informal, ad hoc relationships. That's a nice definition that combines some of the important aspects of web 2.0 and the needs of an enterprise.

It got me thinking though—what does the term mean to architects over here at BEA? A google search for the term on site:dev2dev.bea.com yields a paltry 25 hits. Broadening the search to site:bea.com, yields only 37. Obviously, this is not a term used here. With nearly 800 hits for "Web 2.0", I thought the enterprise types would be jumping on the band wagon :-)

Web 2.0 does have a meaning (baying nay sayers now confined to pens), or more than one, depending on how you look at it. Is "Enterprise 2.0" a term we should be embracing? It it a nebulous fuzzy term, or is there something there, something that we do want to embrace—a social aspect to the enterprise?

Getting back to Anne's definition: I think BEA is going down this road too—I suspect they just call it something else: Enterprise Social Computing. What's in a name? Is there something here behind it all? I've started a poll asking the same question.

In the Articles we have Total Cost of Ownership: A Comparison of C/C++ and Java. A recent survey of C/C++ and Java developers conducted by Evans Data Corporation reveals that Java is generally seen as being cheaper than C/C++.

Also check out the article and podcast What does Web 2.0 mean for Enterprise IT?. To explore what Web 2.0 really means for enterprise IT, Ajay Gandhi, director of enterprise social computing, interviews the architects behind BEA's recently released social computing products.

Over on BEA Education Services News, Yu-Ting tells us about Pre-conference session for architects, IT personnel at BEAWorlds San Francisco, Barcelona. BEA Education Services is hosting an all-day pre-conference activity at BEAWorld specifically for architects and IT personnel who are gearing up to scale SOA to enterprise deployment. Available at San Francisco and Barcelona, SOA Forum for Architects brings you BEA's own experts on SOA so that you can gain real-world insights for successful management, architecture and implementation of enterprise-wide SOA.

In the Blogs, Steve Bennett writes about Addressing the challenges encountered on your chosen SOA Adoption path. I love his phrase "Right-Click architecture" used to highlight "that integrated development environments had matured to a level whereby creating web services from existing components was virtual effortless." Check out Steve's previous post where he talks about innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards in the adoption of SOA.

Looking at ROI of SOA, Bob Rhubart points to findings showing that 68% of services collect dust. The reason, "68% of available services don't get reused, for reasons that include the fact the developers just can't find them(!)"

Writing about complex event processing in CEP, Rules Engines, and SQL, Alexander Alves looks at logic programming and the RETE algorithm before saying, "some of the ideas, with combination of hash functions, [are found] in the implementation of some aspects of our CEP engine, which is based upon SQL and not on a logical programming language." It's a fascinating look at the EPL language found in WebLogic Event Server.

Alex Toussaint reminds everyone of a ALBPM User Group meeting, to be held during BEA World 2007.

Finally, Dain Hansen writes about Mashing Up The Bus: Getting Ready for the Convergence of SOA & Web 2.0. He implements the convergence, if that's the right word, by creating a mashup that shows a "dashboard snippet view from AquaLogic Service Bus into AquaLogic User Interaction," his "hello world" enterprise architecture mashup. Code included.

The Arch2Arch Live! archive features one new item:

• Consistent Service Engineering and Management
• BEA Redefines Virtualized Software Appliances for Java with WebLogic Server Virtual Edition
• Arch2Arch Media Center Podcast feed: or iTunes

From our Event Calendar we have the following upcoming events:

• Business Agility: Innovate Over and Above Your SAP Application (Sep 6, Pennsylvania)
• BEAWorld 2007: San Francisco (Conference, Sep 10-12)
• Smart Virtualization - Taking the benefits to the next level(Webinar, Sep 19)
• BEAWorld 2007: Barcelona (Conference, Oct 2-4)

The current Poll asks "Do you think Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0/Social Computing really means something to the Enterprise?" Please participate by voting on the home page.

The previous poll asked Are you using a service bus in your enterprise architecture?. 47% responded with "Yes", 21% expressed a desire to do so, and 31% responded with "No."

Subscriptions: This blog is written by Jon Mountjoy, and is available as part of the Arch2Arch Editor's blog. You can subscribe using this RSS feed or via the Atom feed.

Technorati Tags: enterprise 2.0 (!), SOA, web+2.0

Mashups and Podcast on Virtualization and Event-Driven Architectures

I sometimes think of (web) mashups as a visually compelling subset of SOA. Over on Dev2Dev I've just blogged about a number of mashup items - including some enterprise architecture mashups that you may be interested in.

One of the articles published today here on Arch2Arch, Information as a Service, about introducing an information bus, is surely related too. Sure, it's not a visual web mashup but it enables an enterprise data mashup—just as exciting in my opinion...

In Arch2Arch news, please check out our new podcast! If you're already subscribed to Arch2Arch Media Center's RSS feed you will have already seen the podcast. If not, do subscribe. You can subscribe in iTunes too if you like, though you may want your blog reader subscription as well (iTunes for the podcasts, blog reader for the events and webinars). The first podcast is on virtualization and event-driven architectures. Let us know if you want more of the same.

In the Articles we have Understanding SOA Management: What's in your SOA?. Author Dain Hansen defines the challenges that exist with SOA today and shows how SOA management can address many of those challenges. He includes a brief look at BEA's SOA management product offering.

Also check out Interview: Information as a Service. Brad Wright, Product Manager for the BEA AquaLogic Data Services Platform, talks to Arch2Arch about delivering information as a service. The interview covers adopting SOA, integrating data, and accessing data using an information bus.

In the Blogs, Bob Rhubart provides a multi-media extravaganza with a number of interviews involving Robert Scoble from this PodTech show. Check out AFLAC and BEA (Robert Scoble talks to AFLAC's Frank Braski about BEA and social computing in the enterprise), AquaLogic Pages (Robert Scoble talks with BEA's Jay Simons and Adrian McDermott about AquaLogic Pages and enterprise social computing), Social Computing (Robert Scoble talks to BEA's Adrian McDermott about social computing in the enterprise), and Applebees and BEA (Robert Scoble talks with Bambi George and Justin Goldsborough of Applebees International about BEA's role in Applebee's new communication portal).

Also in the blogs, new blogger Tejas Joshi asks "Where do I put my Business & Service Orchestration?"

On a completely different note, Quinton Wall wonders You There?, complaining about how many folk have IM statuses indicating that they're available, but when pinged they're not.

The Arch2Arch Live! archive features one new item:

• Beyond Blueprints: From Vision to Value with SOA Governance. You can subscribe to the podcast feed too:
• Arch2Arch Podcast 1: Trends in Virtualization and Event Driven Architectures

From our Event Calendar we have the following upcoming events:

• BEA Redefines Virtualized Software Appliances for Java with WebLogic Server Virtual Edition (Webinar, June 13 - 17:00 GMT, 09:00 PDT)
• Virtualisation and BEA Liquid VM: Performance and Flexibility (Webinar, June 13 - 14:00 GMT)

The current Poll asks "Do you currently have VMware ESX Server deployment in your organization?" Please participate by voting on the home page. (Check out the podcast for a little more on virtualization too)

The previous poll asked On average, what percentage of your x86 server resources are being used regularly?. Only 28% (of 41 respondents) had a usage percentage of 50% or greater. That's a lot of fire power unused, perhaps confirming virtualization as a viable way of getting more from the hardware.

Subscriptions: This blog is written by Jon Mountjoy, and is available as part of the Arch2Arch Editor's blog. You can subscribe using this RSS feed or via the Atom feed.

Technorati Tags: virtualization, SOA, BEA, governance

Virtualization and Data in SOA

The latest Arch2Arch Advisor newsletter headlined with a theme on virtualization. It motivates virtualization by saying "With average server utilization at less than 10 percent, there's currently $140 billion in excess server capacity worldwide. If you can re-architect your physical servers into a virtual server pool—and manage it well—your business could benefit from cost savings, memory savings, higher utilization, and more rapid response to its changing provisioning needs. "

Well, as you'll see from this blog post we have a few more virtualization tips for you. First, check out the Articles below for the white paper. Then check out the blogs where Arvind Jain (Director of Product Management for BEA's virtualization products) has started blogging on the subject. Finally, subscribe to one or two of the upcoming webinars on the subject too. Oh, check out the poll too! You don't want to waste those spare cycles...

In the Articles we have Data in SOA, Part I: Transforming Data into Information. Data and data management are key aspects of nearly every enterprise software solution; SOA is no exception. In this article, Richard Manning explains the importance of having a data strategy, and looks at how to convert your existing data into information.

Also check out Java Virtualization from BEA Boosts Utilization, Performance, and Flexibility. This white paper takes a look at BEA's approach to virtualization and how it can help every business running Java applications.

Over on BEA Education Services News, Yu-Ting tells us about New mock exams available now. One of the new mock exams is that for Certified Architect 8.1 Enterprise Architect.

In the Blogs, new blogger Arvind Jain writes about virtualization. His Virtualization Demo at JavaOne shows off an awesome demo used during a keynote at JavaOne, while Virtual appliances enable dynamic SOA examines the impact of virtualization on SOA.

Regular blogger Quinton Wall laments about a phrase he recently heard, We don't hire Architects. He writes, "I have to admit that for some time now I have become increasingly jaded on the use of the word architect and what did that actually mean."

Finally, check out Michael Rowley asking Does SCA define a new programming model for Java? and Is SDO the data tier for SCA?. He provides some answers too.

The Arch2Arch Live! archive features one new item:

• BEA AquaLogic Commerce Services: eCommerce technologies for today's eCommerce challenges

From our Event Calendar we have the following upcoming events:

• Beyond Blueprints: From Vision to Value with SOA Governance (Webinar, May 30)
• BEA Redefines Virtualized Software Appliances for Java with WebLogic Server Virtual Edition (Webinar, June 13 - 17:00 GMT, 09:00 PDT)
• Virtualisation and BEA Liquid VM: Performance and Flexibility (Webinar, June 13 - 14:00 GMT)

The current Poll asks "On average, what percentage of your x86 server resources are being used regularly?" Please participate by voting on the home page.

The previous poll asked How important is SAML to your security architecture?. 39% (of 51 respondents) hadn't heard of SAML (see Demystifying SAML and Introduction to SAML: Secure Sharing of Digital Identity Information), 35% are using or intend to use SAML soon, while 20% are considering its use. Interestingly, only 6% of those that responded did not see a need for it.

Subscriptions: This blog is written by Jon Mountjoy, and is available as part of the Arch2Arch Editor's blog. You can subscribe using this RSS feed or via the Atom feed.

Technorati Tags: virtualization, SOA, BEA, SCA, aqualogic, ecommerce

Services earning their keep

Reading about enterprise architecture recently, I came across a blog talking about The Reuse Marketplace. Todd points out that, "Reuse is about much more than services." This was coincidentally something similar to what Bob wrote about when he said, "What is important is whether those services are earning their keep by increasing the business's ability to meet competitive challenges."

And this brings me back to enterprise architecture, the topic of the featured article by Gabriel Bechara. Gabriel defines it as: "Enterprise architecture relates to the practice of business optimization that addresses business architecture, performance management, organizational structure, and process architecture."

Hey, I think all of these folk are on the same wavelength!

In the Articles we have An Introduction to Enterprise Architecture. Author Gabriel Bechara delivers a simplified, top-down approach to enterprise architecture in the context of SOA (service-oriented architecture). With a focus on information technology, he shows how to build a better alignment between business and IT.

In the Blogs, Richard Manning tells us that Data is Fundamental to SOA Success. He points out that, "defining your Data & Information Access Services Layer and your canonical data model early in the SOA transformation cycle will improve the overall value, business/IT agility and benefit realization of your SOA Reference Architecture"

Bob Rhubart writes SOA Success? Can you say "Business Value?", reminding us that "SOA is about consolidating software assets to increase reuse." Writing about services, he says "What is important is whether those services are earning their keep by increasing the business's ability to meet competitive challenges."

The Arch2Arch Live! archive features two new items:

• Leveraging SCA to Implement Next Generation SOA
• BEA WebLogic Integration in a Services-Oriented World

From our Event Calendar we have the following upcoming events:

• BEA AquaLogic Commerce Services: eCommerce technologies for today's eCommerce challenges(Webinar, April 25)
• BEAParticipate 2007 (Conference, May 6-9)

The current Poll asks "How important is SAML to your security architecture?" Please participate by voting on the home page.

Subscriptions: This blog is written by Jon Mountjoy, and is available as part of the Arch2Arch Editor's blog. You can subscribe using this RSS feed or via the Atom feed.

Technorati Tags: soa, aqualogic, ecommerce, enterprise architecture

A New Arch2Arch

Welcome to the new Arch2Arch! We've made some significant changes to the old architect page on Dev2Dev.

Our primary goal at Arch2Arch is to promote community, learning and conversations. We do this through our articles, our blogging community and its blogs, together with our RSS feeds, webinars, Arch2Arch Advisor newsletter and event calendar.

More than anything, we value your participation in our community. Feel free to comment on our blogs and articles (they all have comment sections). We also have a newsgroup where we can discuss issues too.

This blog will be published every week or two and highlight any new material posted to the site. Feel free to subscribe to it, or any of our other feeds.

In the Articles we have Rethinking SOA Governance. SOA governance comes down to understanding and addressing two complementary factors: cost and profit. Quinton Wall looks at the incentives for organizations to undertake an effective SOA governance model through a pragmatic approach to addressing cost and profit.

In the Blogs, Steve Bennett looks into the future in SOA 3.0 :) and predicts that "2007 is the year of SOA 3.0." By this he is indicating that a number of challenges will be addressed: Education and Mentoring, SOA Governance and SOA + BPM.

Gabriel Bechara asks "On the SOA presentation layer and in the context of a composite application, should the screen flow logic rely on a BPEL orchestration engine or should it continue being controlled by a screen flow manager that relies on logic contained in page flows and variables held in the Web session?" In Context Management in Different Scopes Gabriel is exploring the contexts created during service composition, and how these can be mapped to a series of screen interactions.

The Arch2Arch Live! archive features two new items:

• AquaLogic Data Services Platform – Harnessing the data explosion
• WebLogic Portal and SOA - your window to business visibility

From our Event Calendar we have the following upcoming events:

• BEA WebLogic Integration in a Services-Oriented World(Webinar, March 21)
• BEAParticipate 2007 (Conference, May 6-9)

The current Poll asks "How important is SAML to your security architecture?" Please participate by voting on the home page.

Subscriptions: This blog is written by Jon Mountjoy, and is available as part of the Arch2Arch Editor's blog. You can subscribe using this RSS feed or via the Atom feed.

Technorati Tags: soa, governance

June 2008

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Arch2Arch Transition Accelerates; SOA Integration