Panel discussion: What componentization means for your enterprise SOA

WSO2 hosts live web panel discussion: What componentization means for your enterprise SOA

Topic: “What does componentization really mean for your SOA?”

When: Thursday, April 30, 9:00-10:00 a.m. Pacific / 12:00-1:00 p.m. Eastern

Where: Via the Web at http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/48043 or by phone at (724) 444-7444, Call ID: 48043

Hop in and share your thoughts ...

Update: If you missed the live show, you can listen to or download the recording. Check the above link.

SOA Platfroms and the Presentation Dilemma

SOA Platform Blog: The Presentation Aspects in a SOA Platfrom

There are tons of portal solutions out there, but how many of those can point to a service and be able to use the service interface to come up with a possible presentation of it?

In this latest post to the SOA Platform Blog, Samisa raises a few valid, timely concerns regarding the presentation aspects of a SOA. This is an ongoing debate within the SOA community in general as highlighted in my recent post Mashups, Portals and the Future Enterprise. Most platforms today have addressed the issues of service creation, connection (mediation), composition and governance. However, for an average enterprise user, what matters most is the presentation and there aren't many products out there, which addresses the issue in a SOA specific manner. Legacy portals still remain the only option apart from asking IT to build something for you from scratch.

It would be nice to have a technology where users will not only have the ability to view a portal/dashboard interface, but be able to point to a service to add a visual presentation of it to this view as well.

Mashups, Portals and the Future Enterprise

Mashups Finding Their Place in Enterprise IT | Blogs | ITBusinessEdge.com

As the piece points out, most of the mashup discussion has focused on building on-the-fly applications when, in fact, the real enterprise potential lies in accessing the data. Kavis decided to use a tool – he talks specifically about Jackbe's Presto or WSO2's Mashup Server – to “present various data services in a secured and governed fashion.” How they consume it, he adds, is up to them:

The article links to interesting posts by Mike Kavis and others. I have to agree with Mike's view that Mashups should not be about "on-the-fly" applications. Rather, emphasis should be given to how they make enterprise data accessible to the average user, so that they can use it the way they see fit and compose new things.

The next point in discussion is the traditional Enterprise Portal and it's potential conflict with Mashups, which is a valid concern these days. As a co-developer of the only Open Source Mashup Platform for the last 2+ years, I agree that the traditional Portal has to go. But the concept of A Portal can not be removed from the equation. Why? Portals are a presentation layer while Mashups primarily deal with service (data) composition. It's true that a presentation component is involved but it can never serve the purpose of a portal like interface.

But. It's clear that traditional Enterprise Portals do not complement the power given to end users by Mashups. So the ideal Enterprise Portal of the future should be a platform that allows both IT and end users to collaboratively create the presentation layer. Apache Shindig, Google Gadget and Open Social Specifications should be technologies to look out for. These allow Enterprise Portals to become platforms such as iGoogle, Facebook, Hi5 and Orkut. The user experience is very similar to a portal, yet open to contributions by end users, not just the people running it.

So what do I see in the future?

• Enterprises will open their data services via published APIs to end users. These will be secured where necessary.
• End users will use these APIs to compose Mashups. 
• The future Enterpirse Portal will allow users to contribute Gadgets/Apps to it (similar to iGoogle, Facebook et al). Others who deem these Gadgets useful will add them to their individual profiles/personalized pages.

... and SOA will open the door to all this.

Deploying a Java Web Service on WSAS and Securing it with Username Token Policy

In this screencast Charitha Kankanamge, highlights WSO2 WSAS' capability of easily exposing and securing Web services using its graphical management console.

Susan Boyle: Some books are better than the cover.

Just because some are born seemingly poor and unsophisticated in the eyes of mere mortals, it doesn't mean that God has forgotten them!

Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent
Uploaded by dwarthy

Now that you have seen that. Here's the actual article from HBR I wanted to blog about in the first place :)

Susan Boyle: A Lesson in Talent Management - Peter Bregman - HarvardBusiness.org

Good managers help their employees succeed in whatever role they happen to be in. Great managers see the unique talents of each employee, and then create the role that's a perfect vehicle for those talents. Great managers remove the obstacles that prevent their employees from unleashing their talent. And they make sure each employee has the right opportunities, the right stage, the right audience, to be fully appreciated.

Kevin Rose tells the story of Digg.. so far!

Interview With Digg’s Kevin Rose: The State of The Union

Rose: Right, so the second I actually needed some real cash, I had no idea what I was doing. Jay had done it before. I said, “Jay, you come on, run the business side of the house, and I’m fine with giving you the CEO role,” because at the time, that’s what I was doing, as long as I have final say on whatever product we decide to…

This is a cool interview by Michael Arrington with Kevin. They walk through various points of the life of Digg and decisions Kevin and later Jay as the CEO made. The rumours, technology, raising of funds and most things in between. I signed up for Digg on November 24th, 2005 and found it way more interesting than Slashdot since it had, at least in my opinion, a better mix of tech and non-tech stuff whereas Slashdot was mostly catering to tech-geeks. Over the years Digg has become part of my everyday reading, a frequently clicked node in my RSS reader and podcasts by Revision3, especially Tekzilla, a part of my weekend viewing.

It would be nice to see how Kevin and his team fare over the coming years. "I, for one, welcome our new Social Media overlords!" :)

Jonathan Schwartz Writes His Toughest Ever Email

Oracle-Sun: Jonathan Schwartz Writes His Toughest Ever Email

"So today we take another step forward in our journey, but along a different path - by announcing that this weekend, our board of directors and I approved the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by the Oracle Corporation for $9.50/share in cash. All members of the board present at the meeting to review the transaction voted for it with enthusiasm, and the transaction stands to utterly transform the marketplace - bringing together two companies with a long history of working together to create a newly unified vision of the future."

Someone at Digg asked why Sun was up for sale in the first place and another posted this entertaining diagram. A good corporate strategy should always have a clear vision of what a company hopes to achieve. Everything else and every decision made should be to achieve this end goal. Once you lose track of this vision and treat strategy formulation as a haphazard, short term focused activity, any promising company can end up with a diagram similar to this. Most executives we see today seem to be narrow in focus and selfish in their decision pushing. 

There's an interesting debate going on at HBR these days along with supporting articles, that try to figure out exactly what the core causes are. Some say it's just plain selfish greed while others argue the lack of ethics training in Universities. My personal view is that at some point higher up in the corporate hierarchy, there should be a benevolent dictator. One who is passionate about the vision and can objectively analyse any decision to filter out the real motives behind those arguing for or against it. Because those very executives will one day enthusiastically approve a decision to sell your company too after directing it to the brink of bankruptcy. I feel sorry for Sun's engineers (those of Sun and MySQL apparently) who will now have to look elsewhere before the lay-offs come. They are the hard working souls who will end up becoming statistics!

"The blistering economy has taken a toll on the tech sector, claiming 84,217 jobs in the first quarter. As a result, we may see more mergers like this morning's $7 billion acquisition of struggling Sun Microsystems Inc by Oracle. Sun announced 6,000 job cuts in November and could see more job loss as the combined entity seeks cost savings and positions itself against its chief rivals, IBM and HP. Overall, mergers and acquisitions have resulted in 44,379 job cuts so far this year. That is up 469 percent from the 7,796 merger-related cuts by the same point last year." [Source]

 

Oracle in $7.4bn deal to buy Sun

BBC NEWS | Business | Oracle in $7.4bn deal to buy Sun

"Business software manufacturer Oracle has said it is to acquire computer hardware maker Sun Microsystems in a deal worth $7.4bn (£5.1bn)."

You had your chance IBM and you lost it! Good job Oracle. I hope you will go ahead and buy Redhat next :)

Aneesh Chopra: America's new CTO

Tim O'Reilly has some interesting thoughts in his post "Why Aneesh Chopra is a Great Choice for Federal CTO". Here's a recent keynote by Aneesh Chopra, for those interested.

WSO2's Paul on high availability, clustering and the future of UIs

More on that "future of UI" part and what we have been up to, in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!