SOA Success - AAA Carolinas passes competitors by integrating business processes

IBM SOA Customer : SOA in Travel and Transportation

AAA Carolinas passes competitors by integrating business processes. Eliminating paper drives improvements in customer service.

"To scale to meet our rapid growth, AAA Carolinas needs a single, standardized infrastructure to support our insurance and document management applications. IBM WebSphere software forms the basis of a service oriented architecture that will allow us to continue to reuse existing services and integrate new ones for the foreseeable future." - Harry Johns, Manager of Insurance Information Technology, AAA Carolinas

Customer: AAA Carolinas
Deployment Country: United States
IBM Business Partner: RJS Software Systems
Industry: Insurance, Travel & Transportation
SOA Solution: Business Integration, Enabling Business Flexibility, Innovation that matters, Openness, Service Oriented Architecture, Small & Medium Business

SOA Overview
AAA Carolinas has set itself ambitious goals for 2010: To be the top insurance provider of personal lines in the region and exceed $100 million in written premiums. To compete effectively, AAA Carolinas must acquire new customers and retain existing ones by providing better customer service than its rivals. At the same time, staying profitable demands effective cost control, which requires business processes that are optimized for operational efficiency.

Business need: Reduce operating expenses and boost efficiency to maintain profitability and accommodate rapid growth in highly competitive market

Solution: An integrated, lower-cost Web-based solution enables customer service representatives to access information online, in real time

Benefits: Growing 48% a year by offering more responsive customer service; 23% reduction in time to resolution for customer call; insurance applications processed in days, not weeks; $20,000 saved per year in storage costs; ROI in less than two months

SOA Case Study
On Demand Business defined
An enterprise whose business processes—integrated end-to-end across the company and with key partners, suppliers and customers—can respond with speed to any customer demand, market opportunity or external threat.

Why Become an On Demand Business?
By eliminating paper documents and integrating key applications, AAA Carolinas lowered costs and offers more responsive service
On Demand Business Benefits
AAA Carolinas realized a full return on its investment in IBM and RJS in less than two months.
AAA Carolinas is growing rapidly—48% a year—by offering more responsive customer service.
AAA Carolinas now processes insurance applications in days, not weeks, increasing agents’ productivity and ability to close sales.
Eliminating the need for additional file cabinets and contract staff to manage archiving of paper documents saves AAA Carolinas $20,000 a year.

“IBM WebSphere Application Server – Express offers us the ease of use and affordability that we need to automate our internal business processes. It also supports J2EE, which gives us a way to build dynamic Web user interfaces with a drag-and-drop development methodology.”

—Harry Johns

“One of the big factors in RJS’s success has been our ability to implement scalable solutions rapidly using the IBM WebSphere software platform.”

—Bill Whalen, Sales and Marketing Executive, RJS Software Systems

“Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina.” That old show tune is music to the ears of AAA Carolinas, a not-for-profit membership organization operating exclusively in North and South Carolina. Founded in 1922, AAA Carolinas (www.aaacarolinas.com) provides travel and roadside service to more than 1.5 million members. Affiliated with the Automobile Association of America, AAA Carolinas also offers a full range of insurance products, including automotive, homeowners, health and life.

AAA Carolinas has set itself ambitious goals for 2010: To be the top insurance provider of personal lines in the region and exceed $100 million in written premiums. With 2004 written premiums of $20 million and an annual growth rate of 48 percent—four times the national AAA average—the organization is well on its way. A healthy regional economy and AAA Carolinas’ reputation for excellent customer service promise a speedy ride towards its destination.

However, the road has a few twists and turns. Insurance premiums in the Carolinas are regulated by the state governments, limiting the company’s ability to differentiate through pricing. To compete effectively, AAA Carolinas must acquire new customers and retain existing ones by providing better customer service than its rivals. At the same time, staying profitable demands effective cost control, which requires business processes that are optimized for operational efficiency.

Paper documents cause gridlock
Since 1998, AAA Carolinas had relied on a green-screen insurance application from Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) to manage customer information and provide pricing. The organization’s customer service representatives (CSRs) were accomplished in its use and could provide responsive customer service in many cases.

However, some customer-facing activities were suffering, in part due to the organization’s reliance on paper. “Hardcopy insurance applications made the approval rounds sequentially, requiring weeks to process,” relates Harry Johns, manager of insurance information technology. “When an agent requested the status of an application, the customer service representative had to put the call on hold and find the paper copy, which could be located anywhere within the office. As we continued to grow, we realized that our responsiveness to our customers would degrade unless we streamlined and automated the process.”

Automating document management
Johns was wary of any document management solution that would require AAA Carolinas to rip and replace costly IT investments, but that didn’t prove necessary. The organization wanted to continue to use its IBM eServer® iSeries™ system, as Johns attests: “We’ve never found anything that can compete with the iSeries system in our environment. It’s the ideal platform for AAA Carolinas.”

AAA Carolinas evaluated vendors to help them automate their paper processes. Johns chose the WebDocs-iSeries Edition product from RJS Software Systems (RJS), an IBM Business Partner, because of its proven ability to work well on the iSeries platform and extensive feature set. RJS also recommended that Johns use IBM WebSphere Application Server – Express. “One of the big factors in RJS’s success has been our ability to implement scalable solutions rapidly using the IBM WebSphere software platform,” says Bill Whalen, sales and marketing executive for RJS.

Johns took RJS’s advice and has been pleased with the results. “IBM WebSphere Application Server – Express offers us the ease of use and affordability that we need to automate our internal business processes,” Johns explains. “It also supports J2EE [Java 2 Enterprise Edition], which gives us a way to build dynamic Web user interfaces with a drag-and-drop development methodology.”

Enabling CSRs to work from a single screen
At about the same time that Johns was finalizing the decision to move to RJS WebDocs-iSeries Edition, CSC was introducing a new insurance application product called POINT IN. POINT IN features Web-browser access and includes a Java™ technology-based interface using JavaServer Pages (JSP). Johns saw an opportunity to create a single integrated front end that CSRs could use to bring up documents while they were using the POINT IN application.

RJS was excited about integrating the two applications. “We believe in IBM’s business integration approach,” says Whalen. “RJS designed WebDocs – iSeries to integrate easily with other Java technology-based applications in a portal-based environment.” In less than one day, RJS implemented a link between the two applications using Java.

Now, CSRs can perform all of their customer service functions from the POINT IN screen. When they need to access a document, they simply click an icon and the WebDoc application appears. Being able to instantly retrieve a document during a call has greatly speeded response times, as well as providing other capabilities. “CSRs can view, print, fax or e-mail any of our electronic documents, all without leaving the CSC application,” explains Johns. “Our average customer service call is shorter, which reduces our time to resolution by 23 percent.”

Advantages of going paperless
Moving from paper to electronic documents has streamlined the company’s internal processes, leading to operational efficiencies that save time and costs. AAA Carolinas can now process an insurance application in days instead of weeks. This faster turnaround improves the productivity of its agents and allows them to close more sales, especially when they are competing directly with other insurance companies.

In addition, eliminating paper helps AAA Carolinas reduce storage costs. Before implementing WebDocs, the organization had to buy additional filing cabinets regularly, hire temporary help to file the documents and pay an archival firm for offsite storage. “With WebDocs, the overhead expense of archiving paper documents is gone,” says Johns. “That alone saves us $20,000 a year. When we add up the savings, the IBM and RJS solution paid for itself in less than two months.”

Moving ahead with a service oriented architecture
Johns is enthusiastic about how IBM is helping AAA Carolinas meet the company’s challenges: “To scale to meet our rapid growth, AAA Carolinas needs a single, standardized infrastructure to support our insurance and document management applications. IBM WebSphere software forms the basis of a service oriented architecture that will allow us to continue to reuse existing services and integrate new ones for the foreseeable future.”

Key Components
Software
· IBM WebSphere® Application Server – Express
Servers
· IBM eServer iSeries 810
Business Partner
· RJS Software Systems

IBM Business Partners and their customers speak about success with IBM software

IBM SOA Customer : SOA in Travel and Transportation

IBM Business Partners and their customers speak about success with IBM software

Customer: Various
Deployment Country: United Kingdom
Industry: Energy & Utilities, Financial Markets, Industrial Products, Professional Services, Retail, Travel & Transportation, Wholesale Distribution & Services
SOA Solution: Enabling Business Flexibility, SOA Service Oriented Architecture

SOA Overview
IBM® software is at the heart of many successful business operations. Tens of thousands of companies, working closely with IBM Business Partners, are developing innovative ways to do better business everyday by extending, developing and tailoring IBM software products to fit their precise business needs.

Business need: Companies of all kinds are looking to innovate and to make better use of their intellectual capital. The challenge is to find new and better ways to serve customers, while keeping a watchful eye on internal costs and efficiencies.

Solution: IBM Business Partners offer a range of tailored solutions, built on the foundations of software products from IBM.

Benefits: By working with IBM Business Partners to deploy IBM software solutions, companies can reduce costs, boost productivity, better integrate their systems, gain faster insight into

SOA Case Study
IBM® software is at the heart of many successful business operations. Tens of thousands of companies, working closely with IBM Business Partners, are developing innovative ways to do better business everyday by extending, developing and tailoring IBM software products to fit their precise business needs.

IBM DB2® information management software provides access to diverse information easily and efficiently. Underlying the explosion in data collection and analysis, our information management portfolio focuses on managing that content - sharing and exploiting information to manage risk, inform decision-making, and achieve real business value, cost-effectively.

IBM Lotus® products focus on collaboration, teamwork, connectivity and learning, with advanced tools for organising workflows, publishing teamwork and creating communities.

IBM Rational® software is the development platform for advanced application development, designed to meet the need for rapid response to changing business conditions. Rational software enables new applications to be designed, built, tested and deployed, exploiting a high degree of automation, delivering cost-effective business solutions rapidly and reliably.

IBM Tivoli® solutions for growing businesses provides simple, fast, secure IT management assisting with the monitoring, management, protection, diagnosis and recovery of even the most diverse systems landscape. Take advantage of enterprise-class IT management on a midsize business budget with the IBM Tivoli® Express portfolio of storage, security, and availability IT management solutions which help ensure fast time-to-value for customer’s most critical business needs. These solutions are built with practical experience from working with mid-sized customers, leading Business Partners and industry experts.

IBM WebSphere® software helps business achieve flexibility and integration through service oriented architecture (SOA). With the WebSphere toolset, customers can integrate voice, mobile, Web and commercial operations into highly cost-effective business systems serving the needs of shareholders and customers alike.

To find out how customers of all varieties are using IBM software solutions to improve their businesses, please download the PDF at the top of this page.

STM delivers better value for public money with IBM and SAP

IBM SOA Customer : SOA in Travel and Transportation

STM delivers better value for public money with IBM and SAP

“With excellent assistance from IBM Global Business Services, we can easily extend the benefits of SAP software across all parts of the enterprise, and add new functionality that is integrated into the core SAP software systems.” - Steve Boily, Divisional Manager, Architecture and Technology Support

Customer: STM (Société de transport de Montréal)
Deployment Country: Canada
IBM Business Partner: SAP
Industry: Travel & Transportation

SOA Solution: Business Performance Transformation, Enabling Business Flexibility, Enterprise Resource Planning, Infrastructure Simplification, Optimizing IT, Service Oriented Architecture

SOA Overview
Société de transport de Montréal (STM) manages the entire transport infrastructure for Montréal and all the communities of the Island of Montréal, and has a public commitment to “Being the best public transit company in North America.”

Business need: Constant pressure on the public purse means close attention to costs, and managers found that the information needed to understand and control expenditure was not easily available.

Solution: Working with IBM, STM embarked on a major rollout of SAP software, with SAP NetWeaver technology, designed to bring information from every aspect of operations right onto managers’ desktops.

Benefits: Better visibility of costs by activity in bus maintenance, one of the four key activities for STM; the team is able to set KPIs and measure performance, with the potential for significant reductions in long-term cost of ownership for vehicles, equipment and real estate.

SOA Case Study
The Société de transport de Montréal (STM) is responsible for the public transportation systems in the city of Montréal in the Québec province of Canada. The organization manages four metro lines, totaling 66 kilometers of track and serving 65 stations, and 186 bus routes – for a total of more than 360 million passenger journeys each year. STM has more than 7,300 employees and an annual budget of around CAN$870 million.

With a very diverse set of operations, STM found it hard to collect accurate financial data on - for example - bus maintenance costs, personnel costs, rolling stock, real estate and equipment. The information needed was hard to come by, originating from diverse systems that were hard to integrate. STM aimed to control and plan its activities more effectively, and deliver a better service to the citizens of Montréal, and to do this with an IT infrastructure which itself would be lower cost and easier to operate.

Strategic choices for SAP and IBM

In order to enhance business processes and gain a clearer view of enterprise performance, STM opted to expand its ERP software architecture from SAP and to deploy a new transportation management solution called GIRO.Together, these would allow managers to obtain operational data rapidly and cost-effectively, giving them true insight into the business as a whole.Working with IBM, STM has embarked on a major strategic project to deploy portal functionality to extend its SAP software.

The new approach enables the organization to extend the functionality of its core enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, and to create Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to help drive improvements in the efficiency and speed of maintenance processes.

Sylvain LaPointe, Divisional Manager, Business Solutions, comments: “By enabling us to set KPIs and measure performance against them, the IBM solution is already giving managers better information for decision-making.

“Ultimately, we expect to reduce costs and improve transparency across the entire organization – the IBM and SAP solution is a cornerstone of our future information strategy.”

Clearer view

Managers in the bus maintenance division now have better information on which to base their decisions, and in particular much better visibility of costs – whether human or material – by activity. “With SAP software, we are much more proactive and able to plan expenditure more precisely,” comments LaPointe. “There are three key objectives in this area: improve the reliability of the buses, improve their availability through optimal planning of routine maintenance, and reduce the cost per kilometer.

“By achieving the first two objectives, we will need fewer vehicles for the same level of service, so the cost per kilometer will fall. With SAP software running on the resilient IBM System p5 platform, we are making rapid progress towards these goals.”

Says LaPointe, “The strategic vision was to create a Service Oriented Architecture, building integrated business intelligence and other services around core ERP functionality.”

Enterprise-strength systems

STM’s existing ERP software was running on Intel-based servers running Microsoft Windows. Steve Boily, Divisional Manager, Architecture and Technology Support, comments: “To meet our future requirements, we needed to increase the number of concurrent users, and to enable batch and interactive tasks to run simultaneously.

“Our decision to build portals would extend the core SAP software functionality to new users, and extend the working day. We therefore needed a very robust, reliable and high-performance platform – and we chose IBM System p5 servers running AIX 5L.”

IBM provided technical assistance for the migration from Windows to AIX, moving the entire system to two IBM System p5 servers, with Oracle 9.2.0.7 database. In the near future, STM will invest in an additional pSeries for the test, development and quality assurance portions of the SAP software, leaving all the power of the System p5 servers dedicated to the production environment.

STM currently runs its SAP NetWeaver platform on Windows servers, and will migrate it to AIX on the System p5 servers in the coming months, together with other business intelligence components and SAP software interfaces. Consolidating all parts of the SAP architecture onto a single physical platform will aid application integration and prepare the ground for a planned move to mySAP ERP in the second half of 2007.

“The technical support from IBM during the migration to AIX was of very high quality, helping us to accelerate the process and keep risk low,” says Boily.

More intelligent architecture

STM has completed the rollout of the SAP R/3 and portal functionality across the bus maintenance division, and is now at the blueprinting stage for infrastructure maintenance management. With each new element of ERP, the company now deploys a corresponding business intelligence element, so that users can access reporting and KPIs. Says LaPointe, “It’s like a pyramid – ERP functionality at the bottom, SAP Business Information Warehouse in the middle, and the KPIs at the top.”

He adds, “The business benefit is to be able to support all processes, even if they are not standard in the ERP, and integrate the business intelligence function, all wrapped up in a portal that supports change management.”

STM has developed a Web services application in Java for vehicle inspection, delivered directly to maintenance staff through a portal. The application presents the required functionality in an intuitive interface, giving mechanics the information and tools they need without requiring any knowledge of the underlying SAP software. Boily concludes, “With excellent assistance from IBM Global Business Services (BCS), we can easily extend the benefits of SAP software across all parts of the enterprise, and add new functionality that is integrated into the core SAP software systems.

“The reliability and availability of the System p5 servers are more than enough for our requirements, and we are very confident about running the whole SAP software landscape on the System p5 platform in the future.

“The Société de transport de Montréal has set itself an ambitious goal, to become the best public transit company in North America. SAP and IBM solutions are some of the key components helping us to reach our destination."

Products and Services Used
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.

Hardware: System x
Operating System: AIX, AIX 5L, Win NT/2000
Services: IBM Global Business Services

IBM Business Partners and their customers speak about success with IBM software

IBM SOA Customer : SOA in Travel and Transportation

IBM Business Partners and their customers speak about success with IBM software

Customer: Various
Deployment Country: United Kingdom
Industry: Chemicals & Petroleum, Consumer Products, Fabrication & Assembly, Government, Healthcare, Industrial Products, Media & Entertainment, Professional Services, Retail, Travel & Transportation
SOA Solution: Enabling Business Flexibility, Service Oriented Architecture

SOA Overview
IBM® software is at the heart of many successful business operations. Tens of thousands of companies, working closely with IBM Business Partners, are developing innovative ways to do better business everyday by extending, developing and tailoring IBM software products to fit their precise business needs.

Business need: Companies of all kinds are looking to innovate and to make better use of their intellectual capital. The challenge is to find new and better ways to serve customers, while keeping a watchful eye on internal costs and efficiencies.

Solution: IBM Business Partners offer a range of tailored solutions, built on the foundations of software products from IBM.

Benefits: By working with IBM Business Partners to deploy IBM software solutions, companies can reduce costs, boost productivity, better integrate their systems, gain faster insight into changing market conditions, and improve customer service in all areas.

SOA Case Study
IBM® software is at the heart of many successful business operations. Tens of thousands of companies, working closely with IBM Business Partners, are developing innovative ways to do better business everyday by extending, developing and tailoring IBM software products to fit their precise business needs.

IBM DB2® information management software provides access to diverse information easily and efficiently. Underlying the explosion in data collection and analysis, our information management portfolio focuses on managing that content - sharing and exploiting information to manage risk, inform decision-making, and achieve real business value, cost-effectively.

IBM Lotus® products focus on collaboration, teamwork, connectivity and learning, with advanced tools for organising workflows, publishing teamwork and creating communities.

IBM Rational® software is the development platform for advanced application development, designed to meet the need for rapid response to changing business conditions. Rational software enables new applications to be designed, built, tested and deployed, exploiting a high degree of automation, delivering cost-effective business solutions rapidly and reliably.

IBM Tivoli® solutions for growing businesses provides simple, fast, secure IT management assisting with the monitoring, management, protection, diagnosis and recovery of even the most diverse systems landscape. Take advantage of enterprise-class IT management on a midsize business budget with the IBM Tivoli® Express portfolio of storage, security, and availability IT management solutions which help ensure fast time-to-value for customer’s most critical business needs. These solutions are built with practical experience from working with mid-sized customers, leading Business Partners and industry experts.

IBM WebSphere® software helps business achieve flexibility and integration through service oriented architecture (SOA). With the WebSphere toolset, customers can integrate voice, mobile, Web and commercial operations into highly cost-effective business systems serving the needs of shareholders and customers alike.

To find out how customers of all varieties are using IBM software solutions to improve their businesses, please download the PDF at the top of this page.

Crowley Maritime plots its course and lowers the boom on costs with Service Oriented Architecture Solution from IBM and Ultramatics

IBM SOA Customer : SOA in Travel and Transportation

Crowley Maritime plots its course and lowers the boom on costs with Service Oriented Architecture Solution from IBM and Ultramatics, Inc., leads to reduced application delivery time and costs, improved efficiency and productivity

"This Service Oriented Architecture SOA solution directly translates to $225,000 in savings for Crowley over our previous practices. Not to mention the soft dollar implications on resource utilization costs and efficiency as those resources can now focus their efforts on other fronts." - Jerry Dresch, director of application services, Crowley Maritime Corporation

Customer: Crowley Maritime
Deployment Country: United States
IBM Business Partner: Ultramatics, Inc.
Industry: Travel & Transportation

SOA Solution: Business-to-Business, Business-to-Consumer, Business Continuity, Business Integration, Business Performance Transformation, Business Process Management, Business Resiliency, Collaborative Innovation, Customer Relationship Management, Enabling Business Flexibility

SOA Overview
Crowley Maritime Corporation, a global provider of maritime services, needed an innovative solution to streamline costs. It turned to IBM and Business Partner, Ultramatics.

Business need: Crowley needed to reposition its business operations to meet the challenges of its second century of operations -- including reducing operating costs; increasing profits and ROI of existing routes/platforms; and addressing legacy application modernization.

Solution: SOA solution implemented by Ultramatics that includes: o IBM WebSphere Process Server o IBM WebSphere Message Broker for Multiplatform o IBM WebSphere MQ o IBM eServer zSeries 890

Benefits: o Application delivery time and costs reduced by half o $15,000 savings per integration interface; anticipated $225,000 savings over previous practices o Significant improvement in efficiency, productivity, business flexibility o Errrors and omissions reduced

SOA Case Study
A diversified organization employing almost 5,000 people, Crowley Maritime operates globally in a variety of businesses with a mantra of “Small Company Mentality, Big Company Efficiency.” Founded by Tom Crowley in 1892, and run by his son Thomas B. Crowley and grandson Thomas R. Crowley, Jr. since, Crowley Maritime began with a single 18 ft. rowboat servicing ships and sailors in San Francisco Bay.

Over the following century, while maintaining family control of the company, the Crowleys have grown and transformed the business into a major provider of maritime services ranging from tugs and barges to containerships, with operations from Central America and the Caribbean to Alaska’s North Slope. Now nine years into the job of Chairman, President, and CEO, Thomas B. Crowley, Jr. has guided a carefully paced streamlining and repositioning of the company to meet the new challenges of its second century of operations. As Crowley Maritime has grown, it has accumulated business lines and strategies that needed reexamining and improvement in light of changing market conditions that have made ‘return to core competencies’ the new reality for many industries.

Crowley, with headquarters in Oakland, California, and primary logistics operations in Jacksonville, Florida, found the innovations it needed in a Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solution designed and customized by IBM and Ultramatics, Inc., an IBM Premier Business Partner, headquartered in Tampa, Florida.

Ultramatics used IBM WebSphere® Message Broker for Multiplatform V5, IBM WebSphere MQ V5, IBM eServer™ zSeries® 890 in the solution, which formed the Advanced Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and adapter framework at Crowley.

Key Components of the Crowley Maritime Solution

Software
• IBM WebSphere Message Broker for z/OS V5
• IBM WebSphere MQ V5
• Software Oriented Architecture designed and implemented by Ultramatics, Inc.

One early benefit was a reduction — by at least half — of the usual time and costs incurred in tying new, third-party applications into the Crowley core infrastructure, which included a legacy mainframe-based customer-information system. With a 30-year-old system that was heavily customized, this was no small achievement. Under previous practices, integration projects typically ate up about 300 work hours of people in the Crowley information technology group.

“We had a spider web of point to point connections, with custom-built application interfaces needed at both ends,” said Jerry Dresch, Director of Application Services, at Crowley. Dresch explained: “Prior to the implementation of WebSphere Message Broker and our ESB, Crowley was heavily dependent on point to point integration.”

The ESB is the IBM Advanced Enterprise Service Bus, a foundation for IBM’s Service Oriented Architecture. The IBM Advanced ESB is a robust middleware solution that defines the backbone for corporate integration. It represents a combination of technologies that are responsible for connecting disparate application components without each application component having complete dependency on other application components (inclusive of programming language, platform, operating system, transport, etc.) The ESB becomes the intermediary between all component technologies, and introduces an information pipeline that acts like a kind of information superhighway for incoming and outgoing messages regardless of the applications that connect to it. An application component will plug into the ESB via its published interfaces and necessary adapters. Likewise, applications can be easily added or removed as business demands dictate without concern of complex integration requirements in a rigid environment.

Anticipated $225,000 in savings

“Normally, it could take our team at least 300 hours to develop integration components for our systems and new applications,” Dresch said. “In the event that a change needed to be made, a long and tedious process had to occur. This first step in our SOA Strategy has led to a direct dollar savings of $15,000 per integration interface, which are now implemented as reusable services.”

“As reuse of the SOA platform continues and these numbers hold true,” Dresch continued, “we will see this savings on at least 15 new integration interfaces over the next 24 months. This directly translates to $225,000 in savings for Crowley over our previous practices. Not to mention the soft dollar implications on resource utilization, costs and efficiency as those resources can now focus their efforts on other fronts.”

More important for Crowley Maritime were the strategic benefits, which are part of the ongoing savings and increased operational efficiencies. Early results were seen in the first half of 2006, when a major business initiative at Crowley was launched. This major initiative, implementation of a transportation management system for inter-modal transportation, was purchased and launched in late 2005, effectively “plugging into” the adapter framework and the ESB that Ultramatics and Crowley had already brought into production earlier that year.

This particular inter-modal transportation management system automates the routing of Crowley cargo containers — several hundred per day — to dozens of terminals across North America. The application manages and improves operational efficiency of the intermodal portion of Crowley Maritime’s ocean shipping business. As the first true test of the ability of the Crowley Service Oriented Architecture to easily integrate with a substantial package, the adapter framework and Enterprise Service Bus performed above expectations and with unprecedented flexibility.

“Right away in Pennsauken (New Jersey),” said Ed Ramsey, manager of the Crowley Integration Team, “we were seeing efficiencies we had never seen before. The routes chosen were, on average, better, cheaper and faster,” he continued. “So we’re raising the quality of services we can provide. We’re increasing customer satisfaction. And we’re seeing fewer empty containers
on the back-haul trips.”

SOA Benefits

• $15,000 saving per integration interface; anticipated $225,000 savings over previous practices
• Application delivery time and costs were immediately cut in half
• Enterprise specific standards and effective SOA governance led to significant operational efficiencies and productivity improvements
• Errors and omissions reduced
• Creation and exposure of services called for by applications within SOA leveraged for every new application rollout
• Technology simplification, application modernization as a result of reusing legacy assets rather than replacement

Legacy Modernization as a direct benefit of Service Oriented Architecture

The Crowley/Ultramatics’ team has built at least 20 major interfaces for the Enterprise Service Bus by way of the adapter framework – including interfaces to equipment control systems, the legacy Accounts Receivable system, Customer/Vendor information system, and others. One major component of the success of these projects though was utilizing a proven methodology of ‘service enablement’ for several legacy systems/applications that continue to serve Crowley very well.

“Having delivered service oriented architecture SOA to several customers, Ultramatics worked closely with Crowley to describe and document SOA & Integration Best Practices as related to addressing items like legacy modernization,” said Sean Jensen, Sales and Marketing Manager for Ultramatics.

Ultramatics helped Crowley add years of life to several back end legacy systems/applications by creating “service enabled” adapters to older, heavily customized systems/applications. In effect, as new packages like the transportation management system (or any other new package) were implemented, they could be seamlessly integrated and thus communicate with every Crowley back end system. The methodical approach leads to significant “reuse” as portions of those same interfaces are leveraged for new packages.

“One of our biggest successes from my perspective,” Ed Ramsey adds, “is that our financial leaders love how easily we were able to leverage the interfaces we created for the legacy Accounts Receivable system. By way of service enablement, two additional operational systems can invoke the services on the legacy AR system as needed. Bringing the total to three financial systems using and reusing the same interface, these financial leaders were more easily able to view the core data that was so important to them. Ultramatics had alluded to benefits like this as a byproduct of the Service Oriented Architecture during our roadmap sessions, but the quick visibility of these benefits to the business was impressive.”

The ability to create services for legacy applications has subsequently added life to legacy applications that were not ready for replacement (due to years of heavy customization and unique abilities of that existing package). “The integration framework took care of it all.”

These benefits are expected to multiply during 2006 and 2007 as other key corporate processes — including financial systems, human resources, and business-to-business interactions — were brought into the integration framework.

‘Enterprise view’ wanted

The challenges that led Crowley to Ultramatics had been mounting for several years. Facing the reality that the Crowley business would be making several acquisitions of other businesses as well as establishing new partner relationships to fill gaps in services and operations (partnership with trucking companies, for example), Crowley sought expert guidance from Ultramatics in the area of “Integration Best Practices.”

The question of how to support each future integration requirement was growing urgent since Crowley already had three smaller lines of business whose information systems had not yet been integrated into the core business operations. This complexity was even seen in accounts receivable, since many customers were buying services of different kinds from two or more of the Crowley business units. Each unit had developed its own style of tracking, pricing and servicing a specific customer — some literally paper- and pencil-based.

“Crowley felt that, in some cases, they were leaving money on the table and could improve profitability with some segments,” said Saru Seshadri, President and Chief Executive Officer, at Ultramatics.

Crowley management wanted, first of all, a single enterprise view of its business processes and revenue flows. Managers wanted to view metrics for transaction monitoring (like a business dashboard) as well as wanting operating lines to interact in real time with a unified customer-information database. Equally important, they wanted any new business application that the company might want to adopt to be easily integrated into the core infrastructure.

Dresch said each point-to-point link between a new application and the core infrastructure “had to be built laboriously in-house. Reliability and manageability were becoming really difficult. Data transfers with some of the third-party applications were increasingly prone to failure. We never knew what we were getting into when the business decided it wanted to install a new application. We did know we couldn’t keep living like that.”

That was the situation when, in early 2004, Crowley engaged the consultants at Ultramatics for advice. Ultramatics specializes in business-process integration and service-oriented architectures. The Ultramatics team spent most of the rest of 2004 working side-by-side with Crowley management and the in-house technology group, studying the company’s history and what it was trying to do strategically going forward. “They became a trusted advisor to our business,” said Dresch.

Positioning itself as a “go-to” partner in the transportation industry, Ultramatics approached Crowley from the position of “Best Practices” in their vertical market. Having delivered at other transportation industry customers, Ultramatics spent the education time needed for Crowley to understand the strategic importance of implementing a “sustainable” and robust solution, one that would answer their current pains around point to point integration, but also be positioned for future, unexpected desires from the Crowley business.

The upshot was the implementation, starting in 2005 and continuing into 2006, of the Crowley SOA solution. IBM middleware was the foundation. Saru Seshadri, President of Ultramatics adds, “Our ‘Best Practices’ message is one of Ultramatics’ strongest competitive advantages. Our core competencies are centered on the IBM WebSphere and Rational technologies because they are the most robust, most comprehensive and most reliable - but the ability to show new prospects that your firm can help them bypass some of the common pitfalls/mistakes that other have made is one of the strongest messages we can bring to the table.” Seshadri adds, “we quaintly call this our “battle scars” when talking with new customers about SOA strategies and the need for an iterative approach to SOA Service Oriented Architecture. It simply cannot be a ‘Big Bang’ approach, or you lose some of the governance and strategic value that service oriented architecture SOA delivers to an enterprise.”

“Our ‘Best Practices’ message is one of Ultramatics’ strongest competitive advantages. Our core competencies are centered on theIBM WebSphere and Rational technologies because they are the most robust, most comprehensive and most reliable…but the ability to show new prospects that your firm can help them bypass some of the common pitfalls/mistakes that other have made is one of the strongest messages we can bring to the table.”

Saru Seshadri, President & CEO, Ultramatics, Inc.

Regarding an iterative approach to Service Oriented Architecture:

“It simply cannot be a ‘Big Bang’ approach, or you lose some of the governance and strategic value that SOA delivers to an enterprise.”

Saru Seshadri, President & CEO, Ultramatics, Inc.

How service oriented architecture SOA works

Sean Jensen, sales and marketing manager, for Ultramatics, explained that the magic of SOA is that it supports the reusability of components and provides easy access to those components when needed – on demand.” Jensen said the combination of IBM WebSphere MQ and the Message Broker were the “heart” of the SOA at Crowley. “SOA serves as the central medium, doing the required translations and conversions, and tracking down reusable components wherever they may reside, instantly, automatically, and supplying them to wherever they may be needed,” Jensen said. “That eliminated all the massive tweaking that had to be done at the application level previously.”

“It makes for a very flexible and strategic infrastructure that serves as the linchpin for everything else that they do,” Jensen continued. “It’s a sustainable architecture — not a solution to be implemented today for a benefit today. It allows Crowley Maritime to build a really strategic core infrastructure — one they can keep building on.”

“It’s a sustainable architecture — not a solution to be implemented today for a benefit today. It allows this customer to build a really strategic core infrastructure — one they can keep building on.” Sean Jensen, Sales & Marketing Manager, Ultramatics, Inc.

Ultramatics, IBM PartnerWorld®, and SOA Specialty

When Ultramatics opened its doors in 2001, “we found immediate, mutual benefits in working with IBM,” said Seshadri. Ultramatics became an IBM Premier Business Partner in 2003. “And now we’re in many IBM programs. Recognized and certified as an IBM Business Partner as “SOA Specialty” certified, Ultramatics participates in IBM programs such as vertical-industry workshops
and co-marketing projects that are tightly integrated to the Ultramatics business vision and increasing the core competencies.

With SOA Solution Galleries in Tampa, Florida, and Chennai, India, Ultramatics delivers vertical domain solutions in the areas of Healthcare, Transportation, Banking, and Telecom. In 2006, Ultramatics was recognized by IBM with the “Beacon Award” nomination for excellence in solution delivery.

Ultramatics participates in IBM PartnerWorld Industry Networks, which offers a rich set of incremental industry-tailored resources to all PartnerWorld members who want to build their vertical market capabilities and attract potential customers in the markets they serve worldwide. Whether a company focuses on one or more industries — or serves small, medium or large companies — IBM has the technology and resources to help members more effectively meet their clients’ needs.

Ultramatics is an “optimized” member of the travel and transportation industry, which means it has developed further specialization by optimizing its applications with IBM on demand technologies, achieving success with its own on demand solutions and meeting other criteria.

Other networks are automotive, banking, education and learning, electronics, energy and utilities, fabrication and assembly, financial markets, healthcare and life sciences, insurance, media and entertainment, retail, telecommunications and wholesale.

Seshadri said Ultramatics used the network benefits “various ways over the past year to solidify our position at Crowley. The program helped us maintain a strategic perspective on Crowley requirements from a vertical industry perspective.” The vertical industry perspective is important to Ultramatics. It focuses on the vertical markets of transportation, healthcare, telecommunications and banking. Ultramatics’ offerings are branded as UltraStart Business Solutions and include IBM software, integration services and skill transfer.

Products and Services Used
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.

Hardware: System z
Software: WebSphere Process Server, WebSphere MQ, WebSphere Business Integration Message Broker for Multiplatforms
Operating System: z/OS and OS/390

Malaysia Airports Technologies : Integrating airport operations with IBM’s SOA platform

Malaysia Airports Technologies : Integrating airport operations with IBM’s SOA platform

IBM SOA Customer : SOA in Travel and Transportation

"MAT can now distribute real-time information from disparate sources, communicating accurate and timely resource, planning, and operations information to essential departments." - YBhg Dato’ Azmi Murad, Senior General Manager

Customer: Malaysia Airports Technologies
Deployment Country: Malaysia
Industry: Travel & Transportation
Solution: SOA Service Oriented Architecture

SOA Overview

Airport operations typically extend across multiple service providers, comprising processes, people and information segregated by location, role and function. Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) opened in 1997 using a suite of disparate solutions linked together by middleware. As passenger numbers, flight frequencies and carrier types continued to grow, these older technologies were no longer sustainable.

Business need: Malaysia Airports Technologies (MAT) needed a flexible mechanism for incrementally migrating to new applications and rolling out solutions to multiple airports while continuing to operate with the existing infrastructure technology and applications.

Solution: IBM offered an SOA-based solution that delivered a universal mechanism to interconnect all applications required to support MAT's worldwide airport operations without compromising security, reliability, or scalability. IBM’s solution also helped MAT to distribute real-time information from disparate information sources and provided a powerful new means of unifying employees across the organization. IBM GBS developed a roadmap for MAT to migrate to this new flexible service-oriented approach.

Benefits: MAT can now distribute real-time information from disparate sources, providing a powerful new means of unifying employees across the entire organization. The solution also enables MAT to replace individual components without compromising the integrity of airport operations.

SOA Case Study

MAT is the subsidiary of Malaysia Airports responsible for the operation and maintenance of all information technology systems and infrastructure at KLIA and for undertaking ICT (information and communications technology) business ventures. Among the services it offers include airport system solutions, system integration, networking, broadband network service, facility management and monitoring.

Business Need
MAT knew that establishing an integrated, end-to-end on demand airport technology environment would help improve the information flow across internal business units. Instead of operating multiple systems that were not designed to work in synch, an integrated environment would enable more efficient and cost-effective processes, enrich collaboration, and create a less complex infrastructure from which to manage relationships with employees, partners, suppliers, agents and customers.

However, replacing all the separate systems with a single system was both cost-prohibitive and logistically infeasible. Malaysia Airports Technologies needed a solution that would allow its existing applications to work together without having to replace its existing technology investment. It needed to ensure that as applications came to the end of their life they could be replaced incrementally without compromising the integrity of the airport operations. MAT needed a flexible mechanism for integrating the operations technology at KLIA that would support ongoing change and growth.

SOA Solution
IBM Global Business Services implemented IBM’s Airport Integration Solution, which provides the common interface between processes, people and information, helping to convert complex airport operational functions into services that can be easily accessed without the need for significant changes in the underlying infrastructure. The solution brings applications from leading specialist providers in airport operations and management information systems into a cohesive and complete solution optimized for airport operations.

Utilizing IBM’s SOA framework and integration solution enables MAT to leverage existing investments and to create a common communications network and operational database. IBM WebSphere, provides the platform that unifies disparate applications across the entire organization.

SOA Benefits
- The solution creates, maintains, and stores resource, planning, and operations data in a secure repository, readily available for reporting, auditing, and analysis purposes.
- Integrates and coordinates resource, planning, and operations information with best of breed front-end systems such as Flight Information Display Systems (FIDS), check-in counter displays and Common Use Terminal Equipment (CUTE), and back-office systems such as ERP and finance systems.
- It communicates accurate and timely resource, planning, and operations information to essential departments: planning, operations, passenger-service, security, ramp workers and service partners.
- MAT can now distribute real-time information from disparate sources, providing a powerful new means of unifying employees across the entire organization.
- The solution provides MAT with a flexible platform to extend and enhance business functionality to the airport's changing needs and enables MAT to replace individual components without compromising the integrity of the airport operations.

Products and Services Used
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.
Software: WebSphere Business Integration
Services: GBS Enterprise Integration, IBM Global Business Services, IBM Software Service for WebSphere

Xerox enhances productivity with IBM enterprise service bus solution and SOA

Xerox enhances productivity with IBM enterprise service bus solution and SOA.

IBM SOA Customer in Electronics:

"With IBM’s help we can move forward with a service oriented architecture that helps us respond to today’s challenges and gives us a flexible architecture to respond to future challenges." - Ram Sunkara, Manager, Integration Competency Center, Xerox

Customer: Xerox
Deployment Country: United States
IBM Business Partner: Software Spectrum
Industry: Electronics

IBM SOA Solution: Business Integration, Customer Relationship Management, Enabling Business Flexibility, Enterprise Resource Planning, Openness, Service Oriented Architecture, Supply Chain Management, e-business infrastructure

Overview
Based in Stamford, Connecticut, Xerox (www.xerox.com) has 58,100 employees worldwide who are committed to helping people find better ways to work. While copying has been good to Xerox, the widespread duplication of efforts to custom code new business applications for its many product divisions became a bottleneck that hampered productivity.

Business need: Custom coding for new and updated business applications slowed production and raised costs

Solution: Enterprise service bus (ESB) enabling the integration of back-end databases with decoupled front ends without custom coding

Benefits: 100% payback of investment in 24 months; savings of $720,000 per year in deployment costs; development and implementation of new applications in 25% of the time it took previously

Why IBM?
Xerox wanted a vendor that would support its software with future product development, and IBM showed the SOA leadership, stability and commitment to the market that Xerox required

“Not only did IBM meet our requirements for scalability, availability and performance, it differentiated itself from the competition with its ability to follow through with research and development to continuously enhance its portfolio of offerings.”

–Ram Sunkara

“Wherever we have a need for a middleware solution to enable us to develop more flexibility or leverage our existing assets, all we have to do is ask IBM. ”
–Ram Sunkara

Best known throughout the world for replacing the blurry, messy mimeograph with the crisp, clean and sharp photocopy, Xerox Corporation (Xerox) revolutionized office work as its name became synonymous with its flagship product, the copy machine. Xerox research is also credited with many innovations that define personal computing today, including Ethernet, the graphical user interface and the mouse. Based in Stamford, Connecticut, Xerox (www.xerox.com) has 58,100 employees worldwide who are committed to helping people find better ways to work.

While copying has been good to Xerox, the widespread duplication of efforts to custom code new business applications for its many product divisions became a bottleneck that hampered productivity. The multiple corporate divisions that produce Xerox’s wide range of products and services require a steady flow of new business applications to automate manual processes, serve customers better and achieve ever more demanding marketing goals. But developing each new application from scratch was a waste of effort, especially since many applications shared common back-end databases and enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

To centralize these programming efforts and bring costs under control by using more efficient methods of application development and integration, Xerox created its Integration Competency Center. This group, dedicated to integrating Xerox’s business applications with back-end systems, set to work to build an information technology (IT) architecture that would enable them to reuse coding assets and leverage a common infrastructure for integrating a large number of applications.

ESB delivers an infrastructure for flexible connectivity
After several years of integrating applications using CORBA code, the group found that they were writing increasing amounts of custom code, sending costs up and slowing deployment cycles. Xerox began to evaluate middleware for a new enterprise service bus (ESB) architecture—a pattern of middleware that unifies and connects services, applications and resources within a business. The ESB pattern enables the connection of software running in parallel on different platforms and using disparate programming languages and skills, allowing Xerox to more quickly and easily introduce new applications and updates to their users.

To provide the integration business logic for its ESB framework, Xerox evaluated middleware from IBM, BEA Systems and webMethods. In the end, they chose a solution providing universal connectivity—an ESB with full failover capabilities using the message-oriented, event-driven and Web services capabilities of WebSphere software. IBM WebSphere Message Broker (formerly known as IBM WebSphere Business Integration Message Broker), IBM WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment and IBM WebSphere MQ were the foundation for an advanced ESB solution to deploy its growing portfolio of business applications in the most efficient way possible. IBM Business Partner Software Spectrum provided the software solution in a timely manner to help Xerox meet its target project deadline.

“IBM was the most credible presence in the market in terms of its ability to develop middleware products and support them with related products and services,” says Ram Sunkara, manager, Integration Competency Center, Xerox. “Not only did IBM meet our requirements for scalability, availability and performance, it differentiated itself from the competition with its ability to follow through with research and development to continuously enhance its portfolio of offerings.”

With its new ESB solution based on WebSphere software, Xerox estimates it is saving $720,000 annually in the cost of making changes to its applications, which formerly required custom coding to reintegrate with back-ends systems. In addition, application changes take 25 percent of the time they took previously. “We achieved payback in 24 months,” says Sunkara. “As for our conviction that IBM would support its software with future product development, IBM repaid that with an entire integration infrastructure for applications and data that includes new products we are considering for adoption.”

Flexible, available infrastructure powers 50 solutions
Among the 50 applications that run on the new WebSphere infrastructure are Web services for looking up service providers for Xerox’s customer support teams, performing credit authorizations, managing customer problem calls, fulfilling parts orders and capturing user profiles for printers. Many of these applications require 24x7 availability, and the failover capability of WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment ensures that users will have service when they need it. In addition, WebSphere Application Server plays a part in Xerox’s disaster recovery plan. Also working to maximize uptime is WebSphere MQ, which provides assured delivery of more than two million messages monthly, an essential part of the integration solution that connects Xerox’s back-end databases and other business systems to application front ends.

The open standards-based integration solution supports a service oriented architecture (SOA) that is compatible with multiple methods of communicating with back-end systems, including messaging with WebSphere MQ and WebSphere Message Broker. WebSphere Message Broker transforms and enriches information on the fly to conform to different message structures and formats on back ends. A J2EE and Web services application server with advanced deployment services, WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment supports Enterprise JavaBeans for creating applications that make fast work of the business logic. Xerox also uses IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition to build modular applications that are designed to adapt quickly to changes.

Developing standards for SOA
With its ESB integration solution and SOA, Xerox is moving to standardize application integration throughout its global organization. This entails creating a set of Web services for leveraging some existing mainframe information and making it accessible via the Web. “Right now we’re working on tying in our European operations and establishing governance practices for continuous process improvement,” says Sunkara. “We’re also looking at using IBM WebSphere Host Access Transformation Services (HATS) to extend our host applications to the Web—giving our green screen applications a modern and up-to-date look. Along the way, we’ll be looking at IBM WebSphere Data Integration Suite to perform extract, transform and load operations within some of our data management environments. Wherever we have a need for a middleware solution to enable us to develop more flexibility or leverage our existing assets, all we have to do is ask IBM. With IBM’s help we can move forward with a service oriented architecture that helps us respond to today’s challenges and gives us a flexible architecture to respond to future challenges.”

Key Components

Software

IBM WebSphere® Message Broker (formerly known as IBM WebSphere Business Integration Message Broker)
IBM WebSphere MQ
IBM WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment
IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer Integration Edition

Business Partner : Software Spectrum

Products and Services Used
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.

Software: Rational Application Developer for WebSphere Software, WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Message Broker for Multiplatforms, WebSphere MQ

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center partners with IBM to make tomorrow's patient care a reality

IBM SOA at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center partners with IBM to make tomorrow's patient care a reality. IBM SOA customer - University of Pittsburgh - SOA in Healthcare industry.

“We are combining IBM’s unparalleled infrastructure knowledge with our medical knowledge. At the end of our eight-year transformation project, we expect to see cost savings of 15 to 20 percent.” - – Dan Drawbaugh, CIO, UPMC

IBM SOA Customer
Customer: University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC)
Deployment Country: United States
Industry: Healthcare
Solution: Business-to-Business, Business-to-Consumer, Business Integration, Business Intelligence, Enabling Business Flexibility, Information Integration, Infrastructure Simplification, Innovation that matters, IT/infrastructure, Knowledge Management

Overview
UPMC, a leading IT innovator, sought to become a truly integrated, self-regulating healthcare system, utilizing evidence-based medicine to produce superb clinical outcomes and lower costs.

Business need: UPMC knew it needed an innovative relationship combined with world class technology to achieve its goals. It saw IBM’s pioneering vision and technology as a way to simplify its IT systems, facilitate the sharing of data and improve its flexibility.

Solution: In a landmark strategic partnership valued at $402 million over 8 years, UPMC’s systems will be transformed into an On Demand Business environment using IBM products and services. On this foundation, IBM and UPMC will work together to bring new healthcare solutions to market.

Benefits: - Expected IT cost savings of up to 20% - Major increase in efficiency through server consolidation and virtualization

Case Study

“We are combining IBM’s unparalleled infrastructure knowledge with our medical knowledge. At the end of our eight-year transformation project, we expect to see cost savings of 15 to 20 percent.”
– Dan Drawbaugh, CIO, UPMC

UPMC is the premier health system in western Pennsylvania and one of the most renowned academic medical centers in the United States. Its 40,000 employees and 4,000 doctors are spread across a network of 19 hospitals and 400 smaller sites throughout western Pennsylvania.
>> On Demand Business defined
“An enterprise whose business processes—integrated end-to-end across the company and with key partners, suppliers and customers—can respond with speed to any customer demand, market opportunity or external threat.”

Challenge
UPMC, a leading IT innovator, sought to become a truly integrated, self-regulating healthcare system, utilizing evidence-based medicine to produce superb clinical outcomes and lower costs.

Why Become an On Demand Business?
UPMC knew it needed an innovative relationship combined with world class technology to achieve its goals. It saw IBM’s pioneering vision and technology as a way to simplify its IT systems, facilitate the sharing of data and improve its flexibility.

Solution
In a landmark strategic partnership valued at $402 million over 8 years, UPMC’s systems will be transformed into an On Demand Business environment using IBM products and services. On this foundation, IBM and UPMC will work together to bring new healthcare solutions to market.

Key Benefits
- Expected IT cost savings of up to 20%
- Major increase in efficiency through server consolidation and virtualization

This is a story of how two important players in the healthcare space—one a leading integrated health system, the other a leading provider of IT solutions—discovered they had a shared vision of tomorrow’s healthcare delivery model, and how their common goals became the foundation of a new kind of relationship. It’s the story of how these players, IBM and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), saw the opportunity to combine and complement each other’s strengths to forge a new generation of healthcare solutions. Perhaps most unique, it’s an example of how they went outside the boundaries of a customer-vendor relationship and selected each other as partners, an arrangement likely to serve as a template for the healthcare business in the coming years. Here’s how it happened.

From its roots as a major academic medical center, UPMC (www.upmc.com) has evolved into Pennsylvania’s largest integrated health care delivery system—with revenues of $5.8 billion—and one of the nation’s most influential healthcare institutions. In addition to operating the nation’s largest transplant program and an array of highly specialized clinical services that draw patients from across the nation and around the world, UPMC acts as the major source of routine healthcare services for residents of western Pennsylvania. UPMC is also closely affilated with the University of Pittsburgh, one of the top recipients of National Institutes of Health research funding. As the term “integrated delivery network” implies, UPMC’s mission is to provide outstanding patient care and to shape tomorrow's health system through clinical innovation, biomedical and health services research and education. With UPMC’s rapid growth and large investments in advanced IT initiatives, being integrated hasn’t always been easy. Each new hospital added to the network added to the complexity of the organization; each new system added to the complexity of its IT infrastructure. In combination, these factors made it that much harder for UPMC to integrate its resources for the benefit of its patients. In the big picture, this created a tremendous challenge—finding an effective way to leverage integrated information across its large and diverse system. UPMC’s early efforts to address this challenge led to its first contacts with IBM.

On Demand Business Benefits
Project up to a 20% reduction in overall IT costs
Simplified infrastructure, facilitating integration of data from across the UPMC enterprise
Increased cost predictability through IBM Open Infrastructure Offering financing model
Increased flexibility to grow systems and add new technologies by virtue of open systems support
Single point of access for all clinical applications, improving caregiver efficiency and quality of care
Improved ability to develop, commercialize and profit from clinical innovations

Every relationship has a starting point, and for UPMC and IBM it was a specific engagement focused on improving the performance of its Cerner Millennium electronic health record system. One of the many solutions that place UPMC among the healthcare industry’s leading innovators, the Cerner system performed adequately but fell short of UPMC’s high expectations due to response time and availability problems. IBM proposed that it could address it by consolidating and simplifying the infrastructure on which it ran. UPMC engaged IBM to redeploy the new Cerner system, which had been running on HP servers, on the IBM eServer™ pSeries® platform. The improvement was immediate and dramatic, with response time going from five seconds to “blink speed” and downtime falling precipitously. But more important, the engagement gave UPMC concrete proof of how IBM’s vision and expertise could be applied to its broader vision—the integration of all of its healthcare information resources. That’s where the real story begins.

Building a foundation for the future
Having established a new level of credibility with UPMC, IBM sought to provide it with a fuller picture of its own healthcare vision and the depth and breadth of resources it had to back it up. UPMC—interested in hearing more about IBM’s roadmap for integration, transformation and simplification—provided a willing audience. In extensive meetings involving a cross section of top UPMC decision-makers, an equally broad-based IBM team presented its vision of how On Demand Business supports the emerging requirements for world-class healthcare delivery. Hearing IBM articulate its strategy for On Demand Business, UPMC was struck by how closely it resonated with its own needs and vision— this realization marked the foundation of the partnership between IBM and UPMC.

UPMC looked at the dynamism of the healthcare industry and saw a host of challenges and opportunities that mandated the need for a strategic partner. The challenge was to establish, support and pay for an infrastructure that is flexible, robust and secure enough to support its healthcare vision. The opportunity for UPMC was to bring a stream of innovative new solutions to the market without diluting its focus. UPMC saw IBM—with its common vision, unmatched strengths in research and development and solid track record in the Healthcare and Life Sciences—as being singularly well-equipped to meet them. IBM saw UPMC as the perfect center of evidence for IT solutions for healthcare. Both companies realized that the close-knit, long-term nature of the mission, and the shared vision and high reward stakes, called for a new kind of customer-vendor relationship that would serve as a model for healthcare in the 21st century.

Key Components

Software IBM WebSphere® Application Server
IBM WebSphere Business Integration
IBM Tivoli® product suite

Hardware IBM eServer xSeries®
IBM eServer pSeries
IBM eServer zSeries®
IBM eServer BladeCenter®
IBM TotalStorage®
Lenovo PCs

Solution IBM Component Infrastructure Roadmap

Services IBM Global Services - Integrated Technology Services
IBM Business Consulting Services
IBM Healthcare and Life Sciences
IBM Research
IBM STG Services
IBM SWG Services

A new relationship model, a new era
The result was an 8-year, $352 million agreement under which IBM Global Services – Integrated Technology Services and IBM Business Consulting Services—will work with UPMC to transform its IT infrastructure through consolidation and standardization across the entire enterprise. Under the deal, UPMC’s 931 servers will be reduced to 319 (IBM eServer xSeries, pSeries, zSeries and BladeCenter servers), nine operating systems reduced to four, and 40 storage databases reduced to just two (running on IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Storage Servers). To manage the infrastructure centrally and efficiently, the solution will employ a common toolset based on IBM Tivoli products. Moreover, its reliance on standard technology enables a high degree of virtualization within the infrastructure, further driving efficiency and leading to overall IT cost savings of up to 20 percent. IBM’s integration efforts were guided by its Component Infrastructure Roadmap, a defined and agreed-upon blueprint for integrating the appropriate capabilities into a client’s IT environment.

What makes the deal truly groundbreaking is its second major component: a $50 million strategic partnership—funded equally by UPMC and IBM—aimed at supporting the co-development and commercialization of new healthcare solutions. The partnership, whose value could potentially reach $200 million, enables UPMC to turn its full attention to its strong suit—clinical and research innovation—while leveraging IBM’s proven ability to bring open solutions to market. Moreover, the new revenue stream created by the venture provides UPMC with a solid return on its investment in innovations as well as a means of sustaining and expanding them.

5 Reasons Why UPMC Partnered with IBM
On Demand Business for people, process and technology
IBM’s “unmatched” R&D capability
IBM’s strength in Healthcare and Life Sciences
Availability of Open Infrastructure Offering pricing model
Breadth, depth and cohesiveness of IBM team supporting the partnership

“A question that may be asked is, ‘How did UPMC select IBM?’ In reality, however, it was IBM and UPMC selecting each other.” -- Dan Drawbaugh, CIO, UPMC

In the final analysis, though, the relationship’s true value has to be measured by its support of UPMC’s efforts to transform the way it cares for the patient. Here are some fundamental examples of how it will. UPMC’s new infrastructure will enable the seamless and secure sharing of patient data across applications and multiple locations, thus providing caregivers with instant access to the information they need to deliver the best possible patient care. At the core, infrastructure simplification—characterized by the flexibility, adherence to standards and data model consistency of IBM’s service-oriented architecture approach—is what makes it possible. These same infrastructure properties will enable UPMC to add new capabilities rapidly and seamlessly. And as UPMC develops new solutions for the broader market, its open infrastructure, combined with IBM’s go-to-market expertise, will speed their fruition.

While it’s easy to view technology as the driver of UPMC’s choice to partner with IBM, the deal in fact rests on several of IBM’s unique strengths, such as its ability to pull together resources from across the company into “one IBM” and present it to UPMC as a single offer. Indeed, UPMC’s access to the flexible funding of IBM’s Open Infrastructure Offering—a key aspect of IBM’s On Demand Business framework—enabled it to avoid large upfront expenditures, while guaranteeing access to all the IBM resources it needs to realize its vision. As IBM Executive Sponsor Dan Pelino sees it, IBM is eager to bring its mix of vision, expertise and technology to its partnership with UPMC to develop new and better ways to improve healthcare. “As partners, UPMC and IBM can make the difference in healthcare, nationally and globally. This is about two world class organizations coming together to deliver on a single vision—world class healthcare for each and every one of us.”

Products and Services Used
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.
Hardware: BladeCenter, System p, System x, System z
Software: WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Business Integration Server
Services: IBM Global Business Services, IBM Integrated Technology Services, IBM Software Service for WebSphere

IBM SOA - netASPx delivers new value to customers with IBM middleware

netASPx delivers new value to customers with IBM middleware. IBM SOA customer - netASPX - SOA in Healthcare industry

"By incorporating IBM technology, netASPx is able to deliver a wide range of benefits to its customers. We’re able to provide and manage ERP applications at a scale and service level that are unprecedented in the market." - Chance Veasey, Vice President of Operations, netASPx

IBM SOA Customer
Customer: netASPx
Deployment Country: United States
Industry: Banking, Computer Services, Healthcare, Insurance, Retail
Solution: Enabling Business Flexibility, Enterprise Resource Planning, SOA Service Oriented Architecture, Small & Medium Business

Overview
netASPx is an innovator in the delivery of “software as a service.” The company provides Managed Applications Services (MAS) for enterprise resource planning and workforce management solutions. netASPx automates these functions for customers at lower cost, higher service levels and with less risk than would result if customers maintained an in-house team.

Business need: Respond to customers’ demands for scalability, performance and high availability, with the cost-effectiveness of a hosted solution

IBM SOA Solution: Incorporation of IBM middleware, security and server technology into a hosted ERP application

Benefits: netASPx can better serve customers who could not afford a clustered environment; ability for customers to focus on high-value work without needing to maintain infrastructure; improved performance will enable customers to migrate to Web solution and save costs for themselves and for netASPx

Case Study
“By implementing load balancing with WebSphere Application Server, we can offer our customers application clusters. This provides them not only with additional reliability but increased performance. So we can have a failure on one application server node and it doesn’t negatively affect users of the system.”

–Chance Veasey

netASPx is an innovator in the delivery of “software as a service.” The company provides Managed Applications Services (MAS) for enterprise resource planning and workforce management solutions. netASPx automates these functions for customers at lower cost, higher service levels and with less risk than would result if customers maintained an in-house team.

Specifically, the netASPx data center in Minneapolis delivers a hosted solution of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems that include Financials, Human Resources, Procurement, Healthcare Supply Chain Management, and software for Service Process Optimization and Retailers. The solution resides on a high-availability platform for approximately 70 customers, who pay on a monthly per-user basis.

Recently netASPx’s ERP vendor announced that it was expanding its existing partnership with IBM. With the availability of its new release, not only will this ERP vendor develop on IBM middleware and hardware technologies, it will also encapsulate IBM middleware and security software into its products.

IBM WebSphere® Application Server Network Deployment lies at the center of the new offering. This enables netASPx to provide its customers higher availability and scalability, with a no-single-point-of-failure architecture. By running the software on WebSphere Application Server clusters, ASPs like netASPx enable customers who might not have been able to afford this high-availability architecture by themselves to take advantage of a scalable, available and high-performance infrastructure. In addition, netASPx’s strategy of software as a service supports the IBM approach to service oriented architecture (SOA), which automates repeatable business processes with software services that create efficiencies while connecting people, processes and information.

Along with WebSphere Application Server, the new release also uses IBM Tivoli® Directory Server to help clients meet the demands of regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA. In addition, the new release will be supported across all IBM server platforms, including IBM System i™ and i5™, System p™ and p5™, System z™, and System x™. netASPx has chosen to run the application on the System p5 550, clustering the solution with the IBM General Parallel File System.

“By incorporating IBM technology, netASPx is able to deliver a wide range of benefits to its customers,” says Chance Veasey, vice president of operations of netASPx. “We’re able to provide and manage ERP applications at a scale and service level that are unprecedented in the market.

“Thanks to IBM technology, and our infrastructure and support, our customers can focus on their core business. Their technologists can work and manage the client or patient care systems that are essential to what they do. Behind the scenes, supporting them, netASPx takes on the responsibility of patching a financial or HR payroll system, worrying about the performance of Web servers and working to get more reliability and capacity from the infrastructure.”

Managing delivery and quality of service
Healthcare represents close to 20 percent of netASPx’s customer base. Retail is the second largest category, representing up to 18 percent of the company’s installed base, and the rest consists of government/education and services.

All of these customers are enjoying a higher level of reliability because of WebSphere Application Server. “By implementing load balancing with WebSphere Application Server, we can offer our customers application clusters. This provides them not only with additional reliability but increased performance,” Veasey says. “So we can have a failure on one application server node and it doesn’t negatively affect users of the system.”

Horizontal scalability, increased availability and faster performance are all benefits of the new ERP software with WebSphere Application Server. Says Veasey: “Even before the announcement of the general availability of the new technology, we’ve been part of the beta project focused on the capability of using IBM WebSphere to scale the application horizontally. The result is that we can provide increased application availability as well as better performance.”

“We have seen that the performance of the new application is significantly faster with the WebSphere Application Server,” says Veasey. Within its own customer population, netASPx foresees a 100 percent migration to Web access using WebSphere Application Server and IBM HTTP Server, as opposed to the client-based proprietary access method used before. This will save time and administrative costs for netASPx and its customers.

“The performance of the new release on WebSphere Application server, combined with the strength of the WebSphere product line, made for an easy decision to choose the WebSphere architecture and implement that over time for our entire customer base,” says Veasey.

Security to help meet compliance demands
For netASPx’s customers, compliance with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley has never been more important as it is now. Regulated companies need to be able to demonstrate that they have application security procedures and roles defined and in place. They also need the application access documentation to support their security decisions. With IBM Tivoli Directory Server, customers now know that they have this type of application security built in.

Previously, organizations could not easily provide documentation proving who had access to what applications and what access rights were actually used. “Now customers are in a different position because not only can they prove who had access, they can also say why a particular person had access,” says Veasey. “We’ve moved to role-based security with authentication of users’ credentials based on the roles defined for them to perform. This is going to greatly streamline the compliance function on the part of a customer. It goes beyond just having documentation. It moves the client towards governance for their business-critical decisions.”

Veasey predicts that new customers will turn to netASPx to help them take advantage of the powerful new functionality of the new release. “We are a shortcut to value for our customers. Our hosted solution saves customers from having to acquire new hardware or fulfill new training and support requirements in order to manage Tivoli Directory Server and WebSphere Application Server. They don’t need to invest the capital to take advantage of WebSphere to scale the application across multiple, physical servers and reduce their single points of failure. With our infrastructure,” says Veasey, “we can quickly migrate customers and—with the depth of knowledge we have in our ERP vendor and IBM—we can provide all the functionality that they have put into their new releases.”

Products and Services Used
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.
Hardware: System i, System p, System x, System z
Software: Tivoli Directory Server, WebSphere Application Server

IBM SOA - IBM Business Partners and their customers speak about success with IBM software

IBM Business Partners and their customers speak about success with IBM software - IBM SOA customer - SOA in Healthcare Industry

IBM SOA Customer
Customer: Various
Deployment Country: United Kingdom
Industry: Chemicals & Petroleum, Consumer Products, Fabrication & Assembly, Government, Healthcare, Industrial Products, Media & Entertainment, Professional Services, Retail, Travel & Transportation
IBM SOA Solution: Enabling Business Flexibility, SOA Service Oriented Architecture

Overview
IBM® software is at the heart of many successful business operations. Tens of thousands of companies, working closely with IBM Business Partners, are developing innovative ways to do better business everyday by extending, developing and tailoring IBM software products to fit their precise business needs.

Business need: Companies of all kinds are looking to innovate and to make better use of their intellectual capital. The challenge is to find new and better ways to serve customers, while keeping a watchful eye on internal costs and efficiencies.

Solution: IBM Business Partners offer a range of tailored solutions, built on the foundations of software products from IBM.

Benefits: By working with IBM Business Partners to deploy IBM software solutions, companies can reduce costs, boost productivity, better integrate their systems, gain faster insight into changing market conditions, and improve customer service in all areas.

Case Study
IBM® software is at the heart of many successful business operations. Tens of thousands of companies, working closely with IBM Business Partners, are developing innovative ways to do better business everyday by extending, developing and tailoring IBM software products to fit their precise business needs.

IBM DB2® information management software provides access to diverse information easily and efficiently. Underlying the explosion in data collection and analysis, our information management portfolio focuses on managing that content - sharing and exploiting information to manage risk, inform decision-making, and achieve real business value, cost-effectively.

IBM Lotus® products focus on collaboration, teamwork, connectivity and learning, with advanced tools for organising workflows, publishing teamwork and creating communities.

IBM Rational® software is the development platform for advanced application development, designed to meet the need for rapid response to changing business conditions. Rational software enables new applications to be designed, built, tested and deployed, exploiting a high degree of automation, delivering cost-effective business solutions rapidly and reliably.

IBM Tivoli® solutions for growing businesses provides simple, fast, secure IT management assisting with the monitoring, management, protection, diagnosis and recovery of even the most diverse systems landscape. Take advantage of enterprise-class IT management on a midsize business budget with the IBM Tivoli® Express portfolio of storage, security, and availability IT management solutions which help ensure fast time-to-value for customer’s most critical business needs. These solutions are built with practical experience from working with mid-sized customers, leading Business Partners and industry experts.

IBM WebSphere® software helps business achieve flexibility and integration through service oriented architecture (SOA). With the WebSphere toolset, customers can integrate voice, mobile, Web and commercial operations into highly cost-effective business systems serving the needs of shareholders and customers alike.

To find out how customers of all varieties are using IBM software solutions to improve their businesses, please download the PDF at the top of this page.

IBM SOA - Cardinal Health partners with IBM to provide top-notch healthcare.

IBM SOA - Cardinal Health partners with IBM to provide top-notch healthcare. IBM SOA customer - SOA in Healthcare industry

“Our partnership with IBM is not just about hardware and software. In the end it’s about helping our custom­ers fulfill their mission of providing better health care to people around the world.” - Jeanne Lasheff, Vice President Application Services, Enterprise IT, Cardinal Health

IBM SOA Customer
Customer: Cardinal Health
Deployment Country: United States
Industry: Healthcare, Wholesale Distribution & Services

IBM SOA Solution: Autonomic Computing, Database Management, Enabling Business Flexibility, Information On Demand, Service Oriented Architecture

Overview
Cardinal Health is a US$81 billion global health care company, with 55,000 employees and operations in 29 countries on six continents. Cardinal Health is rated number 19 on Fortune Magazine’s list of the 500 largest U.S. companies. Cardinal Health manufactures, packages and distributes pharmaceuticals and medical supplies, offers a wide range of clinical services, and develops products that improve the management and delivery of supplies to hospitals, physician offices and pharmacies.

Business need: Cardinal Health recently began to transition from a holding company to an integrated operating company so that it could go to market with integrated solutions in supply chain management, medication management, clinical services and manufacturing. The new company vision led to a redesign of IT operations away from a business-unit focus and toward a company-wide IT service provider, with greater data integration, flexible access and delivery.

IBM SOA Solution: The solution incorporates IBM middleware, hardware, tools, services and technical support. Cardinal Health’s new infrastructure will be built around a service oriented architecture (SOA) model to increase its flexibility, responsive­ness and performance.

Benefits: OGTP and the SAP applications Cardinal Health has selected to deploy will be powered by the new DB2 9 data server, which is optimized to run SAP applications. The Cardinal Health DBA staff and BASIS development teams will both take advantage of the autonomic features of DB2 9, which make administrative tasks more seamless and transparent. In addition, Cardinal Health expects the new deep compression feature of DB2 9 to provide significant savings in storage hardware and associated costs.

Case Study Overview

Cardinal Health
Dublin, Ohio, United States
www.cardinal.com

Industries
• Healthcare
• Wholesale Distribution & Services

Products

• IBM DB2® 9 data server
• mySAP™ Business Suite applications
• IBM WebSphere BusinessIntegration software
• IBM WebSphere® Portal software
• IBM WebSphere CustomerCenter software
• IBM Rational® tools
• IBM System p™ servers
• IBM System x™ servers
• IBM System Storage™ technology
• IBM Global Services

“Our partnership with IBM is not just about hardware and software. In the end it’s about helping our customers fulfill their mission of providing better health care to people around the world.”
—Jeanne Lasheff, Vice President Application Services, Enterprise IT, Cardinal Health

Background
Cardinal Health is a US$81 billion global health care company, with 55,000 employees and operations in 29 countries on six continents. Cardinal Health is rated number 19 on Fortune Magazine’s list of the 500 largest U.S. companies.

Cardinal Health manufactures, packages and distributes pharmaceuticals and medical supplies, offers a wide range of clinical services, and develops products that improve the management and delivery of supplies to hospitals, physician offices and pharmacies.

Every day, Cardinal Health:

• Manufactures more than 4 million medical/surgical products that are used by 90 percent of all hospitals in the United States
• Manufactures more than 500 million doses of pharmaceuticals
• Makes 50,000 deliveries to 40,000 customer sites

Challenge
Cardinal Health recently began to transition from a holding company to an integrated operating company so that it could go to market with integrated solutions in supply chain management, medication management, clinical services and manufacturing. The new company vision led to a redesign of IT operations away from a business-unit focus and toward a company-wide IT service provider, with greater data integration, flexible access and delivery.

Last year, Cardinal Health committed to a multi-year migration to a standard, company-wide ERP system from SAP® as a key component to align business processes across the company. At the same time, Cardinal Health launched its One Global Technology Platform (OGTP) project. OGTP provides the technology infrastructure to support and enhance the SAP deployment enterprise-wide. Cardinal Health chose IBM as its strategic partner for OGTP, to help transform its technology environment quickly by implementing a robust infrastructure that would enable future growth, keep IT operating costs low and mitigate technology transformation risks.

SOA Solution
The solution incorporates IBM middleware, hardware, tools, services and technical support. Cardinal Health’s new infrastructure will be built around a service-oriented architecture (SOA) model to increase its flexibility, responsive­ness and performance.

Benefits
OGTP and the SAP applications Cardinal Health has selected to deploy will be powered by the new DB2 9 data server, which is optimized to run SAP applications. The Cardinal Health DBA staff and BASIS development teams will both take advantage of the autonomic features of DB2 9, which make administrative tasks such as installation and performance monitoring and tuning more seamless and transparent. In addition, Cardinal Health expects the new deep compression feature of DB2 9 to provide significant savings in storage hardware and associated costs.

Products and Services Used
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.

Hardware: System p, System x
Software: WebSphere Customer Center, DB2 9 for Linux, UNIX and Windows, WebSphere Portal, Rational Suite
Services: IBM Global Services

IBM SOA at NSPCC in Healthcare Industry

IBM SOA Customer at NSPCC - SOA in Healthcare Industry

NSPCC takes a rational approach to development with REAL Solutions and IBM. “IBM Rational development tools provide an enterprise-class modelling and design environment, keeping our IT infrastructure flexible enough to meet business challenges fast.” - Fred Thwaites, Business Systems Manager, NSPCC

IBM SOA Customer
Customer: NSPCC
Deployment Country: United Kingdom
IBM Business Partner: REAL Solutions
Industry: Healthcare

SOA Solution: Enabling Business Flexibility, Optimizing IT, Service Oriented Architecture, Web Services

Overview
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) is the UK’s leading child protection charity. It coordinates 177 community-based projects throughout the UK, and provided ongoing services to 20,500 children and young people in 2004/5. The charity has around 2,500 employees and its FULL STOP Appeal has raised more than £200 million since 1999.

Business need: To improve its relationship with potential and existing supporters, the NSPCC wanted to redevelop its main Web site. The challenge was to increase donations by enhancing the Web site, rapidly and cost-effectively. This ambitious project with complex requirements highlighted a shortage of in-house skills.

SOA Solution: The NSPCC is working with REAL Solutions to implement IBM Rational Software Modeler, which provides a comprehensive project design and communications tool. Requirements management and documentation will be handled by IBM Rational RequisitePro and SoDA, while Rational Unified Process will ensure best practices in project management. REAL Solutions is also transferring skills to the NSPCC with tailored training courses, enabling in-house staff to respond quickly to future business needs.

Benefits: Revised architecture allows the NSPCC to take advantage of componentised software that can be re-used as the Web site grows, allowing expansion of fund-raising activities and enhanced supporter relationship management. In-house training provides cost-effective Web development, and total costs of Web operations have been reduced.

SOA Case Study
The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) is the UK’s leading child protection charity. It coordinates 177 community-based projects throughout the UK, and provided ongoing services to 20,500 children and young people in 2004/5. The charity has around 2,500 employees and its FULL STOP Appeal has raised more than £200 million since 1999.

Although a charity, the NSPCC has many of the features of a large enterprise, including a requirement for robust, high-performance IT systems which match the pace of operations. When new opportunities for fund-raising and marketing arise, the charity needs to be agile enough to take advantage – if key channels like the Web site are to be effective tools, continuous development is a must.

The NSPCC’s IT department realised that in the long term, costs could be reduced and change cycles shortened by taking a more modular approach to development. If the components of one application can be reused in another, time and money will be saved, and if the components are easily replaceable, the overall shelf-life of the application will be lengthened.

“Looking back over projects we had done in the last five years, I could see that we would do better to develop re-usable components and avoid having to start from scratch every time,” says Fred Thwaites, Business Systems Manager at the NSPCC. “As a large enterprise, we needed an industry-leading development environment, so it was natural for us to turn to IBM.”

Single modelling environment

The NSPCC initially chose to implement IBM Rational Rose XDE, and is now upgrading to IBM Rational Software Modeler (RSM), a visual modelling and design toolkit which enables users to document and communicate varying views of a system under development to all the stakeholders involved. RSM supports the industry-standard Unified Modelling Language (UML) and is built on the Eclipse platform, enabling it to integrate easily with third-party development tools.

“We are currently using several other Eclipse-based tools, and knew that we could use RSM as a one-stop shop, bringing all the functionality we need into a single modelling environment,” says Fred Thwaites.

As some of its staff lacked experience in object-oriented languages, the NSPCC worked with REAL Solutions, an IBM Premier Business Partner, to provide training.

“REAL Solutions designed a course tailored specifically to our needs,” explains Fred Thwaites. “It was important for our in-house team to develop confidence in using the tools, and the success of the training means that our analysts will be able to use RSM and the Rational Unified Process for all planning, design and testing from the end of this year.”

Requirements management and documentation will be handled by IBM Rational RequisitePro and SoDA, ensuring efficient project management with a high degree of traceability.

Better customer relationships

IBM Rational Software Modeler is being used in a number of NSPCC projects, including a major redevelopment of the charity’s Web presence.

“The existing Web sites treat visitors to each area as separate individuals, whereas frequently it is the same person registering for several different activities or purposes,” says Fred Thwaites. “For users, this was an uncomfortable and unproductive way to interact with NSPCC. We need our Web presence to treat users in a coherent manner if we are to improve relationships with our supporters, enhance their user experience and increase the revenues to the charity.”

RSM’s advanced design, discovery and documentation capabilities are helping the NSPCC to develop a new, consolidated Web site which handles users more intelligently. The Web site will also feature a new content management system, accelerating the publication of information to the Web and lessening manual update workload for staff.

Modular architectures

The deployment of Rational Software Modeler means that the NSPCC can plan and design software in greater detail and with a high degree of process-led control. Even complex projects like the redevelopment of the Web site – which involves around 40 internal and external stakeholders – can be managed easily.

This level of control gives analysts and developers more time to think strategically, and facilitates the design of modular architectures whose components can be re-used in subsequent projects. “Even if the cost of developing the individual components is relatively high, we expect overall costs to fall because we can use each one many times over,” explains Fred Thwaites.
With a componentised framework already in place, many projects will require considerably less original coding, saving workload for staff and ensuring that the NSPCC can react to emerging situations in an agile manner.

“Rational Software Modeler is a vital part of the NSPCC’s development strategy, giving us the tools we need to develop intelligent software quickly,” concludes Fred Thwaites. “IBM Rational development tools provide an enterprise-class modelling and design environment, keeping our IT infrastructure flexible enough to meet business challenges fast.”

Products and Services Used
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.
Software: Rational RequisitePro, Rational SoDA, Rational Software Modeler

IBM SOA at Initiate Systems in Healthcare Industry

SOA in Healthcare Industry - Initiate Systems - IBM SOA Customer

Initiate Systems and IBM help hospitals improve patient and provider satisfaction
Initiate Systems provides software for creating complete, real-time views of data about people and organizations.

"As an IBM Business Partner and member of the IBM PartnerWorld Industry Networks, we expect that our enhanced visibility and our priority access to IBM capabilities will expand our solutions to many more clinical information systems environments." - Scott Harper, senior vice president of Initiate Systems and general manager of the healthcare division

IBM SOA Customer
Customer: Sutter Health
Deployment Country: United States
IBM Business Partner: Initiate Systems, Inc.
Industry: Healthcare

SOA Solution: Business-to-Consumer, Business Continuity, Business Integration, Business Process Management, Business Resiliency, Customer Relationship Management, Enabling Business Flexibility, Human Resources, Information Integration, Information On Demand

Overview
IBM and Business Partner Initiate Systems, Inc., provide software for creating complete, real-time views of data about people, households and organizations.

Business need: Sutter Health, a not for profit network of doctors and hospitals serving more than 100 communities in Northern California, needed a scalable patient information network that could handle millions of records in seconds.

Solution: Sutter Health turned to a system from IBM and Initiate Systems, called Initiate Identity Hub software that included IBM middleware and hardware.

Results: Improved patient and provider satisfaction

Benefits: o Improved patient and provider satisfaction o Increased clinical performance o Minimized legal and risk management issues

Case Study
IBM Business Partner Solution Brief
Industry: Healthcare and life sciences
Initiate Systems, Inc., and IBM help hospitals improve patient and provider satisfaction
IBM Business Partner: Initiate Systems
Initiate Systems, Inc., provides software for creating complete, real-time views of data about people, households and organizations. It is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois.

In the modern healthcare setting, “knowing your patient” is critical to quality care, but obtaining a complete picture across disparate systems and geographies is complex. How much health information can a doctor know about John Doe, from Atlanta, who’s now unconscious in an emergency room in San Jose?

The answer is a lot, thanks to a type of application known generally as a master patient index (MPI). MPIs can locate and link data from multiple, disparate systems – also known as interoperability – and provide a base from which a consolidated patient health record is built and delivered to wherever it is needed.

Successful implementations of such applications require healthcare providers to address new concerns, such as:

• How well will the MPI implementation fit with existing information technology investments?
• Are patient records across disparate systems accurately matched?
• Can complete information be viewed in a single system?
• Can the system scale to meet the needs of our large organization?
• What about the security and the speed of arrival of patient information at the point of care?

Interoperable performance in patient-centered environments

Answering those questions are IBM and Initiate Systems, an IBM Business Partner, that supplies a software component that takes MPI to a higher level — to where it functions as the cornerstone in patient-centric networks.

Initiate Systems is a leader in the development of enterprise master person index (EMPI) applications. Unlike the typical MPI, which tends to be limited in the range of databases from which it can draw, EMPI applications are designed for fast, accurate patient identification lookups on an inter-enterprise, cross-enterprise and even a global scale.

The company’s core EMPI product — Initiate Identity Hub™ software — is accurate, scalable, rapidly implemented and widely deployed. With patented matching and linking technologies, it can handle hundreds of millions of records with sub-second response times, reconciling disparate identity information -- whether duplicative, fragmented or incomplete -- and quickly delivering a complete record of the patient’s ID across disparate systems.

One customer that took advantage of the expertise from Initiate Systems is Sutter Health, a not-for-profit network of doctors and hospitals serving more than 100 communities in Northern California and headquartered in Sacramento. Given its organizational size and diversity, coupled with a growing customer base of about 10 million individuals and multiple IT application platforms, Sutter leadership recognized the need for a sophisticated EMPI.

It used Initiate Identity Hub software to build an enterprise-wide information infrastructure to tie together business platforms and legacy systems. It was able to improve patient and provider satisfaction while increasing clinical performance. For Sutter, some of the legal and risk management issues that permeate the healthcare landscape also have been minimized thanks to the quick availability of accurate and secure patient information.

Why IBM and Initiate Systems?

IBM integrates Initiate Identity Hub™ software into a healthcare organization by bringing its healthcare infrastructure expertise and leadership in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) for healthcare environments. IBM middleware offerings facilitate data flows within healthcare environments, and the IBM clinical services and clinical data integration expertise is world class. IBM also offers project management including process re-engineering and optimization skills using IBM Prolink 4 methodology, which helps to improve both business and clinical processes.

SOA provides a structure, business- centric IT approach to help integrate your customers’ processes as linked, repeatable business tasks or services.

Headquartered in Chicago, Initiate Systems has been successful since entering the market in 1995 armed with patents for its records matching-and-linking technologies. The company tailors its products and services for a range of industries, with healthcare predominating. By mid-2006, about 50 of the leading hospitals in North America were using Initiate Identity Hub software.

“As an IBM Business Partner and member of the IBM PartnerWorld® Industry Networks, we expect that our enhanced visibility and our priority access to IBM capabilities will expand our solutions to many more clinical information systems environments,” said Scott Harper, senior vice president of Initiate Systems and general manager of the healthcare division.

IBM components of a solution anchored by Initiate Identity Hub software may include:

• IBM System p™ servers, offering the leadership performance of POWER5™ and POWER5+™ technology, and supported by more than 3,700 Independent Software Vendors around the world
• IBM System x™ servers, delivering industry-leading, single-system reliability and support for mixed operating system workloads
• IBM AIX® and IBM-supported Linux™ operating systems
• IBM Informix and IBM DB2® Universal Database®
• IBM middleware such as DB2 Connect
• IBM Global Financing, which provides financing to conserve cash during software implementation and integration projects.

Products and Services Used
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.

Hardware: System x
Software: DB2 Universal Database, Informix Tools, DB2 Connect
Operating System: AIX, AIX 5L, Linux

IBM SOA in Healthcare at Regional Healthcare Payer

IBM SOA in Healthcare - Regional healthcare payer empowers providers with new self-service tools using IBM’s Composite Business Services Platform

Regional Healthcare Payer, IBM SOA customer, SOA in Healthcare industry “We chose IBM after a detailed product evaluation and review of their prior results.” - Director of IT, regional healthcare payer

Customer: Regional Healthcare Payer
Deployment Country: United States
Industry: Healthcare
Solution: Enabling Business Flexibility, Service Oriented Architecture

Overview
IBM is helping to transform provider services for a regional leader in healthcare financing. The healthcare payer has always been an innovator in applying advanced technologies for the delivery of superior member services and streamlined operations. The company was looking for new, more effective solutions to improve healthcare provider satisfaction, secure their provider network from competitors, and reduce operating costs for both their providers and for themselves.

Business need: Give healthcare providers highly personalized self-service tools to automate claims processing and error correction to increase provider satisfaction and reduce costs for both payer and provider

SOA Solution: Deliver self-service tools and differentiated services from existing legacy IT systems using configurable business services that leverage Web service and industry standards

Benefits: Automated claims error correction; improved claims auto-adjudication rates; shortened provider payment cycles; reduced provider ramp up costs; reduced clearinghouse fees; improved business visibility and control; reduced operating costs; reduced provider support costs

Why IBM SOA?

IBM provided the leading end-to-end SOA service oriented architecture platform for composite business services and included a healthcare industry content pack to reduce time to market for new solutions

IBM is helping to transform provider services for a regional leader in healthcare financing. The healthcare payer employs approximately 4,300 people and provides insurance products and services to more than two million members. It has always been an innovator in applying advanced technologies for the delivery of superior member services and streamlined operations. The company was looking for new, more effective solutions to improve healthcare provider satisfaction, secure their provider network from competitors, and reduce operating costs for both their providers and for themselves.

Improving the provider’s ease of doing business with a health plan has become increasingly important to locking in and defending provider supply chains from competitors. This leading company was constantly under attack from national health insurers and smaller regional health plans. The company recognized the opportunity to securely expose and personalize their core administrative processes to providers with new “self service” tools unavailable from any clearinghouse or competitor.

The company was continually seeking ways to streamline processes that required manual touch-points, such as phone, fax, e-mail and paper-based transactions. The company was especially interested in identifying solution areas that would have the potential to reduce costs both internally and for providers. Reducing costs for providers, as the company viewed it, was an important factor in increasing provider satisfaction and securing their loyalty.

To move forward with these initiatives, the company evaluated several alternatives before choosing to deploy composite business services (CBS) using IBM’s WebSphere Business Services Fabric. The IBM solution provided an end-to-end platform for composite business services that extends and enhances IBM’s SOA Foundation products. WebSphere Business Services Fabric also included an optional healthcare industry content pack, which would reduce time to market for service oriented architecture (SOA) based healthcare solutions.

The IBM software enabled the company to deliver new personalized and configurable process automation solutions using the standards-based technology of Web services and healthcare industry standards such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This flexible suite of composite business services helped the company rapidly automate payer-provider collaborative processes to the benefit of both the regional healthcare payer and their provider network.

Automating claims self-service error correction
The healthcare insurer pursued a phased approach to its service oriented architecture SOA and CBS adoption, deploying the IBM software incrementally while preserving and extending its existing IT assets. The first phase was delivered in just six months and focused on further automating the claims lifecycle, including new solutions to streamline claims error handling and self-service claims error correction for a pilot group of providers.

This automated claims correction capability included comprehensive HIPAA validation, Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) 1-7 edits, and company companion guide and business edits exposed and personalized to providers through a Web portal. This enhanced provider portal improved claims auto-adjudication rates, reduced overall processing costs, and accelerated provider payment cycles.

Using the IBM software, the regional healthcare payer also deployed a composite business service to automatically generate an online claims status report for providers based on a configurable number of days since the claim was filed. This reduces duplicate claims submissions, proactively addresses returns, and facilitates disputes and appeals.

Later phases of this CBS initiative will expand the scope to include additional claims sources and other lines of business, as well as scaling up provider direct-connect programs. Future projects will also include the implementation of composite business services for benefits and eligibility inquiries.

Delivering personalized service
The company recognized that their business objectives were dependent upon high provider utilization of automated tools and processes. Ease-of-use, convenience and personalization were key to increasing utilization, and a successful solution would have to tailor service delivery for each provider segment including both technically sophisticated and “low tech” providers.

The IBM software enables the company to dynamically personalize service delivery based on the context, content and contract for the service request through the use of sophisticated runtime profiles, policies, and service meta data. This helps the company minimize costly and time-consuming exceptions, delays, and manual touches, and helps improve the overall provider experience. The IBM solution also managed consistent service quality, visibility and control across shared work processes.

Reducing time to market and re-using IT assets
The company was also able to quickly launch new composite business services and deliver rapid business results using prebuilt healthcare SOA assets and the WebSphere Business Services Fabric. Future composite business service deployments at the company will continue to leverage existing business services and IT assets using the IBM software as the system of record for faster time-to-market, reduced cost, and better solution reliability. In addition, the IBM software leverages HIPAA, Health Level (HL) 7 and Web-service standards for faster application deployments and reduced integration risk and expense.

Greater cost savings and visibility
The regional healthcare payer and its providers are reducing operating costs in several areas, including call center management and related phone calls, faxes and paper-based processes. The IBM software includes dashboard visibility services to monitor performance, improve operational efficiency and obtain a more holistic view of the provider network. Additionally, the software unifies machine-to-machine, Web portal, secure FTP and other types of communications on to a single platform for centralized maintenance and lower total cost of ownership.

Bringing providers on board faster
The IBM software was able to dramatically reduces the time and cost of on ramping new providers, and does not require providers to alter their existing PMS/HIS systems. IBM software capabilities include self-ser­vice and assisted service provisioning, robust file bundling/unbundling, content-based routing, and legacy transformation capabilities for National Science Foundation (NSF), Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) 1500 and HCFA Uniform Bill 92 (UB-92) file formats into HIPAA-compliant American National Standards Institute (ANSI) X.12N transactions.

Reducing clearinghouse fees
The IBM software enabled the regional healthcare payer to receive claims previously processed by clearinghouses to direct-connect solutions that free providers from usage fees. The healthcare payer has also strengthened its provider relationships by delivering a range of advanced services not available through clearinghouses.

Staying focused on provider needs
At each stage of incremental transformation, the regional healthcare payer improves the efficiency and productivity of its provider services to achieve greater competitive advantage. By maintaining its focus on customer service and business agility to respond to new market needs, the company is further establishing itself as an innovative healthcare leader.

Key Components
Software - IBM SOA WebSphere Business Services Fabric

IBM SOA at Catholic Medical Center - Healthcare Industry

IBM SOA - Catholic Medical Center chooses IBM DB2 9 with pureXML over legacy DBMS to support its integrated healthcare platform.

IBM Service Oriented Architecture SOA in Healthcare Industry - Catholic Medical Center, IBM SOA Customer

“Now that we can store XML data directly on our IBM DB2 9 data server, we have been able to streamline access to medical records and improve care to our patients—all while reducing storage costs with the deep compression feature.” —Lee Hungu, Team Manager of Development Service Team, Catholic Medical Center - —Lee Hungu, Team Manager of Development Service Team, Catholic Medical Center

Customer: Catholic Medical Center
Deployment Country: Korea - Republic of
IBM Business Partner: Daou Technology
Industry: Healthcare
Solution: Database Management, Enabling Business Flexibility, Information On Demand, Leveraging Information, Openness, Service Oriented Architecture

Overview

Catholic Medical Center is an association of eight large hospitals and 23 other Catholic medical facilities across the Republic of Korea. The organization is a leading provider of a variety of medical services in Korea including cancer treatment, cardiology and rehabilitation.

Business need: To improve the quality and timeliness of patient care, managers at Catholic Medical Center decided to integrate the organization’s healthcare platforms onto a unified health information system. With this change, staff could do away with outdated paper information processes and reduce patient management costs. Ideally, the new system would also offer heightened system availability and a flexible architecture that could support future data sources and formats.

Solution: Looking for an offering that would be cheaper, more flexible and more reliable than their existing Oracle and Sybase database systems ,they migrated patient files to an IBM DB2® 9 data server. With the IBM software’s ability to support pureXML data, the client was able to easily integrate its operations. The program acts as a service-oriented architecture (SOA) that unifies hospital systems, including electronic medical records and picture-archiving communications systems files.

Benefits: • Simplifies data access methods while increasing system flexibility as a result of DB2 9’s ability to support native XML data • Provides a lower total cost of ownership than the previous DBMS solution by leveraging the deep compression capability of the DB2 9 data server, minimiz­ing storage requirements • Raises the availability and accessibility of patient information with the IBM platform’s HADR functionality

Oracle SOA - Customers Embracing Oracle's SOA Approach

Oracle SOA - Customers Embracing Oracle's SOA Approach

Organizations throughout the world are using Oracle Fusion Middleware, the company's comprehensive, standards- based family of middleware products to adopt and manage service oriented architecture (SOA) in heterogeneous computing environments.

The service oriented architecture SOA market is poised for tremendous growth over the next few years. According to a recent Gartner report, "SOA will provide the basis for 80 percent of development projects, by 2008." Advanced Data Exchange, Cattles Bank, Griffiths Waite, the Mexican Government's Ministry of Finance and Public Credit, Neustar, Norwegian Ministry of Justice and Police, Spanish Regional Government, Universita di Bologna and Wyeth are a few of the growing number of organizations using components of the Oracle SOA Suite, part of the Oracle Fusion Middleware product family, to help maximize business efficiency, increase IT flexibility and lower costs.

Built on a hot-pluggable architecture, Oracle's SOA Suite enables organizations to rapidly deliver new business services -- based on a mix of old and new IT systems -- while avoiding costly rip-and-replace projects. The suite delivers a comprehensive service lifecycle management platform that enables services to be created, secured, monitored, managed and orchestrated into composite applications and multi-step business processes. Partners are using Oracle's products as the foundation for service oriented architecture SOAs, decreasing the time spent re-architecting entire systems and increasing the time dedicated to building competitive, vertical differentiators and solving customers' business problems. Oracle SOA Suite boasts some of the industry's most advanced and well-regarded SOA technologies, including Oracle BPEL Process Manager, Oracle Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), Oracle Business Rules Engine, Oracle Enterprise Service Bus, Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle Web Services Manager.

Advanced Data Exchange (ADX) is a privately held, venture-backed company headquartered in Fremont, Calif., providing services to build and expand trading communities by building upon the benefits of electronic data interchange (EDI) and XML without the typical cost or complexity. ADX improves commerce process execution, enabling customers and suppliers to efficiently exchange business documents, streamline orders, track and manage changes, resolve discrepancies, improve the accuracy of payments and the timeliness of receivables. Its use of Oracle BPEL Process Manager and Oracle's EDI B2B Gateway brings flexibility and agility to ADX's technology platform, resulting in improved response times to customers, minimal manual data entry and improved accuracy.

"ADX drives efficiency in the buyer-supplier relationship. Our Business Integration and Commerce Management services allow electronic order processing and related communication with trading partners regardless of technology capabilities or data formats," said Carl Lehmann, vice president of solutions strategy at ADX. "To build a service-oriented technology infrastructure to best support our clients, we selected Oracle Fusion Middleware's SOA service oriented architecture technologies, which allow for interoperability with our clients regardless of their business system or technology platform."

Cattles plc, one of the largest providers of financial services products to the non-standard consumer credit market in the United Kingdom, chose to work with Oracle partner Griffiths Waite (GW) to build an adaptive application processing platform to support their expansion into new markets, as well as an ambitious partner program. GW evaluated various SOA offerings and selected Oracle BPEL Process Manager and Oracle BAM, key components of the Oracle SOA Suite. Using Oracle BPEL Process Manager, Cattles has the flexibility to easily change business processes as partner requirements change. Oracle BAM provides Cattles with immediate visibility into the application pipeline enabling them to monitor, manage and change their business -- in real time. This platform is successfully supporting an initial implementation of more than 2,000 users and processing upward of 25,000 applications per day. GW specializes in the design, development and management of business solutions based upon Oracle technology.

"The Oracle SOA Suite is by far the most comprehensive and integrated SOA service oriented architecture offering in the marketplace," said Mark Simpson, architect at Griffiths Waite. "Cattles needed a solution that could not only orchestrate high-risk loan approval process, but could also provide the ability to monitor the key business metrics. Together, Oracle BPEL Process Manager and Oracle BAM helped us create a robust platform, enabling Cattles to easily monitor processes and provide a feedback loop for process optimization."

Norwegian Ministry of Justice and Police is responsible for the maintenance and development of the basic guarantees of the rule of law throughout Norway. Established in 1818, the organization has approximately 17,700 employees across its three major subsidiaries -- the Police Directorate, the Prison and Probation Service and the Legislation Department. The organization selected Oracle SOA Suite to develop an IT architecture that would integrate its disparate applications and data.

"We chose the Oracle SOA Suite to serve as the foundation for our new architecture. All solutions developed within the Justice Sector will be based upon this architecture, and the software that is acquired will be of central value in prospective projects of development for the National Police Computing and Material Service," said Peter Hafskjold, technical project manager of National Police Computing and Material Service. "This is the first big SOA service oriented architecture project within the public sector in Norway. With service oriented architecture SOA principles, now the IT systems of the Norwegian Police, the Norwegian Courts and the Norwegian Correctional services will be connected in a most efficient way. All the central police solutions including, criminal records, private prosecution treatment, advertisement of loss and systems pertaining to center of operations and shift scheduling will be integrated."

Tibco SOA Fundamentals

Tibco SOA Fundamentals

At first look, instituting an enterprise SOA service oriented architecture can appear to be a daunting task. Many of the same questions come from those who are just trying to gain a basic understanding of the service oriented architecture SOA fundamentals. Issues around organizational governance, such as establishing an SOA Steering Committee and Program Management Office, need to be addressed. Managing the entire service lifecycle, including policies that define service level agreements and security are other requirements. It's important to address these issues early in the planning process to ensure a successful SOA service oriented architecture deployment.

SOA Software’s “Service Virtualization”

SOA Software’s “Service Virtualization” By John K. Waters

A service oriented architecture (SOA) takes the discrete business functions in enterprise applications and organizes them into interoperable services—which is one of the most effective ways to share and consume information with partners. But managing and exposing these services creates some big security risks; keeping the bad guys from connecting to those services is tricky.

One approach getting serious attention involves what SOA Software calls an XML virtual private network, which the company developed to enable partners to securely connect to an enterprise's Web services. An XML VPN is an edge proxy that intercepts incoming service packages, verifies the source of origin, decrypts the packages, and signs the message using its own public key infrastructure, explains Ian Goldsmith, the company's VP of marketing.

"Essentially, what the product does is to build a virtual service inside the partner’s firewall," Goldsmith tells service oriented architecture SOATrends. "Partners communicate with that virtual service, which handles the passing of messages back and forth between the virtual service and the real service. So, what we talk about is ‘service virtualization.’”

SOA Software's recently released XML VPN version 4.3 is available both as software and an appliance. It is designed to act as a proxy for any external Web services, whether provided by another XML VPN device or not. A company can use the XML VPN to provide its developers with internal versions of important third-party services, and ensure the security and reliability of those services.

The focus of this release is the product's new last-mile security capabilities. With version 4.3, the XML VPN proxy can digitally sign messages destined for internal services to prevent end-run attacks by external applications that could otherwise directly contact internal services protected by the XML VPN. "[This capability] ensures the security of internal services and provides an end-to-end audit trail for all partner transactions," Goldsmith says.

XML VPN version 4.3 is also the first B2B Web services security solution to support the emerging WS-Policy standard, Goldsmith says. Support for WS-Policy ensures that third-party providers can discover the policies they must implement before attempting to communicate with a service.

"SOA Software's notion of an XML VPN is catching on with customers,” says Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink. "Unlike a traditional VPN, the XML VPN is content- and application-aware. SOA Software can therefore connect companies to their business partners and customers in a secure, flexible, intelligent manner, leveraging the power of Web services and service oriented architecture SOA for business-to-business interactions."

SOA Software Company Overview

SOA Software Company Overview

SOA Software is the leading provider of comprehensive enterprise class Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Governance, Security, Mediation, and Management solutions. It is the largest specialist vendor of SOA solutions and the only company that offers a complete SOA infrastructure solution that can govern Web Services that reside on all major platforms.

SOA Software provides software and solutions for Enterprise SOA, including comprehensive SOA governance and Web Service for the mainframe. SOA Software’s products include the award winning Service Manager™, Workbench™, and SOLA™. Service Manager provides a high-performance, scalable SOA Service Oriented Architecture management and security solution. Workbench provides a comprehensive closed-loop SOA governance solution. And SOLA is SOA Software’s mainframe Web services solution for CICS programmers. These enterprise-class products combine to create the only comprehensive SOA infrastructure solution available today. These enterprise-class products combine to offer end-to-end Governance, security, monitoring, reliability, registry and provisioning capabilities for Enterprise SOA Service Oriented Architecture and Mainframe Web services.

SOA Software is a privately held company backed by leading investors including Redpoint, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Palisades Ventures Fund, Paladin Capital Group, and Goldman Sachs

Understanding Enterprise SOA

Understanding Enterprise SOA

Virtually every major corporation has embraced Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), the new technology that takes advantage of such open computing standards as XML to reduce the cost and complexity of connecting software programs with one another.

Up to now, the business world has been subjected to hype-prone messages about Service Oriented Architecture SOA from IT vendors who claim that it is an easy fix to the classic problem of interoperation between systems. Just released by Manning, Understanding Enterprise SOA Service Oriented Architecture clears the air by providing a vendor-neutral approach to teaching the core technologies and their interdependencies in plain English.

Written in a comfortable, mentoring style by two industry insiders, the book draws conclusions from real business experiences in diverse industries, from manufacturing to genome research. The authors first explain the core Service Oriented Architecture SOA technologies involved in realizing an enterprise SOA and then go on to explain the critical human factors involved in their deployment. Using a fictional insurance company with real-life challenges, they demonstrate how to develop and implement a successful SOA.

Understanding Enterprise SOA Service Oriented Architecture shows how enterprise SOA changes the terrain of EAI, B2B commerce, business process management, real-time operations, and enterprise software development in general. This book is necessary reading for business people and technologists involved in or planning an SOA implementation. It cuts through vendor hype and teaches what it really takes to get SOA Service Oriented Architecture to work.

About the Authors...
Eric Pulier is a pioneer in the software and digital interactive industries. Eric has helped establish cutting-edge technology companies in media management, professional services, voice systems, and peer-to-peer networking. Hugh Taylor is an SOA marketing executive who writes, teaches, and promotes the business value of Service Oriented Architecture SOA and Web services to major companies. The authors live in Los Angeles, California.

Understanding Enterprise SOA: SOA for enterprise application integration

Understanding Enterprise SOA: SOA for enterprise application integration

Written by Eric Pulier and Hugh Taylor with forward by Paul Gaffney and reproduced from "Understanding Enterprise SOA" by permission of Manning Publications Co. ISBN 1932394591, copyright 2005. All rights reserved. See http://www.manning.com

The following excerpt continues to look at the IT and management issues at Titan Insurance, a fictitious business that the book uses as a case study in Service-Oriented Architecture. The excerpt refers to "Jay," who is an employee of Titan's IT department. There is also a reference to the "Atticus Finch Technique," which refers to a process of asking a question only when one knows the answer in advance. (An allusion to the novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird".)

5.1 Is Titan happy with its EAI?

5.2 How web services can simplify EAI

5.3 Web services in portals

5.4 Web services in software development

5.5 The savvy manager cautions: limitations of web services in EAI

5.6 Summary

I explain to Jay that web services and the service-oriented architecture (SOA) have the potential to facilitate real change in enterprise application integration (EAI). In addition, the new technology can have a major impact on two related areas: portals and software development. All three of these endeavors currently suffer from difficulties caused by proprietary standards. In this chapter, we look in detail at the way the open nature of web services may offer some welcome relief.

SOA Book - Understanding Enterprise SOA

Understanding Enterprise SOA [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback) by Eric Pulier (Author), Hugh Taylor (Author)

Book Description

Understanding Enterprise SOA service oriented architecture gives technologists and business people an invaluable and until now missing integrated picture of the issues and their interdependencies. You will learn how to think in a big way, moving confidently between technology- and business-level concerns. Written in a comfortable, mentoring style by two industry insiders, the book draws conclusions from actual experiences of real companies in diverse industries, from manufacturing to genome research. It cuts through vendor hype and shows you what it really takes to get enterprise SOA service oriented architecture to work.
Intended for both business people and technologists, the book reviews core service oriented architecture SOA technologies and uncovers the critical human factors involved in deploying them. You will see how enterprise SOA service oriented architecture changes the terrain of EAI, B2B commerce, business process management, "real time" operations, and enterprise software development in general.

What's Inside

• How SOA streamlines portal development and EAI
• Rapid integration with partners
• Effective BPM and real time management
• How to design, develop, run, and secure an SOA
• Real-world SOA service oriented architecture deployment scenarios

About the Author

Eric Pulier is a pioneer in the software and digital interactive industries. A frequent public speaker at technology conferences around the world, Eric has helped establish cutting-edge technology companies in media management, professional services, voice systems, and peer-to-peer networking. Hugh Taylor is an service oriented architecture SOA marketing executive who writes, teaches, and promotes the business value of service oriented architecture SOA and web services to major companies. The authors live in Los Angeles, California.

SOA Books - Understanding Enterprise SOA

SOA Books - Understanding Enterprise SOA Service Oriented Architecture by Eric Pulier and Hugh Taylor with foreword by Paul Gaffney

About this book

This SOA book is for anyone in the business world or in the public sector who needs to make sense of the new emerging standards for virtually all major information technology decisions. For business professionals, this book is meant to explain and clarify—in business terms—the way web services and SOA Service Oriented Architecture work in a business setting. For IT professionals, the book provides a business-oriented overview of Service Oriented Architecture SOA.

How the book is organized

The book is organized around the two critical areas necessary in realizing an enterprise SOA Service Oriented Architecture: technology and people. The nature of Service Oriented Architecture SOA is integrative; by definition, SOA Service Oriented Architecture pushes boundaries. Enterprise SOA cuts across multiple lines of business and technological disciplines. In the book this is amply illustrated through the presentation of the Titan Insurance case study, an up-close look at an insurance company that is suffering from the IT aftermath of a troubled merger.

In addition to an Introduction that sets out the parameters of Titan Insurance, and provides the back story, the book consists of two parts:

Part 1 “Understanding the technology of enterprise SOA” delves into the technological aspects of web services, as well as other technological issues that underlie the enterprise SOA Service Oriented Architecture. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 provide a broad overview of web services, how they work, and what they can do for your business. Chapter 4 introduces the concept of the service-oriented architecture. Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8 explore how the enterprise SOA Service Oriented Architecture changes the terrain of enterprise application integration, software development, business-to-business commerce, business process management, and real-time operations. Chapters 9 and 10 introduce the extremely important discussions of security and management of enterprise SOA Service Oriented Architecture. Chapters 11 and 12 look at SOA networks and utility computing, two deployment scenarios that are likely to be on your horizon if you are considering an SOA Service Oriented Architecture.

Part 2 “Understanding the people and process of enterprise SOA Service Oriented Architecture, returns to the Titan case in full depth and provides a thorough look at the political, personal, and technological factors that arise when implementing an enterprise SOA at a real company. Chapter 13 looks at realizing Titan’s wish list for its Service Oriented Architecture SOA and begins to sort out how to deal with the individual players involved in the process. Chapter 14 continues with a description of how we achieved consensus among the players about how to pursue an effective SOA Service Oriented Architecture. Chapter 14 also introduces the “four P’s”—people, pilot, plan, and proceed—my suggested four-stage process for best practices in enterprise SOA. Chapters 15 and 16 go into more depth on how the training and pilot planning process works. In addition, these chapters outline a best practices approach to identifying the applications in an enterprise that are best suited for exposure as web services, a process I call service discovery. Chapter 17 examines platform selection and establishment of project goals and measurements of success. Chapter 18 concludes the book with a look at how Titan Insurance has moved forward with its Service Oriented Architecture SOA plan.

About the authors

Eric Pulier Founder and Executive Chairman of Service Oriented Architecture SOA Software and a widely recognized pioneer and visionary in the world of information technology. Named one of 30 e-Visionaries by VAR Business, Eric is a featured speaker at industry conferences and events and a member of the IBM’s UDDI Advisory Community. He leads Service Oriented Architecture SOA Software’s trailblazing efforts to develop breakthrough solutions for the management of XML Web Services, working with such clients as Toyota, US Steel, Hewlett Packard, and Charles Schwab. Eric earned his BA, Magna Cum Laude, from Harvard University. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

Hugh Taylor Vice President of Marketing at Service Oriented Architecture SOA Software and the author of numerous white papers and articles on Service Oriented Architecture SOA, as well as the book, The Hollywood Job Hunter’s Survival Guide. Hugh earned his BA, Magna Cum Laude, and MBA from Harvard University. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.

Venting on SOA 2.0

Venting on Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0

I'm admittedly a big Oracle fan. I believe in the software. I also like the company's willingness to take risks. I'm a major envangelist for Oracle within my own organization and elsewhere when the opportunity presents itself. Nevertheless, I've ridden with a burr under my saddle for several months...a burr that Oracle put there. With apologies to my many friends within Oracle and elsewhere in the Oracle universe who may disagree with my opinion, it's time to vent.

In May, Oracle introduced the concept of Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0 at JavaOne. They've continued to push this concept since that time. As I understand it, Oracle's flavor of Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0 is the combination of their Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) Suite combined with an Service Oriented Architecture SOA suite of tools (preferably Oracle's). You can learn more about the features of Oracle's EDA Suite here, so I won't rehash the highlights in this post. Suffice it to say that Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0 = EDA + SOA.

Now for my ranting. Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, and Office 2.0 are all the rage. And, at least from my perspective, all those "2.0" versions represent change in the overall concept of each. But now it seems the marketing folks have concluded that any concept hung with a "2.0" will generate significant buzz. The "2.0" suffix seems to have developed some serious marketing mojo. But the "2.0" concept is really stretched with Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0. What changed from plain, old SOA? Nothing that I can see, other than we added on some EDA tools on top and tagged Service Oriented Architecture SOA with a "2.0". It's analogous to adding a set of socks to a pair of shoes and selling the package as "Shoes 2.0"...and if WalMart steals this idea, I want royalties!

So, why am I upset about Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0? First, because the term adds confusion to the marketplace. Enterprises around the world are struggling to implement and master Service Oriented Architecture SOA as it is. In fact, if we're going assign version numbers, most are still struggling with "SOA 0.5" or less. Pushing SOA 2.0 at this time is like telling me that I really need to be on the summit of K2 when I'm still struggling to get halfway up Pike's Peak. Second, Oracle's flavor of SOA 2.0 essentially combines EDA and SOA technology...not much real innovation happening to benefit my enterprise, as I can buy both tools sets and integrate them without all the SOA 2.0 smoke and mirrors. In business terms (better, faster, lower cost - those types of tangible benefits), what benefit does SOA 2.0 provide over plain, old SOA Service Oriented Architecture? The business-oriented value proposition is not clear (at least, not to me). If there's no measurable business benefit, why bother with it?

Now, I know that Oracle is not the only organization jumping onto the Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0 bandwagon. Nevertheless, I have higher expectations of Oracle and I'm disappointed with that they're "stirring the pot" with the fuss they're making over SOA 2.0.

It could be that I just don't understand Oracle's version of SOA 2.0, and so my post here only demonstrates my lack of understanding. If that's the case, somebody please set me straight by commenting on this article. On the other hand, if you find yourself on my side of the fence, there is an on-line petition protesting the confusion surrounding the term "Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0" here. You may want to consider signing the petition yourself.

Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0 huh?

Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0 huh?

Just when we'd started to figure out Service Oriented Architecture SOA, along comes SOA 2.0. Analysts at Gartner Research are using the latest industry buzzword to differentiate between what it calls ''traditional'' service-oriented architectures, which rely on the client-serve model and direct calls from one piece of software to another, and an event-driven type of SOA that is much more closely tied to business components with alerts and notifications. Think order processing systems, hospital admissions processes, and bank transactions.

Oracle Corporation is embracing the new moniker in a big bear hug and rubbing it up against its Fusion middleware products. ''Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0 is the term that we're using to talk about the combination of service-oriented architecture and event-driven architecture,'' Steve Harris, vice president of Oracle Fusion middleware, said at the recent JavaOne developer show.

But analyst Neil Ward-Dutton (one of the two Neils at UK-based Macehiter Ward-Dutton) isn't feeling so chummy about the term. In his May 24 blog he writes: ''I'm so angry about it I can't work out where to start!'' Macehiter wonders what the emergence of an Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0 designation might mean to the work of the OASIS SOA technical committee, which is currently developing a reference model for SOA.

The purpose of the OASIS project, according to that standards org, is ''to address Service Oriented Architecture SOA being used as a term in an increasing number of contexts and specific technology implementations. Sometimes, the term is used with differing - or worse, conflicting - understandings of implicit terminology and components. This Reference Model is being developed to encourage the continued growth of different and specialized Service Oriented Architecture SOA implementations whilst preserving a common layer of understanding about what SOA is.''

Mark Little, director of standards and development manager for the Transactions and ESB projects for JBoss, positively fumes in his May 22 blog: ''[I]f you're an analyst firm looking to stand out from the crowd I can understand throwing a lot of new buzzwords at a wall and seeing which ones stick! But for the rest of us living in the real world, it has no meaning at all. Despite all the hype, I think we're all agreed on what Service Oriented Architecture SOA means: it's an architectural approach to building loosely coupled applications. Companies have been 'doing SOA' for many years, even before the term was coined, using technologies as diverse as CORBA and JMS. Think of it as a pattern, or an architectural approach in the same was as distributed object-oriented systems. It has its place in any good architect's toolbelt and we're finally coming to grips with it as an industry.''

Little points out that the notion of ''Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0'' borders on the dangerously confusing, because it mixes up architecture with implementation detail.

It remains to be seen how useful giving an architectural approach a version number will be. For the moment, I have to agree that it seems, well, a little nuts. As both Ward-Dutton and Little put it, WTF?

SOA 2 Point Oh No!

SOA 2 Point Oh No! - The Notion of "SOA 2.0" Is Just Plain Silly By: David Linthicum

Here we go again. While the paint is still wet on this new Web 2.0 stuff, many service oriented architecture SOA vendors and large analysts firms are calling their market service oriented architecture SOA 2.0. It's one of the silliest things I've heard in a long while, and both the analysts and vendors who use this term should be ashamed of themselves.

I get Web 2.0 because the Web is well over 10-years-old and we've been successful in using this pervasive technology and now we're moving to newer and more exciting stuff such as AJAX and RSS thus the new version number. However, we've yet to get large-scale traction with service oriented architecture SOA so SOA 2.0 is illogical since service oriented architecture SOA 1.0 never existed if we're realistic.

Moreover, service oriented architecture SOA is an architectural concept, not a software product, and to put a version number on something like that shows you don't understand the notion in the first place. SOA service oriented architecture is a journey, not a project or product, and to try to make it such is to demean the core concept and the value it can bring. My larger concern, however, is that hype like SOA 2.0 could cause many of those moving towards service oriented architecture SOA to become disenchanted and ignore the architectural issues, and hurt their business.

I suspect the marketing guys are at it again and that that's where this thing came from. Once again the people who buy the technology have to get involved and push back against this kind of foolishness or else you'll see it again and again. As such, I urge you to tell your vendors that service oriented architecture SOA 2.0 is silly, and if they use the term they'll lose creditability. If enough hear that, the term will die, and other new marketing words like "SOA 3.0," "SOA Next Generation," and "SOA-nator" won't show up either.

SOA (No Version Number)
A service oriented architecture SOA is a strategic framework of technology that allows all interesting systems, inside and outside an organization, to expose and access well-defined services and the information bound to those service that may be further abstracted to orchestration layers and composite applications for solution development. This is not a product, not a piece of software; this is an architectural concept. Am I clear?

The primary benefits of a service oriented architecture SOA include:

Reusing services/behaviors or the ability to leverage application behavior from application to application without a significant amount of re-coding or integration. In other words, using the same application functionality (behavior) over and over again, without having to port the code, leveraging remote application behavior as if it existed locally.

Agility, or the ability to change business processes on top of existing services and information flows, quickly, and as needed to support a changing business.

Monitoring, or the ability to monitor points of information and points of service in real-time, to determine the well being of an enterprise or trading community. Moreover, the ability to change processes to adjust processes for the benefit of the organization in real-time.

Extend reach, or the ability to expose certain enterprises processes to other external entities for the purpose of inter-enterprise collaboration or shared processes. This is, in essence, next-generation supply chain integration.

The notion of a service oriented architecture SOA isn't new at all. Attempts to share common processes, information, and services have a long history, one that began more than 10 years ago with multi-tier client/server - a set of shared services on a common server that provided the enterprise with an infrastructure for reuse and now provides for integration - and the distributed object movement. "Reusability" is a valuable objective. In the case of a service oriented architecture SOA it's reuse of service and information bound to those services. A common set of services among enterprise applications invites reusability and, as a result, significantly reduces the need for redundant application services.

What is unique about a service oriented architecture SOA is that it's as much a strategy as a set of technologies, and it's really more of a journey than a destination. Moreover, it's a notion that depends on specific technologies or standards such as Web Services, but really requires many different kinds of technologies and standards for a complete SOA.

SOA as a Discipline
What's clear about service oriented architecture SOA is that while we are now beginning to see tactical successes, the large-scale benefits of leveraging this concept have yet to be understood by most organizations. Truth be told, it's going to take time before we can brag about the benefits of SOA, and perhaps the hype will have died down by then, thus some of the confusion that's around today. This confusion includes the number of WS-* standards that are around, many of which are redundant and conflicting. But that's another column or blog.

While service oriented architecture SOA 2.0 is a silly notion, we look to evolving our thinking to a place where SOA is more "the architecture," not "an architecture." And there's a difference. What's more, we have to understand that systemic changes such as using service oriented architecture SOA is going to take most organizations many years to implement. Unfortunately there are no shortcuts like changing version numbers.

EDA, SOA 2.0, And Digital Business Architecture

EDA, SOA 2.0, And Digital Business Architecture - How Event-Driven Applications Fit Into The Future Of IT Architecture - by Randy Heffner

Forrester has long considered event-driven processing to be an integral part of service-oriented architecture (SOA), but some industry players are just recently catching up. They are combining event-driven architecture (EDA) and SOA and calling it SOA 2.0. But IT shops are doing much more than service-oriented architecture SOA, so Forrester's Digital Business Architecture provides a broad vision around service-oriented architecture SOA to encompass firms' varied user-interaction channels, unified communications, information architecture, and virtualized IT infrastructure. And event-driven processing is an integral part of this broader view, too.

SOA 2.0? Don't be Silly.

SOA 2.0? Don't be Silly.

Here we go again, while the paint is still wet on the new Web 2.0 stuff, now many of the service oriented architecture SOA vendors are calling their market "service oriented architecture SOA 2.0." It's one of the most silly things I've heard of in a long while, and both the analysts and vendors who use this term should be ashamed of themselves.

While I get "Web 2.0," because the Web is well over 10 years old and we've been successful with the use of this pervasive technology, and now we're moving to newer and more exciting stuff, thus a new version number. However, we've yet get large scale traction with service oriented architecture SOA, thus SOA 2.0 is illogical since service oriented architecture SOA 1.0 never existed.

Moreover, service oriented architecture SOA is an architectural concept, not a software product, and to put a version number on something like that just shows that you don't understand the notion in the first place. Indeed, service oriented architecture SOA is a journey, not a project or product, and to make it as such is to demean the core concept, and the value it can bring.

I suspect the marketing guys are at it again, and that’s where this thing came from. Once again the people who purchase the technology need to get involved and push back on this kind of foolishness, else you'll see it again and again.

Companies ready to talk up SOA 2.0

Companies ready to talk up SOA 2.0 By Paul Krill

It seems that we just can't wait for a new buzz-phrase. While most of the world is trying to come to terms with service oriented architecture SOA and what it means, Oracle is trying to ignite interest in service oriented architecture SOA 2.0.

The company was setting out its vision for the next-generation version of SOA service oriented architecture at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco. "service oriented architecture SOA 2.0 is the term that we're using to talk about the combination of service-oriented architecture and event-driven architecture," said Steve Harris, vice president of Oracle Fusion middleware.
Oracle is not alone. The phrase is also being championed by Gartner's Yefim Natis, a vice president and distinguished analyst at the firm. Natis stressed event-driven architecture as the main distinction between SOA 2.0 and the first, client-server driven iteration of SOA service oriented architecture.

"SOA service oriented architecture as we know it today, deals with a client-server relationship between software modules," with services being subroutines serving clients, Natis said. "However, not all business processes and software topologies fit this model."

With service oriented architecture SOA 2.0, an event-driven architecture is deployed in which software modules are related to business components, and alerts and event notifications are featured. The initial SOA concept has not been event-driven but instead has featured direct calls from one piece of software to another in a client-server process, Natis said. SOA service oriented architecture implementations have focused on web services and subordinates to clients, he said.

SOA 2.0 service oriented architecture applications could include order processing systems, hospital admissions processes or bank transactions, Natis said.

Oracle is positioning its Fusion middleware components as a solution for service oriented architecture SOA. Oracle sees the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 (Java EE 5), SOA 2.0 and Web 2.0 coming together to produce a more productive application platform, said Thomas Kurian, Oracle senior vice president. Web 2.0 features more dynamic clients.

Additionally, the company plans to soon release some of its AJAX technologies for rich Internet application development to an open source organisation. The technology to be submitted includes a set of JavaServer Faces components and an AJAX rendering kit.
The company, however, still is not climbing aboard the Sun Microsystems-driven NetBeans community for open source tools, but is sticking with its strategy of accommodating the rival Eclipse platform and Oracle's own JDeveloper tool.

"We have a lot of customers where we see Eclipse come up in accounts," said Ted Farrell, Oracle chief architect and vice president of tools and middleware.

"If we saw a similar push for NetBeans for the industry, we'd probably address that as well," Farrell said.

At a jointly held public session with Sun in January, Oracle acknowledged NetBeans but did not actually decide to participate in it.

SOA 2.0 Ignorance

SOA 2.0 Ignorance The viral nature of gossip has taken hold of service oriented architecture SOA 2.0 and run with it. There are more and more articles coming out every day , or so it seems.

My question is this: why do we need the term? OK, if you're an analyst firm looking to stand out from the crowd I can understand throwing a lot of new buzzwords at a wall and seeing which ones stick! But for the rest of us living in the real world, it has no meaning at all. Despite all the hype, I think we're all agreed on what SOA means : it's an architectural approach to building loosely coupled applications . Companies have been "doing SOA" for many years, even before the term was coined, using technologies as diverse as CORBA and JMS . Think of it as a pattern, or an architectural approach in the same was as distributed object-oriented systems . It has its place in any good architects toolbelt and we're finally coming to grips with it as an industry.

Then WHAM! Along comes SOA 2.0! How? Why? WTF?! I also expected more of Oracle on this one! Giving an architectural approach a version number is crazy: it makes no sense at all! Only in software would we even consider such a thing. Can you imagine going back in pre-history: is a hut also to be known as Cave 2.0? Would a house be Cave 3.0 or Hut 2.0? Where would the St Paul's Basilica come in the grand scheme of things?! If something is truly an architectural advance over its predecessors, then it should be named uniquely for a start. Caves, huts, houses, high-rise buildings all share some commonality, but they have different architectural approaches too. To call the Empire State Building an upgraded cave is to do it an injustice (at the very least)!

Steve says it's about a combination of EDA and SOA. I hate that distinction because I think that either EDA is a specific implementation of SOA or it's simply another way of reasoning about your SOA system. Gartner then say that the difference is that SOA 1.0 (yuch!) was about client-server interactions and SOA 2.0 is about events. Apart from seeing my previous comment concerning EDA, where does it say that SOA is all about clients and servers? For a start, that implies synchronous interactions, which SOA certainly doesn't require. Secondly, I know of many SOA deployments that work on an asynchronous peer-to-peer level. Hey, maybe those guys are doing SOA 3.0?!

But in all seriousness, it seems to me that people are confusing implementation with architecture. Where does it say that SOA has to be client-server driven ? That's a fairly arbitrary (aka poor) way on which to base architectural differences: by any strict definition of interaction styles, something is always a client (sender) and something is always a server (receiver), but those roles can be transient and change between invocations. That's the case in most distributed systems, not just SOA based. In the early days of distributed systems it was common to have entities that were pure clients: that's less of the case these days. Take a look at some event-driven systems: they have clients and servers too!

Furthermore, is it then really necessary to confuse the issue by adding implementation semantics within the architectural approach (i.e., events)? Why not give it its own acronym, something like that captures events, the fact that they drive things and that it's an architectural methodology? Hmmm, that would then be EDA and I'm sure some analysts coined that term a long time ago , but it didn't really capture the public imagination like some other three-letter acronyms.

You know, a more cynical person might think that the only reason for SOA 2.0 is to ride on the back of all the Web 2.0 hype that's going round at the moment. But our industry doesn't work that way, now does it?

So stay clear of SOA 2.0. If you really want to talk about SOA and EDA then do so as separate entities in their own right, or coin a new term (any suggestions?) EDSOA?

SOA 2.0 : Why a Revision is Really Necessary

SOA 2.0 : Why a Revision is Really Necessary

I guess I'm a little late to the debate about "Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0". However, after going through the arguments, I will have go squarely against the petitioners. The petitioners would have everyone believe that Service Oriented Architecture SOA is a well defined idea that has worked wonders in practice. On the contrary, SOA Service Oriented Architecture is a term as nebulous as ever, and one in seven SOA endeavors end up in failure. The ideas and concepts behind Service Oriented Architecture SOA are just like its WS-NonexistentStandards underpinnings. That is it is careening towards a massive pileup. Joe Mckendrick has a good summary of the current dismal state:

But, if SOA Service Oriented Architecture really is so abstract and elusive, what else is there? What's the alternative? Enterprise computing requires a very deliberate methodology of planning that extends out for years and numerous budget cycles. For companies saddled with patchwork portfolios of various vendors' incompatible legacy systems — combined with home-grown systems — service-oriented architecture and Web services offer a path of least resistance.

Reality is, the industry desperately needs an alternative, that is a revision of the original Service Oriented Architecture SOA concepts.

So that we can at least frame the argument, let's try to figure out exactly what Service Oriented Architecture SOA means. From there, we can propose a reformulation, something that goes beyond the simplistic Oracle/Gartner definition. The Oracle/Gartner leads much to desired in that it simply augments that original SOA with Event Driven Architecture (EDA). Now, every vendor has the right to hijack a term to hype up their existing product line. This tactic was practiced extensively for Service Oriented Architecture SOA 1.0, so I don't expect them giving up on that tactic for Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0.

Patterns for SOA 2.0 by Erik Johnson

Patterns for SOA 2.0 by Erik Johnson

My dad is a research biochemist at an institute in Southern California. One of the (literally) cool things about his laboratory is the cold room. Going through the huge vault-like door, there are some tall glass tubes a couple of inches in diameter and several feet high. In the glass columns are various kinds of cloudy goo. Over time, colored bands of (I think) concentrated proteins and other molecular constituents appear. This event tended to cause some cordial celebration to occur, which I never really appreciated. But looking back, these scientists would sit back, wait, and then witness specialized things emerge naturally from a process of self-refinement.

Think about the move over the last 4 decades from monolithic applications to service-orientation. Instead of having gravity and osmosis do the work, we have trial, error, and debate. But software architecture is itself self-refining process nonetheless. By definition an architecture pattern is a reflection of an existing practice. I haven’t become nearly familiar with software architecture patterns enough to where I can recite them at cocktail parties. But it seems like the classic process of describing an architecture in terms of patterns is not helping us pin down the formal properties of service oriented architecture SOA. Some argue that this proves service oriented architecture SOA isn’t real because it can’t be described.

But maybe we are just looking for patterns in the wrong way. Physical SOA implementations will probably use well-known patterns like observer-subject, content-based routing and pipelines. However, I think that describing a modern SOA service oriented architecture requires a deeper analysis centered on transformational patterns rather than classic software architectural or integration patterns.

SOA service oriented architecture, well at least a 1.0 version, has been around for quite a while as any systems integrator will tell you for $225 an hour. Enterprise service buses, object brokers, and other agent-oriented have been successfully fooling monolithic applications into working with each other for years. Web services also put agent-oriented systems and services into people’s faces rather suddenly and on a mass scale. But version 1.0 of SOA was geared primarily toward aggregating otherwise inert systems and providing some new communication channels.

But now, many see a need for a more modern SOA service oriented architecture, which I’ll call SOA 2.0 – where frameworks, applications, agents and communication channels understand each other more deeply – ideally using more aspect-oriented approaches. In short, the new SOA is about building a smarter stack and designing applications to take advantage of new constructs that (we hope) promote agility and simplicity.

At its core, service oriented architecture SOA 2.0 uses graph transformation mathematics to convey semantics throughout the service oriented architecture SOA stack’s layers as executable logic. At each layer of the stack, you define some semantic categories (a.k.a. viewpoints or aspects) and develop transformation patterns that produce hard rules that specific service oriented architecture SOA layers can execute dynamically. Semantic category assignments are stored in metadata and transforms are implemented as engines or (less appealingly) as code generators.

This is what makes the architecture stack much smarter – semantics of the underlying application requirements are pulled through the solution mechanically. More importantly, as application semantics evolve over time, the solution itself evolves automatically from top to bottom. The idea is to get deployment overhead to approach zero.

Here is an admittedly simplistic example (italics represent some canonical service oriented architecture SOA layers): In the data domain you could define a semantic category called “data representation” that describes whether a domain entity is resource data (customers, parts), activity data (orders, timesheets), or reference data (sales analysis), which is read-only. You then define a transform template called CRUD that produces interfaces for invoking functions in the application domain.

The template can be smart enough, for example, to avoid producing operations for reference data entities other than “Retrieve” (the “R” in CRUD). In turn, the agent layer has a transform template to create sets of actions (conceptually like a SOAPAction) from the application domain’s interface set. Service communication channels implement physical endpoints for WS-*, REST, etc. These channels use transforms to produce message processors and service descriptions from the agent action set. Finally, you might have 1 or more conversation managers that manage specialized state and data formatting capabilities for special purposes like driving user interfaces, BizTalk orchestrations, or Office Integration.

So, in each successive layer of a service oriented architecture SOA 2.0 stack, new semantic categories and transformation templates are applied that may use artifacts residing in an adjacent layer to affect behavior. This transform pipelining approach creates a turnkey engine to project application capabilities into a sort of super-API. In the real world, however, these transforms are obviously not as simplistic as the CRUD example above. This is why we now need to begin building a library of reusable semantic categories and their corresponding transformation patterns.

Transformation rules – when described in mathematical terms – can be proven complete, unlike many hand-rolled, imperative programming approaches. In fact, this might be an entry requirement for adding candidate patterns to a future library. I think this approach beats the current entry barrier – prove something’s been done at least three times and voila – it’s a pattern!

Seriously, transformations are deterministic and flexible. They can be manifested as independent engines or in static code generation. They can be domain-specific languages (DSLs). Once implemented into an service oriented architecture SOA stack, changes to the application domain can affect the entire solution predictably and automatically. Transformation rules can distinguish breaking changes from compatible evolution. So, the agent can, for example, know when to create a new action-set and when to simply alter descriptions of an existing action-set.

So to summarize, a key area in the next evolution of services architecture is about having the architecture stack aware of certain semantics in the application requirements. The stack can adapt itself to changes in the requirements by executing directed transforms against metadata. And now is the time to start identifying patterns of transformations that link layers of the service oriented architecture SOA together intelligently. The mathematical world is well aware that graph transformations and category logic both relate well to computer science. Unfortunately, I majored in music. So, I need to get some help from more mathematically-astute people to see if all this actually matches up. Maybe a new color band is emerging from that goo in the glass column.

SOA 2.0 madness

SOA 2.0 madness By Dale Vile

Sign the petition, help put a stop to it. Fed up with big analyst firms and IT vendors inventing divisive vocabulary and creating hype to further their own agendas?

Well, you're not alone. Following an attempt by some of the bigger players to introduce yet another term into the already confused area of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), a group of analysts and SOA specialists, led by industry analyst firm Macehiter Ward-Dutton (MWD), have decided to make a stand.

What's prompted this protest is the invention and promotion of the term "Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0" by the likes of Gartner and Oracle. In an initial blog entry responding to Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0 coverage, the normally mild mannered Neil Ward-Dutton of Macehitor Ward-Dutton (MWD) wrote:

I had a conversation at the back end of last year with a seasoned IT industry analyst from another UK firm about why analysts do the job they do. I think there are two camps. One (ours) sincerely believes that analysts should be good stewards of the influence they have - educating, clarifying, abstracting, comparing, acting independently, being measured, etc. It's about filtering out hype and trying to provide practical, independent advice and insight. The other is in this business to make money by whatever means possible. Often that means inventing, or perpetuating, ideas which have marginal value but which sound exciting (and thus tease out vendor marketing cash, and enterprise consulting cash). If ever there was a blatant example of the product of this latter attitude to the IT industry analyst 'profession' (I use that term *very* advisedly), Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0 is it.

At the centre of the protest is an online petition created by MWD, "because we're dumbfounded at the attempt by certain parts of the IT industry to create and give weight to the term SOA 2.0 Service Oriented Architecture".

Neil Ward-Dutton goes on to say: "In part, this petition is an experiment. Many people have discussed the power of the web to aggregate and demonstrate the power of individuals: but it would be good to see if, through this simple web page, we could pressure the protagonists into backtracking on Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0."

Please, no SOA 2.0

Please, no SOA 2.0

As observed in the last post, Oracle and Gartner are getting all worked up about this thing called "Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0." Don’t count rising star JBoss in that crowd, however. At least not its director of standards.

In response to talk about Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0, Mark Little says "I expected more of Oracle on this one! Giving an architectural approach a version number is crazy: it makes no sense at all!" (posted here at WebServices.Org).

Supposedly, Service Oriented Architecture SOA 1.0 is about client/server interactions, while Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0 is about event-driven architecture. "Where does it say that SOA is all about clients and servers?" Little asks. Plus, he adds, some event-driven systems have clients and servers, too.

Some readers have razzed the Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0 idea as well. JOrwell asked: "Why the decimal point? Does this imply we could later decide SOA 2.0 (or Web 2.0) is all a big mistake and we need to regress to, say, SOA 1.6?" (Come to think about it, what was Web 1.8 all about?)

Justin James added, "If you saw, say, ‘Crummy Movie’ and it stunk, would you go see ‘Crummy Movie 2′? NO." (Yes, there never was a "Waterworld 2," but that doesn’t explain the Batman or Police Academy sequels.)

Too tired of SOA 2.0

Too tired of SOA 2.0 - First the "next wave" moniker was clever, then it was useful. Now it's just plain annoying By Steve Fox

Are you as tired as I am of hearing any new development referred to as “2.0”? Suddenly every journalist with a point to make (and a deadline to meet) has gotten the fever: SOA 2.0, Mobility 2.0, Microsoft 2.0, even China 2.0 and India 2.0. And that’s not counting the ubiquitous, if defensible, references to Web 2.0.

Enough already. The label 2.0 has become so overused that it is now a tic, a reflex action, a device that gets trotted out because someone thinks it sounds both hip and techie. And it did — for a while. Now it’s tired.

Before you accuse me of rejecting a perfectly useful term just because I’m weary of pallid imitators, let me go on the record as saying that I’m OK with the label Web 2.0. True, the moniker — coined by Tim O’Reilly — is a tad squishy. But it’s a useful shortcut, a handy way to talk about online apps and services that share certain common characteristics, whether collaborative features, open APIs, or rich Web UIs. So Web 2.0 is in the canon.

Ditto for Business 2.0, mostly because it has precedence on its side. From what I can tell, no one had used the 2.0 suffix in its current sense before 1998, when Business 2.0 magazine sprang to life, its mission to cover the Internet-fueled “new economy.” (The phrase, by the way, is invariably pronounced “two-point-oh,” not “two-dot-oh,” because it draws its inspiration from software revision cycles, as in Netscape Navigator 2.0, not from the dot-crazy online world.)

But SOA 2.0, a label now being championed by Oracle and Gartner, is just plain silly. As InfoWorld’s Real World SOA blogger Dave Linthicum puts it, “Service Oriented Architecture SOA is an architectural concept, not a software product, and to put a version number on something like that just shows that you don’t understand the notion in the first place. Indeed, Service Oriented Architecture SOA is a journey, not a project or product.” If you agree with Linthicum, you might want to sign “Stop the madness!” -- an online petition that hopes to stop the Service Oriented Architecture SOA 2.0 meme in its tracks.

Then there’s Microsoft 2.0, an era apparently ushered in by Bill Gates’ recent announcement that he was hitting the road. I’m not buying it. If there ever were a Microsoft 2.0, it was back in the days of Windows 95 (or maybe even Windows 3.1). I’m guessing we must be up to at least Microsoft 5.0 by now.

And what about the suddenly omnipresent India 2.0 — a locution meant to reflect the offshore powerhouse’s attempt to take the next step up in development? Last I checked, India is more than 5,000 years old, and I suspect that the country has managed to reinvent itself more than once over those five millennia. Ditto for China, which has a 4,000-year pedigree, yet according to Newsweek and others, is primed for its first full upgrade.

It’s time to halt any new 2.0 coinages. And let’s not call that Moratorium 2.0.

Make way for SOA 2.0

Make way for SOA 2.0 - Oracle, Gartner talk up the next-generation version of SOA - By Paul Krill

With the industry still buzzing about service oriented architecture SOA in general, Oracle and others are now talking about SOA 2.0. Oracle officials talked up this next-generation version of SOA service oriented architecture at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.

"SOA 2.0 is the term that we're using to talk about the combination of service-oriented architecture and event-driven architecture," said Steve Harris, vice president of Oracle Fusion middleware.

The term, service oriented architecture SOA 2.0, also is being championed by Gartner's Yefim Natis, a vice president and distinguished analyst at the firm. Contacted by telephone, Natis stressed event-driven architecture as the main distinction between SOA 2.0 and the first, client-server driven iteration of SOA.

"SOA service oriented architecture as we know it today deals with a client-server relationship between software modules," with services being subroutines serving clients, Natis said. "However, not all business processes and software topologies fit this model."

With service oriented architecture SOA 2.0, an event-driven architecture is deployed in which software modules are related to business components, and alerts and event notifications are featured. The initial service oriented architecture SOA concept has not been event-driven but instead has featured direct calls from one piece of software to another in a client-server process, Natis said. SOA service oriented architecture implementations have focused on Web services and subordinates to clients, he said.

SOA 2.0 applications could include order processing systems, hospital admissions processes or bank transactions, Natis said.

Oracle is positioning its Fusion middleware components as a solution for service oriented architecture SOA. Oracle sees the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 (Java EE 5), SOA 2.0 and Web 2.0 coming together to produce a more productive application platform, said Thomas Kurian, Oracle senior vice president. Web 2.0 features more dynamic clients.

Additionally, the company plans soon to release some of its AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) technologies for rich Internet application development to an open source organization. The technology to be submitted includes a set of JavaServer Faces components and an AJAX rendering kit.

The company, however, still is not climbing aboard the Sun Microsystems-driven NetBeans community for open source tools, but is sticking with its strategy of accommodating the rival Eclipse platform and Oracle's own JDeveloper tool.

"We have a lot of customers where we see Eclipse come up in accounts," said Ted Farrell, Oracle chief architect and vice president of tools and middleware.

"If we saw a similar push for NetBeans for the industry, we'd probably address that as well," Farrell said.

At a jointly held public session with Sun in January, Oracle acknowledged NetBeans but did not actually decide to participate in it.

Oracle hails event-driven middleware for SOA 2.0

Oracle hails event-driven middleware for SOA 2.0 - Company again promotes concept that has raised the ire of some By Paul Krill

Oracle continues to boost the concept of SOA 2.0 with the release of the Oracle Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) Suite, featuring Oracle Fusion Middleware products.

Announced on Monday, the middleware allows customers to identify, analyze, and respond to business events in real-time. EDA is a key component of SOA 2.0 which is the next-generation of SOA that defines how events and services are linked together to deliver a responsive and flexible IT infrastructure, according to Oracle.

The suite features:

* Oracle Enterprise Messaging, to deliver event messages;

* Oracle Enterprise Service Bus, to collect and distribute events;

* Oracle Business Rules, for defining business policies on events;

* Oracle Business Activity Monitoring, to monitor and analyze events;

* Oracle Sensor Edge Server, supporting RFID and managing events from physical sensors and automation equipment.

The package is for companies looking to become a real-time enterprise, said Ashish Mohindroo, senior product director for Oracle Fusion Middleware. "In order to become a real-time enterprise, they have to be able to respond to real-time events," such as stock transactions, he said.

Mohindroo acknowledged that most of the products in the suite have already been available, but they are being enhanced with an events correlation and events processing infrastructure. A common metadata repository is featured to handle changes in business rules.

Oracle pitched the concept of SOA 2.0 at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco in May. The analysis firm Gartner also is promoting it.

Not everyone is happy with the creation of the concept, SOA 2.0. An online petition against it is in circulation. Mohindroo said people are reading too much into the naming. "We're trying to add value to the customer and the vision is to turn them into a real-time enterprise," he said.

Yefin Natis, a Gartner analyst who also has been using the term SOA 2.0 said the negative reaction is good in that it has demonstrated the interactive nature of Web 2.0.

He said Oracle's EDA suite is mostly about marketing since it features primarily products already on the market. "The primary impact of this announcement is marketing but as far as marketing, it is a very important move on their part," Natis said.

SOA 2.0 features SOA plus EDA, Natis said.

Oracle EDA Suite is priced at $60,000 per CPU.

Benefits of a SOA Service Oriented Architecture

Benefits of a SOA Service Oriented Architecture

SOA Service Oriented Architecture in its first phase is not a technology, but instead an infrastructure framework that enables software services to be orchestrated in such a way that they communicate with one another in the appropriate sequence while still being completely loosely coupled. It differentiates itself from the concepts of object-oriented development, client/server computing, and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) mainly in that it is very business process oriented. In the past, IT projects were oriented around the applications and the technology. The Service Oriented Architecture SOA approach is more of a business concept than a technical concept. SOA Service Oriented Architecture hides the technical complexities by providing a more business friendly view through a service and process oriented infrastructure. Due to the necessity of canonical documents for the creation of Service Oriented Architecture SOA business processes, department and IT personnel must define a general language for domains, vocabulary, and services. Therefore a SOA implementation inevitably bridges the gap between organizational departments and the organization’s IT. IT processes can be created efficiently and implemented with great flexibility so that needed changes can be made with little expenditure of time and money. For example, if a new “Approval” service is to be used in our example process, only the mapping between the new Approval schema and the published and subscribed schemas need to be redefined – no other changes need to be made, not even to the process model because it works with canonical documents which have not been altered!

The conventional EAI concentrates mainly on the technical aspects of existing applications, SOA on the other hand focuses on the business level of the organization and its business processes. It enables the reuse of services, applications, and legacy systems in several different business processes. Applications and legacy systems can be utilized as Web Services within the SOA architecture. This is accomplished by “Wrapping” the application (or system) with a Web Service (Adaptor) interface (Web Service Wrapper). In summary, Service Oriented Architecture SOA encourages the collaboration between business departments and the organization’s IT segments, enables an efficient implementation of, and changes to, applications and processes, and has potential to same enormous amounts of time and money within an organizations IT. The reuse of existing systems, quick creation of business processes, and the ability to efficiently make changes to existing solutions is why Service Oriented Architecture SOA alters IT from a despised cost factor to an appreciated asset. In addition, due to its flexibility, process orientation, and loose coupling of services, SOA is an excellent basis for providing solutions for and monitoring organizations’ Compliance and Governance.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) - Concepts, Components, and Standards

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) - Concepts, Components, and Standards BY DR. PETER EICHHORST

The Necessity of an Architecture Framework

The first section of this series discussed the problems of today’s IT landscape. The sectioned described how the tight coupling between IT applications was responsible for inflexible IT processes and inefficient application integration. With Service Oriented Computing (SOC), the applications are assembled as Services that communicate with one another using accepted communication standards. Services are autonomous and implement only the business logic but do not concern themselves with process flow or data transformation logic. In order for the loosely couple services to communication with one another, and architectural framework is required. A Service Oriented Architecture SOA is an infrastructure framework that enables autonomous, loosely coupled services (with defined interfaces) to communicate with one another without point-to-point calls between any of the services. It enables internal and external system integrations and the reuse of application logic by enabling the composition and orchestration of services. SOA Service Oriented Architecture offers a complete paradigm change away from the object-oriented client/server paradigm in which very fine grained objects communicate with one another. On the basis of a Service Oriented Architecture SOA, loosely coupled services communicate with one another only indirectly, on a high level and through standardized documents. SOA Service Oriented Architecture facilitates the flexible design of business processes and the agile IT implementation of these processes and “composite” services.

Components of an SOA Service Oriented Architecture

In order for loosely coupled services to communicate with one another (by exchanging standardized documents) and in order to execute the services in the appropriate flow, an Service Oriented Architecture SOA consists of two base components: The Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is responsible for the message distribution and the Service Orchestration Engine (SOE) is concerned with the flow of the business process. Both components work in together in tandem to accomplish the communication between loosely coupled services in a defined process flow.

Web Services (WS) communicate with one another (as shown in the diagram above) in a loosely coupled manner with each WS not “knowing” to which other WS it sends messages or from which WE it receives messages from. To accomplish this, the ESB utilizes an Publish/Subscribe principle in which service clients never directly call the service providers – they don’t even “know” that the providers exist! Generally, the service client sends a message document with all of the data it deems as “relevant” (so that the Service Provider can do its business function) to the ESB. The Service Client registered with the ESB as a Document Publisher and provided the ESB with its document schemas. In order for a service provider to receive documents from a client (via the ESB), it must register with the ESB and subscribe to all of the client documents (schemas) that it is intended to receive. This means that the service provider requests from the ESB to send it all documents published by the clients to which the provider subscribes. Due to existing document standards (XML and schema standards), the service provider can programmatically parse this document and exe-cute its business functions using the extracted data. The Service Provider (publisher) also registered its output schema with the ESB and the Service Client registered as a Subscriber to this same document (in order to receive the response from the provider). The service publisher produces a resulting XML document (with a published schema) and sends it to the ESB, which then sends the document to all services that subscribe to the document. The publish/subscribe principle enables services to communicate with one another in an indirect manner through an ESB. Therefore, the services are loosely coupled because the service client does not “know” which service it is calling and the service provider does not “know” which service it is being called by and to whom the service results are being sent to. But, the services are still not totally loosely coupled because the service publisher must “know” the document schema of the service client and vice versa! This problem is solved by a SOA infrastructure in the following manner: Services register as clients or publishers and provide their document schemas. For every schema published to the ESB, there is a standard schema (also called a Canonical Schema) defined in the ESB. The ESB contains an XML Document Translator that translates all published documents into the appropriate canonical document. The is accomplished using a translation document (XSLT in the XML standard) that contains data translation information. Using this mechanism, a service publishes its output document to the ESB which translates it to a canonical document (using an XSLT document). The ESB then uses additional translators to translate the canonical document to the input documents of all services that subscribe to the document. Up to this point in the article, it is still unknown how the flow of the service communication is accomplished. Using only an ESB, when several services subscribe to the same schema, all of the subscribers will now always receive the document (which is not the desired outcome).

In the example Order Process introduced in the first section of this series, both the “Approval” and “Order” services subscribe to the “Purchase Request” document.

In the ESB scenario described above, both of the subscribing services would always receive the Purchase Request document each time it is published. This is why the ESB must work together with a Service Orchestration component that informs the ESB when to send the appropriate documents based upon business conditions. The diagram below illustrates how the flexible Order Process is implemented within a Service Oriented Architecture SOA Environment in which the ESB and Service Orchestration Engine (SOE) work in tandem:

The SOE receives a canonical document from the ESB which contains specific variables (x and y) that are used to determine the flow of the process. The SOE determines which services are to be call next based on the evaluation of the business rules in the process model. Once the appropriate services are determined but the SOE, it sends a message to the ESB informing it which services are to be called next. In the example “Order Process” the SOE informs the ESB to call the “Order” service if the variable x <= 1000 or it informs the ESB to call the “Approval “ service if the variable x > 1000. Although both of the services subscribe to the same schema (document), only one of the services actually receives the document upon completion of the Purchase Request service. The diagram also illustrates how the document flow and document translation works. It is important to remember that the Service Orchestration Engine never communicates directly with the physical web services, rather through logical service endpoints that receive the canonical documents. In order to quickly develop easily changeable applications and processes on the basis of a Service Oriented Architecture, a SOA development environment is required consisting of many tools that the concepts described above can be achieved without heavy coding, but instead with simple configurations! This includes a tool that makes it possible to create process models that can be interpreted by the SOE as well as a tool to create business rules used within the processes. The example “Order Process” contains two business rules that must be defined: Rule 1 – Approval Required: when x>1000 and Rule 2 – Approved: when y=ok.

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Concepts, Technology, and Design

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Concepts, Technology, and Design by Thomas Erl

Book Description

This is a comprehensive tutorial that teaches fundamental and advanced SOA service oriented architecture design principles, supplemented with detailed case studies and technologies used to implement SOAs in the real world.

***We'll have cover endorsements from Tom Glover, who leads IBM's Web Services Standards initiatives; Dave Keogh, Program Manager for Visual Studio Enterprise Tools at Microsoft, and Sameer Tyagi, Senior Staff Engineer, Sun Microsystems. All major software manufacturers and vendors are promoting support for SOA Service Oriented Architecture. As a result, every major development platform now officially supports the creation of service-oriented solutions.

Parts I, II, and III cover basic and advanced Service Oriented Architecture SOA concepts and theory that prepare you for Parts IV and V, which provide a series of step-by-step "how to" instructions for building an Service Oriented Architecture SOA. Part V further contains coverage of WS-* technologies and SOA platform support provided by J2EE and .NET.

Barriers to a successful SOA service oriented architecture project

Barriers to a successful SOA service oriented architecture project

If you're getting the idea that using service oriented architecture SOA principles will require more time and effort initially, you're right. While the basic concepts of service oriented architecture SOA are fairly simple to understand, actually doing the work required to architect a solution that uses service-oriented principles will require more effort than using traditional point-to-point methods to architect a solution.

We've already discussed some of the benefits of service oriented architecture SOA. While the promise and perhaps the hype will motivate many to undertake service oriented architecture SOA projects, several barriers can stand in the way of their success. This failure to achieve optimal results doesn't have to be your experience. Before you dive in to your own service oriented architecture SOA plans, consider how your organization will handle the following barriers:

Reluctance to collaborate across teams and organizations. Interdepartmental politics is one of the largest barriers to realizing a successful service oriented architecture SOA project. Such politics can keep teams from working together to define an architecture of services that may cross departmental boundaries. These services may in fact need to cross development team boundaries. Services also may require lines of business and IT to work together more closely than they may have before. To make projects succeed, development teams must be rewarded not only for how well they implemented their own part of the architecture, but also for how well those pieces participate in the greater architecture.

Unwillingness to learn a different approach and/or lack of background understanding. Many of us tend to cling to the known and resist shifting to the unknown. On the other hand, many architects and developers may be willing to learn but lack the basic education required to understand the service oriented architecture SOA approach. Architecting solutions using service-oriented principles will require both the willingness to learn some additional skills and the basic background needed to help acquire those skills. This means that if your organization is new to SOA, you should account for the need for education as part of your service oriented architecture SOA adoption plans. And plan for this education both in terms of the cost needed to ramp up, and the time needed to ramp up. Because service oriented architecture SOA is relatively new, formal educational opportunities will be few. As a result, many teams today are finding it most effective to learn through direct experience.

Focusing on technologies rather than architecture. It's tempting to immediately start looking at Web services and imagine how you'd start mapping existing functionality to service interfaces. Slow down—while some in the SOA field believe that it's effective to approach service oriented architecture SOA in a bottom-up manner, doing so can run the risk of creating services that are only of limited use in other projects. Jumping immediately to focusing on technologies also runs the risk of creating services that are less loosely coupled than may be desired.

Unwillingness or inability to make necessary investments. The nature of the business and the need to deliver solutions on a tight time schedule often makes it difficult to use service oriented architecture SOA, especially if you're starting from scratch. As we've addressed, you should expect to make a substantial initial investment in time and possibly in platforms and frameworks in order to realize benefits on your successive efforts. The worst situation occurs when business or IT teams launch an service oriented architecture SOA initiative without fully counting the cost. Acknowledging these costs and planning for them up front can increase your business' chances of launching a successful SOA initiative.

Taking on too large of a project. Avoid taking on more than you can handle at once. For instance, trying to convert an entire organization's application functionality over to an service oriented architecture SOA at once can be problematic. It is important to make sure you determine the appropriate services to enable based on potential cost savings, reusability and revenue. In other words, start small. Then build out your services in an incremental fashion. This will give you time to learn, succeed, and realize increasing returns on leveraging services you've already created.

Characteristics of a service - SOA Service Oriented Architecture

Characteristics of a service - SOA Service Oriented Architecture

Another way to understand Service Oriented Architecture SOA is by looking at it from the perspective of the characteristics of its services. Consider these factors as you evaluate whether the services you define adhere to Service Oriented Architecture SOA principles:

Services should be meaningful. Ideally, you'll design services to meet business requirements as well as functional requirements. These services should be at an appropriate level of granularity tailored to their location in the architecture. (We'll discuss granularity in more detail in a later section.)

Services should be contract-based. The service itself is implemented with the clear understanding that it is fulfilling a set of obligations that are expressed in a contract that is shared between the service provider and the service consumer. As a result, service's consumer can better understand what it must provide to that service and what that service will provide in return. This is more than a definition of operations on a service, but it also should include the semantics of how the service is used. The contract should include specific policies that define who may access the services, what service levels might be expected, etc.

Services should be self-contained and modular. Services should be able to stand on their own with few dependencies. Where dependencies exist to other application functionality or other services, access should be as loosely coupled as possible. In addition, much like you would define an object in object-oriented analysis, services should be cohesive. They should have a single cohesive purpose for existing and a clear definition of the scope of what the service does. If done properly, services will be composable, meaning that several services may be leveraged and composed to create new applications or services with minimal additional programming.

Services should be loosely coupled. This has two key implications. First, the service interface or contract should be independent of the implementation or application code used to fulfill service requests. Second, the contract should not expose any assumptions about the language or data representations used to implement the service request. In this way, service consumers aren't forced to process data types that may not be native to the language used to implement the consumer.

Services should be location-independent. Don't build assumptions into service providers or consumers as to the physical location of the service. This enables flexibility in moving where the service is hosted, routing requests to multiple instances of the service, or even substituting a different service implementation that might adhere to the same service contract. Instead, the Service Oriented Architecture SOA should leverage a service repository or registry where services can register themselves and where consumers can go to locate a service instance. (For more on registries, see The importance of a registry for a service-oriented architecture.)

Services should utilize models. One of the significant characteristics of an Service Oriented Architecture SOA is that services express themselves as models. Models define service capabilities and attributes as well as describe relationships between services. Models can also be used to describe the data being exchanged. This approach is powerful because models make it possible to transform data so that service consumers aren't necessarily bound to the data definitions exposed by the service provider. This freedom gives an Service Oriented Architecture SOA its ability to adapt and to enable rapid composition of services.

Key SOA service oriented architecture principles

Key SOA service oriented architecture principles

Several key principles can guide you as you plan to create an service oriented architecture SOA-based solution. First, remember this: When you begin applying service oriented architecture SOA principles, always do so with an eye toward a specific business domain. For example, in the above illustration, our domain was banking. When we design the services in this example, we'd typically design them to apply to this specific domain. But in some cases, the services will be useful in other domains as well.

Now let's look at the principles of designing an architecture by layers—evaluating the traits of services, and choosing the appropriate level of granularity for each service.

The architecture layers

When designing an architecture using service oriented principles, keep in mind that there are several key layers to the architecture. Each of these layers serves an important purpose. These layers are:

Service enablement: We can consider this first layer as the foundational layer. Many of the key services for the particular domain live here. In our example above, this is where we'll find services such as the checking account service, customer vault service, etc. Some of the enabling capabilities may exist here as well, such as application servers, management services, etc. But note that we don't really have an service oriented architecture SOA if we stop here. Instead, we may have a collection of loosely coupled components. In fact, it may be that these services aren't even loosely coupled. At this level, it may be tempting to simply build out applications using point-to-point connections to these services. Indeed, this is the way many web services applications have been built to date.

Service architecture: When we move to this next level, we can begin to realize the value of an architecture that is service oriented. Here, we'd include many of the architectural services that may be required for any service oriented architecture SOA-based solution. These are key services (discovery, transformation, security, orchestration, messaging and integration) that other services within the solution can depend on. We may also have some domain-specific services here that the other services can leverage. In the case of our banking domain example, such a leverage-able service might include an auditing service, important in banking because regulations require that all transactions are available for audit.

Service model: In this final layer, we can realize the real power of the service oriented architecture SOA approach. Here, we can begin describing the various services and their relationship to each other in terms of a model that can be stored, exchanged, and used to automate interactions, facilitate the creation of orchestrated services, and so on. This is also where we can begin to describe the relationship of services at the functional level to services as they may be understood by business entities that care more about service levels and semantics of the interactions than they care about which the language the service was implemented in or what business logic was written to realize the service. This is a significant part of service oriented architecture SOA because it allows us to use the same services while creating different models to define different service relationships for different domains or solutions.

Comparing SOA and Web services

Comparing SOA and Web services

You may have heard service oriented architecture SOA referred to synonymously with Web services. But it's important to realize that service oriented architecture SOA and Web services are not the same. Web services themselves deserve their own, more detailed discussion in a separate paper. In this current paper, let's take a moment to explore why service oriented architecture SOA is not the same thing as Web services.

Remember when the idea of object orientated programming became popular? During that time, C++ was an emerging programming language that happened to have strong support for object-oriented programming. But it would be inaccurate to say that a program written in C++ was object oriented: object orientation is an architectural approach, and C++ happens to be one language by which you could realize this architecture. The same principle holds true for service oriented architecture SOA and Web services. SOA service oriented architecture is the philosophy or approach used in designing the solution. Using Web services is simply a way in which you could realize this architecture. So let's keep in mind that using Web services isn't the only way to build out an SOA service oriented architecture. So, just as it is possible to use C++ as a language and not have an object oriented program, it is also possible to use Web services and not have an SOA.

Defining SOA service-oriented architecture

Defining SOA service-oriented architecture

This section will address defining SOA service-oriented architecture and look at what makes it unique.

Key elements

It's important to understand the key elements of service-oriented architecture SOA. With that goal in mind, let's begin by breaking down the service-oriented architecture SOA acronym into its core elements. We'll start with the last part first: architecture.

Let's look at the architecture in the context of service-oriented architecture SOA. Typically in software, architecture defines the overall definition and intercommunication of various high-level components. In simple terms, it's how we break down a solution into logical units and how they'll interoperate. In this sense, SOA represents an architectural approach that's focused on the definition and interaction of services.

Because service-oriented architecture SOA is a set of architectural principles, you can't go out and buy one. You may be able to buy middleware components that provide enabling technologies and core services. But by themselves, they aren't an SOA.

Let's move on to another piece of SOA: service-oriented. Service-oriented means that we'll center our solution architecture on a collection of services. If you've had experience with Object Oriented Design (OOD), this may seem familiar. In fact, these two approaches have many elements in common.

A service is a way of thinking about and organizing business functionality so it can effectively stand on its own. The service-oriented architecture SOA approach considers this functionality in terms of service providers and service consumers.

Service providers offer functionality as a set of interfaces to the service capabilities they provide. Service consumers will access the service capabilities provided by the service provider. These consumers may be an application or even a service provider. For example, a checking account service may offer a set of functionality relating to a checking account. This account may offer the ability to make a deposit, make a withdrawal, create a new account, etc. Notice that the capabilities we've described are very specific to the concept of checking account service. Also notice that we haven't yet said whether this service is provided by some banking software, by an ATM machine, by a teller in a bank, or all of the above.

Some may argue that this definition of service-oriented architecture SOA is just the latest way to describe and model application functionality. But it is important to realize that most applications today have been built with an end user in mind. To that end, an application may encapsulate a group of tasks that are related in some ways but are also discrete.

One of the key distinctions of an SOA service-oriented architecture is the fact that the consumer of some application functionality may in fact be another application or service. While human users tend to prefer all functionality aggregated together and accessible through one user interface, other applications don't have the same requirement. As a result, it makes sense to have functionality organized around a set of services that can be self-contained and yet can be woven together to create higher level functionality or services.

Once you apply these architectural principles, you'll end up with a set of services that can interact to provide a specific set of functionality with a business benefit. And now re-use comes into play: You could rapidly build another solution that reuses some of these services as well as some additional services that may be required to satisfy the business requirements. In the end, these services are woven into a kind of software ecosystem. Here, they cooperate to achieve a business objective but may also participate in other ecosystems that offer the same service capability for potentially different end solutions.

Why SOA Service Oriented Architecture?

Why SOA?

Most IT organizations today must justify their projects with an expected return on investment. IT now faces pressures on a number of fronts:

Requirements to be more responsive and flexible to shifting business needs
Challenges of handling often-incompatible, heterogeneous software systems
Demands to bring new business services to a broader array of consumers ranging from customers accessing services via web interfaces, to partners sharing information to improve working relationships and deliver increasing value to mutual customers, to companies sharing information with the supply chain to decrease manufacturing time and costs
Understandably, IT organizations are seeking solutions to help them meet these increasing demands in the most cost-effective way.

The value of SOA Service Oriented Architecture has perhaps been oversold as a methodology and has often been mistakenly promoted as a technology that will solve all of the problems discussed above. However, an SOA approach can in fact bring numerous benefits to an IT organization. Let's look at these potential benefits within three categories:

Standarized interfaces and data models: SOA Service Oriented Architecture can help reduce costs of building new functionality from heterogeneous software systems and incompatible data by providing standardized interfaces and data models.

Re-use: If done properly, these service definitions and data models enable the ability for re-use, thereby reducing the overall cost of application development projects built on these principles. This is especially true for ongoing maintenance and building new applications built by leveraging existing services.

Composability: SOA Service Oriented Architecture enables the idea of composability. This means that new services can be rapidly built from existing services. This ability makes IT organizations more agile than ever before, as they can then respond to continuously evolving business objectives. This may make it possible for you to leverage not only your own services, but also services from other organizations, from partners, or from suppliers with whom you contract to provide these services.

What is SOA service-oriented architecture?

What is SOA service-oriented architecture? An introduction to SOA By Raghu R. Kodali

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an evolution of distributed computing based on the request/reply design paradigm for synchronous and asynchronous applications. An application's business logic or individual functions are modularized and presented as services for consumer/client applications. What's key to these services is their loosely coupled nature; i.e., the service interface is independent of the implementation. Application developers or system integrators can build applications by composing one or more services without knowing the services' underlying implementations. For example, a service can be implemented either in .Net or J2EE, and the application consuming the service can be on a different platform or language.

SOAService-oriented architectures have the following key characteristics:

Service-oriented architecture SOA services have self-describing interfaces in platform-independent XML documents. Web Services Description Language (WSDL) is the standard used to describe the services.

Service-oriented architecture SOA services communicate with messages formally defined via XML Schema (also called XSD). Communication among consumers and providers or services typically happens in heterogeneous environments, with little or no knowledge about the provider. Messages between services can be viewed as key business documents processed in an enterprise.

Service-oriented architecture SOA services are maintained in the enterprise by a registry that acts as a directory listing. Applications can look up the services in the registry and invoke the service. Universal Description, Definition, and Integration (UDDI) is the standard used for service registry.

Each SOA service has a quality of service (QoS) associated with it. Some of the key QoS elements are security requirements, such as authentication and authorization, reliable messaging, and policies regarding who can invoke services.

Why SOA Service-oriented architecture?

The reality in IT enterprises is that infrastructure is heterogeneous across operating systems, applications, system software, and application infrastructure. Some existing applications are used to run current business processes, so starting from scratch to build new infrastructure isn't an option. Enterprises should quickly respond to business changes with agility; leverage existing investments in applications and application infrastructure to address newer business requirements; support new channels of interactions with customers, partners, and suppliers; and feature an architecture that supports organic business. Service-oriented architecture SOA with its loosely coupled nature allows enterprises to plug in new services or upgrade existing services in a granular fashion to address the new business requirements, provides the option to make the services consumable across different channels, and exposes the existing enterprise and legacy applications as services, thereby safeguarding existing IT infrastructure investments.

How You Talk about SOA service oriented architecture to the Business

How You Talk about SOA service oriented architecture to the Business

SOA service oriented architecture implementations thus far have been fairly small. For instance, according to this IT World article, the benchmarking non-profit APQC reports that 43 percent of its respondents report having at least one service oriented architecture SOA service in production, but the average is three. That would seem to corroborate what analysts and consultants are saying: Mostly, companies are doing proof-of-concept service oriented architecture SOA services rather than full-scale implementations.

Of course, this is destined to change. Already, I’m starting to see more focus on the question, “How should IT talk about service oriented architecture service oriented architecture SOA to the business?”

Good question. The smart money seems to be on: Whatever you do, don’t talk about the technology. Talk about what SOA can do for the business.

In this Linkedin.com question and answer, a self-described “IT representative to the business” asks “What does SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) mean to Business Folks?” A CTO responds, “First, don’t talk about SOA.” He continues on, adding a bit later:

I’m constantly frustrated by the excessive focus on the technology of SOA service oriented architecture at the expense of the real potential of service oriented architecture SOA to transform the way a company does business. And, almost all SOA projects come from the IT department and just talk about the technical/infrastructure pieces.

His response is well worth reading. I really like his point about not pushing business process automation when most companies still haven’t Web-enabled many, many legacy applications.

Microsoft employee Avinash Nicklas Chan Kumar Malik (Nick Malik) also recently tackled this question on his blog, Inside Architecture. He compares the way IT currently sells SOA to an architect trying to sell him on a house addition by talking about how easy it will be to add on a room or how he’ll use standard wood and wiring. Instead, the architect talked to him about aesethics, lifestyle and functionality. IT can take a lesson, he argues. Malik writes:

I’ve decided that the best way to “Sell SOA” to the business is not to sell SOA service oriented architecture to the business. Let’s talk about the aesthetics, the features, the speed and reliability, the automation of their business processes to allow them to focus and innovate where it counts. Let’s not talk about standard parts.

Both of these items make excellent points about how you can talk about service oriented architecture SOA.

That said, I’m going to respectfully disagree with the contention you shouldn’t talk about the technology aspects when you talk about SOA service oriented architecture.

Let me explain.

First, when you ask, “How do I talk to the business about service oriented architecture SOA,” what you really want to know is: “How do I convince business executives to spend money on retraining and new SOA tools — whether that’s middleware, development tools or new hardware? And then how do I explain why they should put up with the inevitable application deployment delays, increased testing and the numerous meetings with business managers and users as we shift to service-oriented architecture?”

And therein lies the problem. Much of the benefits of SOA service oriented architecture — agility, quicker deployments, less cost for development — won’t come immediately. And even if you could reap that ROI immediately, there’s still the credibility problem.

You see, IT has promised all of this before. And in recent years, the business has grown impatient with spending money on technology solutions that promise to fix business problems, only to find next year IT wants more money, again to fix the same problems.

Imagine if Malik’s architect came back and told Malik he was going to have to rebuild that house addition. Wouldn’t you want to know why? And if that architect said, “Because it will be better… and because the first room didn’t follow coding standards.” The architect would probably be fired. But let’s assume he isn’t. My guess is, Malik and anyone else in that position is suddenly going to be very interested in having conversation about standards and materials and foundations.

Plus, it’s a bit condescending to think business won’t understand the technology reasons behind this change. Real life isn’t like Greg the Architect: Business leaders don’t need to hear the words “ROI” to understand benefits of SOA service oriented architecture.

Of course, you shouldn’t start out the conversation by talking about the technical aspects of SOA service oriented architecture. Business value is definitely the place to begin. But be prepared to discuss services and explain why service oriented architecture SOA is better that EAI or standard development practices — my guess is, there will be questions.

Capitalising on SOA Service Oriented Architecture

Capitalising on SOA Service Oriented Architecture

In a world of rapidly evolving enterprise landscapes the ability to adapt to changing business needs is more crucial than ever. SOA Service Oriented Architecture is not only able to facilitate this but is also allowing organisations to standardise and unify business processes and align IT architecture with business drivers.

While many appreciate the theoretical benefits that are offered by Service Oriented Architecture SOA and web services they have either struggled to realise this potential or have resisted re-designing their architecture because of the perceived risks and costly overheads. However organisations that have successfully implemented Service Oriented Architecture SOA in conjunction with refining business processes are not only seeing direct benefits of agility, standardisation and interoperability, but are shaping their architecture to comply with the demands of the foreseeable future.

This conference will tackle both the strategic and technical aspects of designing and building components of a Service Oriented Architecture SOA and web services that will produce tangible business gains. It will also demonstrate measures that your organisation can take to identify and minimise associated risks. Topics to be explored include:

• Adopting Service Oriented Architecture SOA as a support tool for business processes
• Identifying services that will benefit your organisation
• Building services capable of achieving the desired results
• Evaluating whether to include an Enterprise Service Bus in your Service Oriented Architecture SOA
• Adopting and conforming to appropriate standards
• Appreciating the significance of Enterprise Architecture in a successful Service Oriented ArchitectureSOA

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) definition

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) definition

A service-oriented architecture SOA is essentially a collection of services. These services communicate with each other. The communication can involve either simple data passing or it could involve two or more services coordinating some activity. Some means of connecting services to each other is needed.

Service-oriented architectures SOA are not a new thing. The first SOA service-oriented architecture for many people in the past was with the use DCOM or Object Request Brokers (ORBs) based on the CORBA specification. For more on DCOM and CORBA, see Prior service-oriented architectures (new window).

Services
If a SOA service-oriented architecture is to be effective, we need a clear understanding of the term service. A service is a function that is well-defined, self-contained, and does not depend on the context or state of other services. See Service (new window).

Connections
The technology of Web services (new window) is the most likely connection technology of SOA service-oriented architectures. Web services essentially use XML (new window) to create a robust connection.

The following figure illustrates a basic SOA service-oriented architecture. It shows a service consumer at the right sending a service request message to a service provider at the left. The service provider returns a response message to the service consumer. The request and subsequent response connections are defined in some way that is understandable to both the service consumer and service provider. How those connections are defined is explained in Web Services explained (new window). A service provider can also be a service consumer.

SOA Book - Enterprise SOA: Service-Oriented Architecture Best Practices

SOA Book - Enterprise SOA: Service-Oriented Architecture Best Practices (The Coad Series) by Dirk Krafzig, Karl Banke, Dirk Slama

Average Customer Review: based on 18 reviews.
Customer Review: This is a great introduction to SOA Service-Oriented Architecture. The authors focus on the fundamentals of SOA, displaying both wisdom and honesty as they discuss the structure of an SOA, its essential and optional elements, strategies for Service-Oriented Architecture SOA introduction (from technical and organizational points of view), Service-Oriented Architecture SOA oriented project management techniques, success

SOA Book - SOA Service-Oriented Architecture : A Field Guide to Integrating XML and Web Services

SOA Service-Oriented Architecture : A Field Guide to Integrating XML and Web Services by Thomas Erl

Average Customer Review: based on 32 reviews.
Customer Review: Others have already told you how good this book is. I want to add my 2 cents by highlighting the last few chapters. Thomas gives you 2 chapters on best practices - chapter 12 for integrating XML in the enterprise SOA Service-Oriented Architecture, and chapter 13 for integrating web services in the enterprise Service-Oriented Architecture. As noted in earlier reviews, Thomas provides pros and con...

SEO Book - Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): A Planning and Implementation Guide for Business and Technology

SEO Book - Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): A Planning and Implementation Guide for Business and Technology by Eric A. Marks, Michael Bell

Average Customer Review: based on 32 reviews.
Customer Review: Much has been written about the promise of Service-Oriented Architecture SOA and, at the same time, the difficulty in realizing that promise to date. Most of us who work in this field know by now how to address the technical concepts, architecture and services in an Service-Oriented Architecture SOA. Where this book stands apart from so many others is that it provides both conceptual and pra...

SOA Book - Service Oriented Architecture SOA For Dummies

Service Oriented Architecture SOA For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))
by Judith Hurwitz, Robin Bloor, Carol Baroudi, Marcia Kaufman

Average Customer Review: based on 6 reviews.
Customer Review: It's hard to imagine how anyone even remotely aware of Service Oriented Architecture SOA could be classified as a `dummy'. But, looked at another way, this book's title `SOA for Dummies' makes perfect sense. The authors - all from the consulting firm Hurwitz and Associates - strongly believe that Service Oriented Architecture SOA has the makings of one of those disruptive new technologies tha...

SOA Book - Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Concepts, Technology, and Design

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Concepts, Technology, and Design (The Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series from Thomas Erl) by Thomas Erl

Average Customer Review: based on 55 reviews.
Customer Review: Thomas Erl is service oriented architecture SOA approach guru, this book should be read by everyone who wants to know about service oriented architecture SOA and who are planning to implement. This applies to both IT and business managers. The best thing about this book are the case studies for each concept and the "plain english" analogy for each service oriented architecture SOA concept. It is a must read.

SOA Book - Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Concepts, Technology, and Design

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Concepts, Technology, and Design (The Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series from Thomas Erl) by Thomas Erl

Average Customer Review: based on 55 reviews.
Customer Review: Thomas Erl is service oriented architecture SOA approach guru, this book should be read by everyone who wants to know about service oriented architecture SOA and who are planning to implement. This applies to both IT and business managers. The best thing about this book are the case studies for each concept and the "plain english" analogy for each service oriented architecture SOA concept. It is a must read.

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Suite Solution Assessments

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Suite Solution Assessments

The Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Suite Solution Assessments encapsulate a broad and constantly evolving facet of the application infrastructure market, namely software solutions that aim to reinvent enterprise software as a flexible, service-based medium that can quickly respond to business drivers without imposing the costs normally associated with flexibility and agility.

These solutions, called Service-Oriented Architecture SOA Suites, comprise a series of design, development, runtime and management tools that are closely intertwined. Together, these tools help customers stop wasting development and management dollars on discrete, monolithic applications and instead create, deploy and then re-use discrete services. Built using highly codified interface standards, these services can be combined (and recombined) to form very agile applications capable of running within heterogeneous environments and interacting with a wide array of other applications through these standard interfaces.

With our coverage of Service-Oriented Architecture SOA Suites, we will:

• Evaluate software and service solutions from leading Service-Oriented Architecture SOA Suite vendors including IBM, Oracle, TIBCO, BEA, Software AG, IONA, Red Hat, Microsoft, Sun, Progress Software and SAP.
• Define individual suite components, discussing the capabilities of each.
• Evaluate suite components as a holistic solution from the perspective of a potential buyer.
• Weigh each vendor's ability to meet specific selection criteria such as packaging, services, interoperability, standards support, market and geographic reach, cohesion of the overall portfolio as well as deployment and administration.

What's more, Service-Oriented Architecture SOA Suite Solution Assessment subscribers will be able to see how these vendors compare, side-by-side, mapping out pros and cons for each criteria and overall solution. And as the market changes, so too will this Solution Assessment. If a vendor purchases a leading runtime governance vendor, that vendor's evaluation and the relevant evaluations of competing vendors will reflect that change in the market, making this a perfect tool for competitive intelligence.

Components of Event-driven SOA

Components of Event-driven SOA

What are all the components of service oriented architecture SOA and EDA, and how can they be used together in one architecture?

Services: DNA of SOA
The most easily understood component of service oriented architecture SOA is services. These are software modules that represent reusable business functionality, like “process order” or “bill customer.” There are also system services, like auditing, logging, and even orchestration.

SOA service oriented architecture is fundamentally heterogeneous, which basically means companies host services on many different platforms. The majority of companies have Java, Java EE, and .NET-based services. Most companies also service enable existing applications, exposing functionality as services using adapters or web services.

Events: DNA of EDA
A business event is any activity that happens inside or outside your business. If you’re lucky, an event is captured somewhere in your software infrastructure either directly or indirectly.

There are thousands to millions of events that occur in most companies on a daily basis. All events somehow get noted and affect the operations of a company. Most events will not be relevant, some will have a negative impact on a business, others will have a positive impact, and a few will offer a big opportunity.

All companies are event driven, since our world is event driven. However, most IT applications and processes are geared toward predictable, repeatable events. It’s when events happen that are notable or exceptional that most businesses have trouble. Most companies also find it hard to fit an event into a larger trend that may affect their business.

SOA and EDA: Separate Architectures or the Same?

SOA and EDA: Separate Architectures or the Same? - SOA and EDA, and the Problems They Solve

For several years companies have been trying to solve two strategic problems with middleware. The first is how to automate and streamline business processes that span multiple divisions and applications. The second is how to detect and react to specific business events or problems as they happen, and to automate more intelligent responses.

These two problems are really part of the same problem: how to automate your business. Your business consists of events, tasks, and processes. When automating your processes with software, business events often trigger business processes. Business processes often generate business events.

SOA service oriented architecture is now widely recognized as a solution to the first problem and an approach that delivers new functionality faster with greater productivity and greater flexibility to accommodate changes. EDA has been around for a while but is not widely known. It’s now becoming more widely used to solve the second problem of detecting and reacting to events.

The bad news is some service oriented architecture SOA technologies don’t support EDA, so you could end up having to spend more money on a second architecture to gain EDA capabilities. And then every time you wanted to automate or change part of your business, you’d need to change two different systems.

The good news is service oriented architecture SOA and EDA can be part of the same architecture. In fact, an “advanced SOA” or “event-driven SOA service oriented architecture” is an evolution of SOA service oriented architecture that has already been implemented by several companies. Following the very principles of SOA service oriented architecture, these companies have been able to incrementally add on eventdriven technologies as needed.

Microsoft Dynamics™ Enabling Real-World SOA to connect your business vision with software

Microsoft Dynamics™ Enabling Real-World SOA to connect your business vision with software

Overview: Microsoft Dynamics has made investments in Web services and other Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) technologies across our product lines to help customers take a "Real-World" approach to Service Oriented Architecture SOA. This paper walks you through the tools and technologies that enable service orientation. The purpose of this paper is to share with you the value of Real-World SOA Service Oriented Architecture and a few success stories from our customers who have taken on Real-World SOA Service Oriented Architecture projects to support their business vision.

Microsoft Dynamics SL has long helped small and midsize organizations operate more effectively. The latest version—Microsoft Dynamics SL 7.0—empowers your employees, managers, customers, and vendors to be even more productive. It also helps increase effectiveness by providing the tools your people need to view and process data based on the permissions that you establish

The Merging of SOA and Web 2.0

The Merging of SOA and Web 2.0 By Darryl K. Taft

Dan Cahoon was looking for a way to streamline staffing operations at tax company H&R Block, the nation's largest seasonal employer. Rather than use traditional desktop-based software for the job, the senior systems architect at H&R Block was able to deliver service-oriented architecture SOA-connected AJAX portlets to more than 12,000 branch offices for temporary work spaces to meet the company's staffing needs.

ADVERTISEMENT Cahoon's example illustrates the growing trend of merging Web 2.0 technologies with SOA (service-oriented architecture) to address issues normally handled through PC-based software, resulting in faster, cheaper and more flexible solutions.

"Web 2.0 is used in many ways but predominantly has two aspects—one social, the other technical," said Kevin Hakman, director of developer evangelism at TIBCO Software, in Palo Alto, Calif. H&R Block is a TIBCO customer and used TIBCO products for its service-oriented architecture SOA deployment.

"On the social side, Web 2.0 is about a phenomenon of shifting the publishing power out to users and away from centrally controlled publishing processes," Hakman said. "The ability for users to blog and syndicate their posts, the notion of a wiki as a collaboration amongst users, [and] the evolving idea of a mashup as something the user can assemble from existing Web parts and data are all examples of the power to compose being provided to the many."

Furthermore, Web sites and Web applications using AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) to improve ease of use make it even simpler for users to compose blogs and assemble mashups, Hakman said. Desktop-installed software increasingly is being displaced through the use of AJAX and services, he said.

"Google Docs and Yahoo Mail Plus are examples of this, substantially providing the core features of Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook," Hakman said.

Two of the industry's hottest buzzwords are combining to fuel one of the hottest emerging trends in the industry—the use of Web 2.0 technologies acting as front ends to SOA back-end environments.

This trend touches on RIAs (rich Internet applications), mashups, AJAX, RSS, REST (Representational State Transfer) and other Web 2.0 areas. Now being referred to as Enterprise 2.0, the Web 2.0 technologies are helping to create rich interactive front ends to service-oriented architecture SOA back-end systems. In addition, line-of-business users who typically are nondevelopers can take services and build mashups without IT involvement—a potential boon for productivity but also a possible problem without proper governance.

"What's really changing is the impact that Web 2.0 technologies are having on service-oriented architecture SOA—in fact, changing the approaches," said Dan Hushon, chief technology officer at EMC's Grid Business Unit, in Hopkinton, Mass. "Web 2.0 concepts and technologies may, over time, displace the WS-* stack in many cases.

"For example, where we used to see SOAP [Simple Object Access Protocol] and JSON [JavaScript Object Notation]/REST APIs to services—e.g., Google—we are now seeing mainly JSON/REST," Hushon said. "And, in fact, REST, with its more data-centric approach, may very well prove to be better aligned with the need for collaborating around data. However, systemic security remains an Achilles' heel for REST."

Tibco Offers SOA Governance with Amberpoint Runtime Technology

Tibco Offers SOA Governance with Amberpoint Runtime Technology

TIBCO Software unveiled a comprehensive, standards-based policy solution for service-oriented architecture, TIBCO ActiveMatrix Policy Manager. TIBCO leveraged AmberPoint’s market-leading SOA runtime governance technology to deliver optimized policy-based capabilities. Also, the companies will continue to collaborate on service oriented architecture SOA research and development to drive the adoption of policy interoperability for increasing customer flexibility and choice.


TIBCO ActiveMatrix Policy Manager is one of several products under the TIBCO ActiveMatrix platform, which is designed to help companies quickly create and deploy new applications and business processes leveraging reusable “services” in a heterogeneous environment. The TIBCO ActiveMatrix platform is fully modular, allowing organizations to select any of the core products such as policy management to address requirements including governance as they arise throughout the SOA lifecycle.

Silicon Storage Technology, Inc. Selects TIBCO SOA Offerings

Silicon Storage Technology, Inc. Selects TIBCO SOA Offerings

TIBCO Software Inc. announced that Silicon Storage Technology, Inc. (SST), a provider of flash memory technology, has selected TIBCO Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) software for their new online business-to-business (B2B) partner trading community.

SST will deploy TIBCO BusinessWorks and TIBCO BusinessConnect - now renamed TIBCO BusinessWorks Partner Connect - for the delivery of services that will integrate existing applications, enable the secure exchange of critical information and streamline business processes involving multiple organizations. All this will help to facilitate the flow of real-time data between SST and their large ecosystem of third-party suppliers to manage inventory and reduce fulfillment times.

"SST ships 2 Million units of products a day and to achieve that we work with different vendors to manufacture our flash memory chips, so efficient supply chain management is crucial to deliver our products to market on-time," said Chi Yin, Vice President, Information Technology & Global Communications, SST. "After careful consideration of competing vendor solutions, we selected TIBCO based on their depth and breadth of SOA and B2B expertise, and the ease-of-use and flexibility of their products. We're confident TIBCO will optimize our supply chain and provide unparalleled visibility into our business, helping us achieve operational efficiencies and cost savings."

TIBCO's solutions for B2B integration are based on the RosettaNet and EDI standards, which enable SST and its partners to interact more efficiently and cost-effectively over the Internet. TIBCO BusinessWorks' standards-based Enterprise Service Bus backbone will mediate interactions among disparate applications and databases, automate business processes, manage transactions and Web services, and handle exceptions and process events. With TIBCO BusinessConnect software, SST will conduct transactions with other businesses through the secure exchange of business documents and automated cross-company processes.

TIBCO Expands Event-Driven SOA Capabilities with New Ajax Messaging Service

TIBCO Expands Event-Driven SOA Capabilities with New Ajax Messaging Service

Scalable Ajax Server Delivers Real-time Data to Web Pages and Application Clients
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN, 8 May 2007 – TIBCO Software Inc. (NASDAQ: TIBX) today announced the planned release of enterprise messaging software – TIBCO Ajax Message Service Version 1.0 – that pushes live data and events from servers to Web pages, Ajax applications and other software.

TIBCO has a long history in facilitating real-time information flow with its enterprise message software by publishing events and messages across a network without the subscribing applications needing to request or "poll" for data. Given the exponential growth of Ajax RIAs, TIBCO sought to incorporate Ajax into its messaging capabilities to support HTTP and provide the opportunity for organisations to offer rich, interactive services and information such as real-time notifications, dashboards or financial services portfolio management and derivatives data via Web-based infrastructure.

"TIBCO Active Message Service is a natural extension of TIBCO's legacy in enterprise message bus technology," said Kathleen Quirk, program manager for IDC's enterprise workplace applications and portal strategies research. "Combining real-time data delivery with a rich client on the front-end provides an enhanced level of usability for business users, and gives developers an enterprise-tested set of technologies to build applications that are more in tune with business information requirements."

TIBCO Active Message Service enables data and events to stream to the client over the firewall-friendly HTTP networks that make up corporate intranets and the Web. Further, in keeping with enterprises' preferences to deliver applications to the ubiquitous Web browser, TIBCO Active Message Service requires no plug-ins, applets, Active-X controls or software installations to connect. Product functionality highlights include support for multiple concurrent users; performance monitoring; multiplexing to combine message streams over a single HTTP connection; throttling to detect available bandwidth and adjust data flows accordingly; and the filtering of data streams.

"The ability to push data to the browser has been around for a while, however the real differentiation as it relates to enterprise use is with scalability and reliability of such solutions," said Kevin Hakman, director, TIBCO. "TIBCO Active Message Service is a specialised server for this purpose. With features such as message multiplexing, filtering, automatic bandwidth detection and data throttling, TIBCO Active Message Service simplifies the inherent difficulties of scaling such capabilities and makes them turn-key for our customers. Accordingly, TIBCO expects TIBCO Active Message Service will deliver tremendous value across the enterprise by further extending event-driven SOA."

In addition, TIBCO also announced an OEM licence agreement with Lightstreamer for its high-performance push/streaming engine. Leveraging the Lightstreamer engine as its core, TIBCO Active Message Service represents one of the industry's first enterprise software Ajax solution for streaming enterprise data, such as stock quotes, to end user rich internet applications (RIAs). TIBCO Active Message Service Version 1.0 will be generally available by the end of May 2007 and can be used with or without TIBCO's award winning Ajax graphical user interface toolkit: TIBCO General Interface. To learn more about TIBCO's comprehensive Ajax, SOA and Messaging offerings, please visit www.tibco.com

TIBCO boosts SOA-RIA market with donation of Ajax messaging bus to OpenAjax Alliance

TIBCO boosts SOA-RIA market with donation of Ajax messaging bus to OpenAjax Alliance by Dana Gardner

Filed under SOA, Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, enterprise software, mashups, 2.0 Design Thinking, SaaS, open source

TIBCO Software is easing the way for Ajax component interoperability with the donation this week of its core Ajax message bus technology to the OpenAjax Alliance (OAA) Hub project. TIBCO announced the donation today, at the same time as it released its PageBus, a related open source product.

What’s in it for you? Well, besides the technological benefits, developers could walk away with a 50-inch plasma TV or a 30-GB iPod, if they enter — and win — the Ultimate Mashup Ajax Challenge.

PageBus applies “publish and subscribe” message bus programming patterns within the context of a single Web page, allowing communication among multiple Ajax components. This allows developers to create composite applications from reusable parts and services. All of this is designed to reduce development costs, improve interfaces over HTML and increase business agility.

The message-bus approach solves one of the key problems that comes from combining increasingly sophisticated composite applications. As the number of composite applications and mashups increase, the programming — and needed event-driven reliability — required can increase exponentially.

What’s more, creating client-SOA applications becomes easier because the same conceptual architecture — publish and subscribe — is used for both rich Internet client (RIA) activities as well as for compositing backend services. TIBCO says it has large banks and other users delivering mission critical, real-time data through SOA backends to scads of Ajax-enabled components on RIA clients.

Users get a quick, rich experience, while developers and architects gain flexibility and speed-to-deployment. TIBCO gains by riding the wave of increased demand for back-end SOA integration and messaging infrastructure to support the RIA ramp-up.

TIBCO, as a member of the OAA, is working with more than 70 companies to standardize key aspects of Ajax. The OpenAjaxHub 1.0, the group’s first specification implementation, aims to provide Ajax interoperability through the publish/subscribe interface. The specification will formally be out in about six weeks, but the code is now at Sourceforge.net.

PageBus is open source and can be downloaded. It’s also shipped as part of the TIBCO Ajax Message Service.

The above-noted mashup challenge is a developer community project to build the world’s largest mashup using PageBus and TIBCO’s General Interface. The contest runs through September 30, after which TIBCO and co-sponsor Artima will award prizes for the best entries.

TIBCO Brings SOA Enterprise Infrastructure Software to Tiger

TIBCO Brings SOA Enterprise Infrastructure Software to Tiger

TIBCO announced Wednesday that it was extending support for its service-oriented architecture (SOA) infrastructure software for the enterprise market to Apple's Mac OS X 10.4 Server "Tiger." TIBCO provides networking and other infrastructure tools for enterprise, and the company was among the first in the space to support Mac OS X.

According to the company, its infrastructure software also accommodates customers using Tiger Server and Xserve G5 for specialized requirements, such as grid and high-performance computing.

"Extending our infrastructure software to support Tiger Server further cements our position as the leading platform-agnostic vendor supporting service oriented architecture SOA and is a great example of how we continue to provide flexibility and choice," Murat Sonmez, executive vice president, Strategic Markets, TIBCO Software Inc., in a statement. "This offering helps to simplify IT complexity and heterogeneity to enable our customers and partners to choose technologies that best meet their specific needs."

TIBCO Software: An Integration Platform With Strong Built-In SOA And Web Services Management

TIBCO Software: An Integration Platform With Strong Built-In SOA And Web Services Management - The Forrester Wave™ Vendor Summary, Q1 2006by Randy Heffner

Historically, TIBCO Software has built strong management features into its integration platform. Furthermore, TIBCO views service-oriented architecture (SOA) management as an integral part of an SOA platform. Thus, rather than having a standalone product for SOA management, TIBCO's SOA and Web services management solution starts with its core integration product, BusinessWorks, and adds four additional products. Although this adds complexity to the configuration of service operations, it adds strong depth to the overall service management picture that TIBCO provides. This management depth extends to strong integration with enterprise management infrastructure, making TIBCO's SOA management solution well-suited to firms with mature IT management skills and infrastructure.

STARRS works together to protect the public in the St. Louis region

STARRS works together to protect the public in the St. Louis region - IBM Service Oriented Architecture SOA Solution in Government

Published on: 31 Jul 2007

"So this nurse thought, 'What if we could secure all of that before the patient even gets here?' In hindsight, it seems so obvious, but it took some robust technology to make it happen. It’s a great example of how technology can be used to help us save lives." - Monroe Yancie, chief paramedic, St. Louis Fire Department

Customer: St. Louis Area Regional Response System (STARRS)
Deployment Country: United States
IBM Business Partner: E Team
Industry: Government
Solution: Business-to-Consumer, Business Resiliency, Collaborative Innovation, Enabling Business Flexibility, Governance & Risk Management, Information Integration, Innovation that matters, Networking, RFID, Security

Overview - IBM Service Oriented Architecture SOA Solution in Government

In order to be better prepared in the post-9/11 world, the St. Louis Area Regional Response System (STARRS) was formed.Its task is to create jointly conceived, jointly funded projects that benefit all of the agencies and citizens in the entire region.

Business need: To respond to mandates from the Department of Homeland Security more effectively, the St. Louis Region formed the St. Louis Area Regional Response System (STARRS), a collaborative working group of first responders, experts and other stakeholders. STARRS is tasked with creating ways to better protect the public and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of emergency response, while working with industry to execute the projects it devises.

Solution: Building on concepts generated by STARRS committees, IBM has implemented a variety of solutions to fulfill the critical needs of delivering police, fire and EMS services to the public more effectively. The first two are the STARRS Virtual Emergency Operations Center and the STARRS Patient Tracking System.

Benefits: • Allows first responders to collaborate seamlessly and transparently • Provides immediate access to critical information • Integrates a wide variety of information types • Offers easy expandability • Captures critical patient information on-scene and transmits it to hospitals • Helps make emergency response efforts faster and more effective • Improves EMS productivity 10-15 percent

Case Study - IBM Service Oriented Architecture SOA Solution in Government

"So this nurse thought, ‘What if we could secure all of that before the patient even gets here?’ In hindsight, it seems so obvious, but it took some robust technology to make it happen. It’s a great example of how technology can be used to help us save lives.”
– Monroe Yancie, chief paramedic, St. Louis Fire Department

Business Challenge - IBM Service Oriented Architecture SOA Solution in Government

To respond to mandates from the Department of Homeland Security more effectively, the St. Louis Region formed the
St. Louis Area Regional Response System (STARRS), a collaborative working group of first responders, experts and other stakeholders. STARRS is tasked with creating ways to better protect the public and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of emergency response, while working with industry to execute the projects it devises.

Solution - IBM Service Oriented Architecture SOA Solution in Government

Building on concepts generated by STARRS committees, IBM has implemented a variety of solutions to fulfill the critical needs of delivering police, fire and EMS services to the public more effectively. The first two are the STARRS Virtual Emergency Operations Center and the STARRS Patient Tracking System.

Key Benefits - IBM Service Oriented Architecture SOA Solution in Government

• Allows first responders to collaborate seamlessly and transparently
• Provides immediate access to critical information
• Integrates a wide variety of information types
• Offers easy expandability
• Captures critical patient information on-scene and transmits it to hospitals
• Helps make emergency response efforts faster and more effective
• Improves EMS productivity 10-15 percent

Working together on a regional basis - IBM Service Oriented Architecture SOA Solution in Government

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 emphasized just how important working together can be. Collaboration between police, fire, EMS, various governmental jurisdictions, agencies such as FEMA, the private sector, the military and the public is of overwhelming importance. However, because these diverse groups are separated by a variety of boundaries, in the past they have rarely been able to cooperate closely.

First responders from different agencies can literally be standing near one another, yet be unable to communicate. Worse, they could be talking to different command centers that may not be basing decisions on the same information.

Breaking down the organizational, cultural and technological barriers that stand in the way of first responder collaboration is no easy task. And in the region surrounding a major city, the problem is compounded. There are many different organizations and agencies, all of which have to communicate and work together in a crisis, yet they all answer to different local, county, and even state governments.

Many parts of the country are still grappling with the challenges posed by the need to get these diverse groups to work together. Funding can be hard to get, and it’s tough to get everyone in a region to agree on the best way to spend the money.

The St. Louis region, which encompasses parts of two states and includes eight counties, has come up with an innovative way to pool resources and get everyone working together. In order to be better prepared in the post-9/11 world, the St. Louis Area Regional Response System (STARRS) was formed. Its task is to create jointly conceived, jointly funded projects that benefit all of the agencies and citizens in the entire region.

STARRS creates special committees, made up of first responders, stakeholders and experts, to tackle problems such as interoperability. These committees define specific needs and outline the capabilities that solutions must have, always bearing in mind that any solution must benefit the entire region.

The advantages of this unusual approach are manifold. Since STARRS is comprised of those who actually use the solutions that the group devises, those solutions can be designed better from the outset. And since funding and resources are shared and the solutions must benefit all in the region, more robust and effective systems can be created than would be affordable otherwise. The end result is better preparedness and better service to the public.

Business Benefits - IBM Service Oriented Architecture SOA Solution in Government

• Allows a large number of jurisdictions and first responder agencies to collaborate seamlessly and transparently
• Provides immediate access to critical information to geographically dispersed personnel
• Reduces comparable response times from 72 hours to approximately one hour
• Integrates a wide variety of information types
• Offers easy expandability thanks to service oriented architecture
• Captures critical patient information on-scene and transmits it to hospitals
• Lessens patient processing time dramatically
• Helps make emergency response efforts faster and more effective
• Improves EMS productivity by 10-15 percent

A virtual command center
One of the premier projects to have come out of the STARRS concept is the Virtual Emergency Operations Center (VEOC), which takes the Emergency Operations Center concept that is already in widespread use nationwide, and extends it regionally. “When you look at first response on a regional level,” says Mike Smiley, deputy director of the Office of Emergency Management for St. Louis County, “the challenge is one of sharing information. We have this patchwork of agencies, but we all have to be on the same page, working together.”

The STARRS VEOC solution uses a Web-based incident management package called E Team. The STARRS Emergency Operations Center (EOC) Workgroup knew that the VEOC software would have to be integrated with existing databases and systems from other jurisdictions to maximize its utility, and IBM was chosen as the best technology partner to perform the integration work.

In keeping with the STARRS concept of sharing resources, the VEOC project encompasses the entire region. “The solution has tied all eight of the EOCs in the region together,” notes Smiley. “By doing so, we share data almost instantaneously as we work simultaneously on an area-wide issue. The EOC software enables each of the jurisdictions to be more effective and responsive locally, but it’s our ability to share information and resources that makes us all far more capable in a regional sense.”

The platform incorporates IBM Rapid Response, a packaged incident management solution built on IBM WebSphere® and Lotus® collaboration software. This provides a portal to the E Team incident management software and serves as the common platform for integration of other databases and information sources.

The flexibility and seamlessness of the solution was a key factor, according to Smiley: “It’s completely transparent. Before, we had a network of contacts, but there were gaps and it was all we could do to reach out and get the information we needed. Now, we get it automatically because it’s put out there in the normal course of doing our jobs.”

What makes the STARRS VEOC unusual is its IT foundation: a service oriented architecture (SOA) that enables rapid evolution through the easy incorporation of new processes and technologies as they become available. With SOA, the VEOC is not tied to any particular technology or organizational structure. The entire system is modular and highly flexible.

IBM Rapid Response is the key element that ties all of the region’s systems together, according to Nick Gragnani, executive director of STARRS. He stresses the importance of having a single point of access. “There are several different software packages out there that provide VEOC functions. There are various other software applications in use as well, but on their own they’re not well integrated. What we were looking for was a service oriented architecture. That’s what Rapid Response gives us. It ties all these different software tools together into a suite, and we can access all of them through a single portal.”

Key Components - IBM Service Oriented Architecture SOA Solution in Government

• Software IBM DB2® Express
• IBM Lotus Sametime®
• IBM Tivoli® Directory Integrator
• IBM WebSphere Portal Express
• Hardware IBM System x™
• Symbol handhelds
• Panasonic laptops
• Services IBM Global Business Services
• Business Partner E Team

A new tool for patient tracking - IBM Service Oriented Architecture SOA Solution in Government

The second STARRS-generated IBM project in the region is the Patient Tracking System (PTS). Designed to help EMS and regional hospitals track patients and their status from the site of an incident much more effectively, it supplants the old method of having EMS responders literally call the hospital using a cell phone to pass information about incoming patients.

With PTS, EMS responders carry barcoded ID bracelets and a hand-held device. At the scene of an accident or other incident, the patient is assessed and the ID bracelet attached. The needed information, such as injury, severity, gender and age is entered into the device and transmitted to the hospital wirelessly, along with the barcode ID. When the patient arrives, the hospital scans the barcode so that the patient is accurately tracked.

“This system saves time and eliminates a source of possible error,” says Monroe Yancie, chief paramedic for the St. Louis Fire Department. “One of the issues we face is volume. We handle about 65,000 calls a year, and transport around 45,000 patients per year. The scale of the information challenge is considerable.”

IBM Global Business Services gathered requirements, helped design the solution, and then implemented the IBM and partner technology across eight counties and provided the overall management expertise, user training and ongoing technical support.

The system is in the early stages of deployment, so the information captured is limited. In the future, it will be able to obtain the information encoded on standard ID cards such as driver’s licenses. This kind of information might include organ donor status, blood type, name and address.

“The origins of this system show the value of asking those who are on the frontline to come up with solutions,” Yancie says. “The basic idea actually came from a hospital emergency department nurse. They were scrambling to get all of the necessary information about patients coming in, and it was a bottleneck. So this nurse thought, ‘What if we could secure all of that before the patient even gets here?’ In hindsight, it seems so obvious, but it took some robust technology to make it happen. It’s a great example of how technology can be used to help us save lives.”

Why it matters
The St. Louis Area Regional Response System (STARRS) exemplifies an unparalleled spirit of cooperation, bringing together first responders throughout the St. Louis region to create solutions that better protect the public–sharing resources while benefiting all. Prime examples of solutions that STARRS has created are the Virtual Emergency Operations Center, which enables first responders throughout the region to access shared information and incident management tools along with shared resources, and the Patient Tracking System, which enables EMS responders to more efficiently and rapidly gather and transmit critical patient information to hospitals from the scene of an incident.

For more information
Please contact your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner.

Visit us at: ibm.com/innovation

Products and Services Used
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.

• Hardware: System x
• Software: Tivoli Directory Integrator, Lotus Sametime, WebSphere Portal Express, DB2
• Services: IBM Global Business Services

© Copyright IBM Corporation 2007 IBM Corporation Global Solutions, Industry Marketing 294 Route 100 Somers, NY 10589 U.S.A. Produced in the United States of America 7-07 All Rights Reserved IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, DB2, Lotus, Sametime, System x, Tivoli and WebSphere are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. Many factors contributed to the results and benefits achieved by the IBM customer described in this document. IBM does not guarantee comparable results.

Aurora Health Care sees a bright new dawn with a Service Oriented Architecture on IBM System z

Aurora Health Care sees a bright new dawn with a Service Oriented Architecture on IBM System z

Published on: 22 Feb 2007

"By moving to a service oriented architecture on System z, we have gained the ability to think more about business problems and work through business solutions. At Aurora Health Care, we no longer talk about the technical challenges; we talk about what is possible." - Duane Wesenberg, Vice President Enterprise Applications, Aurora Health Care

Customer: Aurora Health Care
Deployment Country: United States
Industry: Healthcare
Solution: Enabling Business Flexibility, Optimizing IT, Service Oriented Architecture, Web Self Service

Overview - IBM SOA Service Oriented Architecture Solution in Health Care

Aurora Health Care (www.aurorahealthcare.org) is a not-for-profit Wisconsin healthcare provider. Founded in 1987 following the affiliation of two Milwaukee hospitals three years earlier, Aurora now encompasses 250 sites, including 13 hospitals and more than one hundred clinics, with net services revenue of $2.8 billion in 2005. Aurora employs more than 25,000 people and invests heavily not only in treatment but also in improving the prevention of illness.

Business need: Present data from around 1,000 systems in an accessible manner; drive greater internal process efficiency and improve the patient experience; simplify and accelerate the delivery of management information; provide self-service tools to patients

Solution: Used IBM WebSphere® technologies to deploy and host “i-Connect” portal system for internal staff, running on the IBM System z™ platform; new “My Aurora” portal will enable patients to input information and book appointments

Benefits: Easy, browser-based access to information enables staff to share knowledge; streamlined workflows and less paper documentation contribute to significant cost savings; flexibility in the IT function to be more responsive to changing business requirements through a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) that enables quicker deployment of new and changed business functionality; high reliability, scalability and performance of System z platform supports complex, 24x7 working environment

Case Study - IBM SOA Service Oriented Architecture Solution in Health Care

Aurora Health Care (www.aurorahealthcare.org) is a not-for-profit Wisconsin healthcare provider. Founded in 1987 following the affiliation of two Milwaukee hospitals three years earlier, Aurora now encompasses 250 sites, including 13 hospitals and more than one hundred clinics, with net services revenue of $2.8 billion in 2005. Aurora employs more than 25,000 people and invests heavily not only in treatment but also in improving the prevention of illness.

As a large organization, Aurora is able to offer a very broad set of services to its patients, who benefit from access to a large pool of highly qualified medical personnel and top-class facilities. Simultaneously, Aurora is very active at the level of local communities and wants its patients to get the personalized service they might typically associate with a much smaller organization. Aurora’s goal was to engage patients to take an active role in their own healthcare. In order to be successful, Aurora needed to provide a collaborative environment where both employees and patients could access their healthcare information.

With around 1,000 underlying systems, ranging from HR databases to patient records systems, and from accounting to supply chain management, Aurora possessed vast amounts of potentially valuable information that was effectively locked away in silos.

Says Duane Wesenberg, Vice President Enterprise Applications, “We wanted to be able to extract relevant information and present it in a familiar way across all of the regions, all of the sites and all of the business lines. So that if employees moved locations or positions, they would immediately and intuitively be able to find the information they needed to do their job. The philosophy was to have always-on information, like the Internet. Our goals were to take the complexity out of the technology, to enable much better collaboration and to enhance the patient experience.”

Choosing the right platform - IBM SOA Service Oriented Architecture Solution in Health Care

Aurora did not want the cost or disruption of ripping out and replacing its entire infrastructure. Instead, the organization planned to restructure its existing software systems and enable them to be part of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). The aim was to aggregate data from the underlying systems and to push information out to users through Web-based portals. This was to be done with sufficient flexibility to adapt to changing business requirements.

Gary Weckwerth, Director of Technical Systems and Operations, comments: “IT is traditionally very cost conscious, and in the healthcare environment, we want to pinch every penny out of every dollar. When we looked at the business-critical data and systems that we wanted to make available to all users, it was quickly clear that much of it was managed on the IBM System z mainframe platform.”

He adds: “With IBM committed to supporting open standards on the mainframe, the opportunity was there to simply build our new information delivery system on the very firm foundation we already had. We thought: why should we pursue anything else when we have the tools and the staff already in place to do this on the mainframe?”

To position the platform for the new workloads, Aurora upgraded to an IBM System z9™ Enterprise Class platform with an IBM System z Application Assist Processor and an Integrated Facility for Linux® engine. The new server runs IBM z/OS® V1.7, WebSphere Application Server 6.1 and IBM DB2® for z/OS V8.

Wesenberg says: “All we needed to do was to open up the mainframe and make the information available. In addition to being the platform of choice for supporting large databases and business-critical transactional systems, the System z platform is open, it supports J2EE, it supports LDAP for identity management, it has built-in RACF security—so it has everything you need to create a flexible portal solution. The IBM support for open standards was a key factor in our decision—we wanted to stay open and agile, and that’s what the System z platform promised.”

Tony Finn, Manager of Web Application Development, comments, “We chose IBM WebSphere software as the basis of our new portals for its stability and scalability. With 26,000 internal users and up to one million external customers, we needed a true enterprise-class application and Web serving environment; WebSphere fit the bill perfectly.”

Connecting with internal users - IBM SOA Service Oriented Architecture Solution in Health Care

The adoption of SOA at Aurora enabled the organization to bring together information from disparate systems and build new workflows and delivery systems around it. The first of these delivery systems is a single sign-on employee portal called i-Connect, written in Java™ and running on IBM WebSphere Application Server technology on the System z platform.

Initially built as a way to share financial and HR information, i-Connect quickly expanded to encompass other functional areas, and now includes both clinical tools, such as patient acuity scoring and bed management, and business tools, such as supply chain management. The portal is identity-driven, enabling Aurora to personalize the information that is delivered to each user according to their role in the organization.

“Using our SOA, we are beginning to aggregate the hospital information, the clinic information and the retail pharmacy information so that employees wouldn’t need to hunt through dozens of different system to find the information they need. The i-Connect portal provides a single source of truth,” says Wesenberg. “Our original goal was to have 80 percent of the workforce actively using the portal; today, almost 99 percent of employees log in at least every two weeks. There is no hesitation from the user about where to get information, and the benefit is that they are freed up to spend more time with their patients.”

Aurora has set up employee kiosks to support its clinical staff, who need the ability to move from location to location without losing access to the information in the portal. Employees can perform a single sign-on from i-Connect to IBM Lotus® Domino® Web access, giving them the ability to use e-mail wherever they are.

Says Wesenberg, “Using the i-Connect portal running on the System z platform, employees can access applications 24x7 from wherever they are. The solution is saving them time and enabling more efficient workflow, and the new interfaces are far more user-friendly. With the SOA, we can modify the applications very quickly and easily, and so we can rapidly respond to requests for changes from the users.”

Streamlined processes - IBM SOA Service Oriented Architecture Solution in Health Care

In addition to providing valuable information in the clinical setting, i-Connect has streamlined a number of business processes at Aurora. For example, the organization’s Intranet Requisitioning System simplifies stock replenishment and helps ensure that all employees buy the best available products at the best price. Human resources processes have also been improved through the use of the portal: Aurora used to print 26,000 payroll deposit checks every other week and now simply makes them available online resulting in significant savings in printing and internal mail costs.

Robert Burgess, Supervisor of Systems Software for Aurora Health Care, comments, “i-Connect has undoubtedly made the end-user experience better. It’s more user-friendly, it presents more data and it’s easier for staff to use. It has empowered people to do their own HR administration in real-time, saving significant efforts and delays.”

Employee benefits are now administered by the employees themselves, and new members of staff can enroll online through the portal, which provides all the information they need to start work—saving time and money.

By building an open and flexible SOA, Aurora has moved from thinking about technical challenges to thinking about business solutions. The organization can now focus on how to use the information it holds to improve healthcare in the community and to generate greater operational efficiency.

Says Wesenberg: “The positive effect that i-Connect produced within our operations made us think more clearly about how to engage our customers and our patients. This brought us to the realization that we needed to enable the patient to be integrated into the workflow and to have access to information, and sowed the seeds for the next generation of “My Aurora,” our patient portal.”

Simplifying patient care - IBM SOA Service Oriented Architecture Solution in Health Care

Aurora is now constructing the My Aurora patient portal, which, for example, will enable its customers to log in and schedule appointments, pay bills, view their medical information and provide new information to Aurora. My Aurora is integrated with i-Connect, enabling employees to sign in just once and access not only the internal Web applications but also the external applications.

When fully operational, My Aurora will provide information to patients 24x7, saving them time that would otherwise be spent on the phone and freeing up administrative staff at Aurora. More importantly, the portal will significantly simplify the billing process. An episode of illness is a single event from the patient’s point of view, and yet it might produce multiple different invoices from different parts of Aurora. For example, an operation to remove the appendix might involve multiple medical physicians and clinicians at multiple sites, with various scans and laboratory tests. Regulatory requirements mean that Aurora must provide this information in full, which can be confusing and worrying for patients.

My Aurora takes the hospital billing systems and the accounts receivable systems and aggregates the information they hold in a way that reflects the experience that the patient has. Says Wesenberg: “The Aurora philosophy is to remove the complexity, to make it a continuum of care, so that the systems are natural and transparent to the patient’s view. It’s all about making it more of a person-to-person experience, which is what people actually want in healthcare.”

Finn adds: “Ultimately, our goal is to make the healthcare process as simple as possible. What might otherwise be a very traumatic or anxious experience for patients becomes less so because of the easy-to-use information products that we provide. That was behind the whole vision of building an SOA and providing a comprehensive view of data, regardless of the underlying complexity.”

System z—the right platform for portals - IBM SOA Service Oriented Architecture Solution in Health Care

The requirement to serve 26,000 internal and up to one million external users puts a high premium on the reliability, availability and security of Aurora’s IT infrastructure. As a healthcare provider, Aurora needs to comply with very stringent regulations on data protection, including those in the US Department of Health and Human Services’s HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). Aurora takes advantage of the high security offered by the mainframe platform to help meet its patient confidentiality obligations.

The combination of the System z platform with its built-in cryptographic processor, WebSphere and IBM DB2 information management has given Aurora the robust platform it needs for its ambitious portal projects. The use of the System z platform has also enabled Aurora to keep its infrastructure simple and focus more intently on the business challenges rather than technology issues.

Says Wesenberg: “The System z platform had virtually everything we needed built-in, so it allowed us to move beyond the issue of which information systems hold which information, and work more on the user experience and on how to put together information which will ultimately move into embedded learning and knowledge management.”

Weckwerth adds, “The differentiator that Aurora has in the market place is information sharing and knowledge sharing, and the concepts of transparency and transformation. By using the System z platform, and by using portal technology, we’ve been able to introduce the concept of always-on information, anywhere that you want, at any time. Just like the body needs the heart, information systems need information management—DB2 on System z is a vital part of the whole architecture. If you have Web apps and they’re not available, they’re really not any good to anyone. The System z platform gives us the three pillars we need to drive internal value and to support our external customers effectively: reliability, scalability and performance.”

The use of IBM Parallel Sysplex® high-availability technology on the System z platform has enabled Aurora to upgrade its operating system, WebSphere and DB2 with almost no disruption to users. The ability to release new versions of applications within seconds of taking the existing systems down provides the flexibility and speed of response that are crucial to the SOA concept.
“Running on System z, we’ve been able to deploy 50-plus Web applications without significantly adding staff,” says Weckwerth. “This means that System z is a very cost-effective platform for Aurora.”

Wesenberg concludes: “By moving to a service oriented architecture on System z, we have gained the ability to think more about business problems and work through business solutions. At Aurora Health Care, we no longer talk about the technical challenges; we talk about what is possible.”

Products and Services Used - IBM SOA Service Oriented Architecture Solution in Health Care. IBM products and services that were used in this case study.

- Hardware: System z: System z9 Enterprise Class (z9 EC)
- Software: DB2 Universal Database for z/OS, WebSphere Application Server for z/OS
- DB2 Universal Database for z/OS is now known as DB2 for z/OS
- Operating System: z/OS and OS/390

Source: http://www-306.ibm.com/

To stay ahead of the competition, RouteOne develops a strong service-oriented architecture using IBM WebSphere software

To stay ahead of the competition, RouteOne develops a strong service-oriented architecture using IBM WebSphere software.

Published on: 29 Nov 2006

“Using the WebSphere solution, we are able to respond quickly to meet evolving customer require­ments, putting us a step ahead of the competition.” - T.N. Subramaniam, Chief Architect &Director of Technology, RouteOne

Customer: RouteOne, LLC
Deployment Country: United States
Industry: Automotive, Banking
Solution: Enabling Business Flexibility, Openness, Service Oriented Architecture, Small & Medium Business, Transforming IT

Overview - IBM SOA Solutions in Automotive and Banking Industries

RouteOne offers a revolutionary real-time, Web-based system that enables automobile dealers to manage the credit application process from multiple financial sources. The RouteOne system integrates with numerous participating financing companies, and it aggregates all financing sources into a single point for auto dealers.

Business need: RouteOne was looking to upgrade its application platform to an open-standards based architecture so that it could support more users and integrate with diverse partners. In addition, the company wanted to differentiate its system within the automotive marketplace by implementing a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and leveraging Web services to build a more flexible system that could respond quickly to users’ changing needs.

Solution: RouteOne built a robust SOA for its credit application management system using IBM WebSphere® and IBM DataPower® software.

Benefits: • Provides a robust SOA infrastructure to deliver an open, integrated, Web-acces­sible solution for customers • Enables RouteOne to reuse services, build business rules and adopt best prac­tices to bring services to market more quickly than the competition • Offers flexibility to meet evolving customer requirements and support more users • Able to scale to a very large number of concurrent users

Case Study - IBM SOA Solutions in Automotive and Banking Industries

Overview

RouteOne
Farmington Hills, Michigan, USA
www.routeone.com

Industries

• Automotive
• Banking

Products

• IBM WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment, Version 5.1
• IBM WebSphere MQ, Version 5.3

Quote

“Using the WebSphere solution, we are able to respond quickly to meet evolving customer requirements, putting us a step ahead of the competition.”

—T.N. Subramaniam, Chief Architect & Director of Technology, RouteOne

Background - IBM SOA Solutions in Automotive and Banking Industries

RouteOne offers a revolutionary real-time, Web-based system that enables automobile dealers to manage the credit application process from multiple financial sources. The RouteOne system integrates with numerous participating financing companies, and it aggregates all financing sources into a single point for auto dealers.

Challenge - IBM SOA Solutions in Automotive and Banking Industries

With the vision of becoming the credit application management system of choice for auto dealers, RouteOne was looking to upgrade its application platform to an open-standards based architecture so that it could support more users and integrate with diverse partners. In addition, the company wanted to differentiate its system within the automotive marketplace by implementing a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and leveraging Web services to build a more flexible system that could respond quickly to users’ changing needs.

Solution - IBM SOA Solutions in Automotive and Banking Industries

RouteOne built a robust SOA for its credit application management system using IBM WebSphere® and IBM DataPower® software. The company deployed IBM WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment, Version 5.1 software as the primary application platform for the environment. The WebSphere Application Server software offers Web application services, performs capacity management and supports server clustering. IBM WebSphere MQ, Version 5.3 software supports all data transfer and guarantees receipt of business partner transac­tions, mostly between the dealers and financing companies. The IBM DataPower software acts as the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and provides the ESB function­alities of transformation, routing and security.

Benefits - IBM SOA Solutions in Automotive and Banking Industries

• Provides a robust SOA infrastructure to deliver an open, integrated, Web-accessible solution for customers

• Enables RouteOne to reuse services, build business rules and adopt best practices to bring services to market more quickly than the competition
• Offers flexibility to meet evolving customer requirements and support more users
• Able to scale to a very large number of concurrent users

Products and Services Used - IBM SOA Solutions in Automotive and Banking Industries

IBM products and services that were used in this case study.

- Software: WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere MQ, WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment
- Services: GBS SOA Implementation Services, IBM Integrated Technology Services

Source: http://www-306.ibm.com

Cashferium helps retailers and banks cut costs by keeping cash flow local

Cashferium helps retailers and banks cut costs by keeping cash flow local. - SOA Service Oriented Architecture in Retail Industry

Published on: 22 Jun 2007

"When you have a big idea, you need to find a partner who can also think big, and — just as important — deliver big. IBM understood our goals better than anyone and helped us to articulate a solution for making it a reality." - Ton van Schie, CEO, Cashferium

Customer: Cashferium
Deployment Country: Netherlands
IBM Business Partner: infosupportb+p solutionse-office
Industry: Banking, Retail
Solution: Business-to-Business, Business Performance Transformation, Database Management, Development & Technology Adoption, Enabling Business Flexibility, Innovation that matters, Security, Service Oriented Architecture, Transaction Payment, Transforming Business

Overview - SOA service oriented architecture for retails industry

Based in the Netherlands, Cashferium addresses the efficiency and safety of cash handling in today's flow of cash between retailers, banks and consumers. The core of its business model is the "recycling" of surplus banknotes of retailers into a local ATM, thereby minimizing cash transport from local bank branches and restocking of ATMs.

Business need: With banks and retailers spending some €50 billion each year on the handling of cash, the incentive for reducing the amount of cash in transit—one of the main sources of this cost—is powerful. However, with banks and retailers separated by a mountain of disparate processes and systems, the goal of a shorter cash cycle has yet to be realized.

Solution: Startup Cashferium created a whole new process framework for the exchange of cash between retailers, banks and their ATMs. Cashferium then engaged IBM to help define and optimize these processes, and to create a secure, flexible platform for delivering—and continually adapting—its service.

Benefits: • Up to 50 percent reduction in the cost of cash processing for retailers and banks • Estimated total savings of €250,000 per site deployed • Improved security for mall-based retailers

Case Study - SOA service oriented architecture for retails industry

"When you have a big idea, you need to find a partner who can also think big, and —just as important—deliver big. IBM understood our goals better than anyone and helped us to articulate a solution for making it a reality."
–Ton van Schie, CEO, Cashferium

Based in the Netherlands, Cashferium addresses the efficiency and safety of cash handling in today's flow of cash between retailers, banks and consumers. The core of its business model is the "recycling" of surplus banknotes of retailers into a local ATM, thereby minimizing cash transport from local bank branches and restocking of ATMs.

Business Challenge - SOA service oriented architecture for retails industry

With banks and retailers spending some €50 billion each year on the handling of cash, the incentive for reducing the amount of cash in transit—one of the main sources of this cost—is powerful. However, with banks and retailers separated by a mountain of disparate processes and systems, the goal of a shorter cash cycle has yet to be realized.

Solution - SOA service oriented architecture for retails industry

Startup Cashferium created a whole new process framework for the exchange of cash between retailers, banks and their ATMs. Cashferium then engaged IBM to help define and optimize these processes, and to create a secure, flexible platform for delivering—and continually adapting—its service.

Key Benefits - SOA service oriented architecture for retails industry

• Up to 50 percent reduction in the cost of cash processing for retailers and banks
• Estimated total savings of €250,000 per site deployed
• Improved security for mall-based retailers

One of the biggest changes in the world's retail economy has been the vast expansion in the role of alternative payment mechanisms. For reasons ranging from convenience to habit to need, more consumers are opting for plastic than ever before. But even in the face of this sweeping trend, traditional cash payment is—and is expected to remain—the lifeblood of the world's retail activity.

For that reason, the handling and processing of cash will remain an important operational priority for the retailers that receive it, and the banks that keep it circulating. Few consumers think of what happens to money when it leaves their hands, or where it has been before it comes out of an ATM. For retailers and banks, however, it's an issue that has a major impact on their costs and profitability, and is thus the focus of continual efforts to improve efficiency. The fact that cash is a physical medium of exchange—one that needs to be picked up, counted, checked, protected and transported from each place of business—is the main reason that inefficient practices have persisted for as long as they have.

On another level, the inefficiency of retail cash handling processes can be viewed as a natural outcome of the fact that they follow centralized approaches in an increasingly decentralized world. One of the basic requirements for each retailer within a mall is to securely transport cash on the premises to a distant bank or cash center for deposit. The high costs associated with this process are but one dimension of the problem. The other is the risk of physical harm and economic loss, since store employees are sometimes forced to transport large amounts of cash. The irony is that this same cash may make a reverse trip from the bank to an ATM near the retailer, as part of the bank's equally costly requirement to replenish them from a central location. The fact is that recirculating cash follows a needlessly roundabout path that imposes cost on retailers, banks and the financial system as a whole by increasing the amount of cash-in-transit, or CIT.

Business Benefits - SOA service oriented architecture for retails industry

• Up to 50 percent reduction in the cost of cash processing for retailers and banks
• Estimated total savings of €250,000 per site deployed
• Ability for retailers and banks to shift their resource focus from cost centers to value-added operations
• Improved security for mall-based retailers

Circulatory troubles - SOA service oriented architecture for retails industry

The most direct way of shortening and simplifying the flow of cash between retailers, banks and ATMs would be to recirculate it locally. While elegant in theory, a combination of institutional and technological factors has kept the idea from becoming reality. One major barrier is the inherent complexity of the processes that govern the flow, which has made it hard for retailers and banks to find a common ground for process improvements. Another barrier has been a lack of standardized technology to support the transformation of the cash flow process.

In Europe, however, that tide has begun to turn. With much of Europe standardizing on the euro, the incentive for localization has grown even stronger. But the real force for change has come from a combination of breakthrough ideas and enabling technology. In the Netherlands, a small team steeped in retail and banking experience translated their knowledge into a revolutionary process that has made the vision of local cash recycling a concrete reality. The company that group became, Cashferium (www.cashferium.com), saw from the beginning that success in the complicated payment space would require the right mix of its own core expertise and partners who shared its vision. On the banking side, it partnered with global giant ABN AMRO, which saw the opportunity to reduce the cost of cash handling. On the technology side, Cashferium needed a provider that could not only meet demanding technical and security challenges, but also provide a commitment to success backed up by whatever resources were required. The company it selected was IBM.

"The process as a whole is now far more efficient because banks and retailers can focus on the parts of their business that drive profitability." – Ton van Schie

The physical core of Cashferium's service is secured locations in malls, known as Cash Kiosks,® where retailers deposit their stores' cash receipts at the end of the day. With security absolutely essential to the success of the Cashferium solution, IBM designed a robust security and communications infrastructure that provided customers with Web-based access to the system and enabled Cashferium to monitor and manage its Cash Kiosks remotely. To make a drop-off at the Cash Kiosk, retail customers can use a secure portal to schedule a reservation, with the information automatically registered and stored at Cashferium's operations control center. When customers arrive at the Cash Kiosk to make a scheduled deposit, the first level of security requires them to scan a badge with encoded identification information that is automatically checked against stored reservation data, including the scheduled time of the appointment. If the customer is granted access, the Cash Kiosk then applies a second level of authentication that uses a biometric interface to validate the initial check. Upon final approval, the customer deposits funds at the Cash Kiosk. The recycling process comes full circle when this cash is made available to the ATM situated on the outside of the Cash Kiosk and to local ATMs within the mall. Additional services include rolled coin distribution and a Security Host.

Focus on flexibility - SOA service oriented architecture for retails industry

In designing the architecture of the Cashferium solution, IBM Software Group's central aim was to maximize its security and manageability, while at the same time facilitating the long-term expansion of the solution by making it as flexible and architecturally efficient as possible. The team's approach was to use IBM WebSphere® Business Modeler to model critical business processes in the Cashferium solution and then design a modular architecture that employed Web services, using IBM WebSphere Process Server to integrate and automate them. By designing a service oriented architecture (SOA) solution, IBM ensured Cashferium the flexibility it would need to evolve its service rapidly by giving it the means to adapt its processes on-the-fly. Running on the IBM System pTM platform, the solution stores all customer and transaction data within a secure, centralized IBM DB2® database. Other key elements of the solution include IBM WebSphere Portal, which was used to create the customer interface, as well as a range of IBM Rational® software products to develop and deploy the solution.

Key Components - SOA service oriented architecture for retails industry

Software • IBM WebSphere Application Server
• IBM WebSphere Process Server
• IBM WebSphere Integration Developer
• IBM WebSphere Portal
• IBM WebSphere Business Modeler
• IBM Rational Software Architect
• IBM Rational Team Unifying platform
• IBM Rational Portfolio Manager
• IBM DB2

Hardware • IBM System p
Services • IBM Software Group Services
Business Partner • e-office (www.e-office.com)
• b+p solutions (www.bpsolutions.nl)
• infosupport (www.infosupport.nl)
Time frame • Solution design: 6 months
• Rollout: In progress

With five sites deployed in Holland and 22 more in the works, the Cashferium solution has more than lived up to its promise of being a "win-win" solution, notes CEO Ton van Schie. "The Cashferium solution saves banks the cost of handling money, while retailers get better security at a lower price," explains van Schie. "The process as a whole is now far more efficient because banks and retailers can focus on the parts of their business that drive profitability." Based on what customers have experienced so far, van Schie expects transaction costs to fall by as much as 50 percent for the companies using the local cash recycling solution, representing an average savings of €250,000 for each Cash Kiosk deployed. While it's hard to put a monetary figure on improved security, the security enabled by the Cashferium solution represents a significant improvement over traditional cash delivery and pickup practices.

Why it matters - SOA service oriented architecture for retails industry

Drawing on its cash-handling expertise, Cashferium pioneered a disruptive process that establishes a new path for cash to flow between retailers and banks based on the local recycling of surplus cash from retailers to ATMs. By drastically reducing the amount of cash in transit, the solution provides lower costs and greater security for banks and retailers.

Making big ideas work
Cashferium sees its decision to rely on a group of strong and trustworthy partners as a major reason for its success. While the solution's process improvement is what really makes it stand out as "disruptive" in the way banks and retailers handle cash, van Schie sees the technology underpinning this business model as absolutely essential to its successful execution. "When you have a big idea, you need to find a partner who can also think big, and—just as important—deliver big," says van Schie. "IBM understood our goals better than anyone and helped us to articulate a solution for making it a reality. Throughout the whole process, we felt confident that IBM would do everything in its power to help us succeed."

For more information
Please contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner.

Visit us at: ibm.com/innovation

Products and Services Used
IBM products and services that were used in this case study.

Hardware: System p

Software: WebSphere Business Modeler, Rational Portfolio Manager, Rational Team Unifying Platform, WebSphere Application Server, Rational Software Architect, WebSphere Integration Developer, WebSphere Portal, DB2 9 for Linux, UNIX and Windows

Services: IBM Software Service for WebSphere

© Copyright IBM Corporation 2007 IBM Corporation Global Solutions, Industry Marketing 294 Route 100 Somers, NY 10589 U.S.A. Produced in the United States of America 6-07 All Rights Reserved IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, DB2, Rational, System p and WebSphere are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Other company, product or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. This case study illustrates how one IBM customer uses IBM products. There is no guarantee of comparable results. References in this publication to IBM products or services do not imply that IBM intends to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates.

Source: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/success/cssdb.nsf/CS/JSTS-744JQ5?OpenDocument&Site=soa&cty=en_us

Is SOA Ready to Move from the Whiteboards and into Production IT?

Is SOA Ready to Move from the Whiteboards and into Production IT? - Identity-based SOA reality check - By: Scott Morrison

Is SOA service oriented architecture ready to move from the whiteboards and into production IT? As you might have