Want To Make Web 2.0 Work For Your Business?

SOA Service Oriented Architecture Articles : Want To Make Web 2.0 Work For Your Business? by Partho Mondal

Silicon Valley loves its buzzwords, and none more than it does Web 2.0 these days. But what exactly is it in terms of website development and strategic internet marketing? Unless you're a diehard techie, wish you good luck in figuring out what it means.
Web 2.0 technologies bearing names like wikis, blogs, RSS, AJAX, mashups and the startups hawking them -- Renkoo, Gahbunga, Ning, Squidoo sound to be straight out of Star Wars, right up Mr. George Lucas' alley.

So what does all this mumbo-jumbo means to a normal businessman - a value multiplier or 'only for geeks' stuff? Rest assured Mr. Businessman, for all its appeal to the young, the nerds and the wired; Web 2.0 may end up making its greatest impact in business.

And this could well prove to be the one vehicle to usher in more changes in corporations that are already in the throes of such tech-driven transformations as globalization and outsourcing. Indeed, what some are calling Enterprise 2.0 could transcend the whole lot of organizational boundaries, between managers and employees and between the company and its partners and customers.

So how does one go about making Web 2.0 work for his/her business? Let's see how:

1. Work out a plan

Don't dive in just for the sake of keeping abreast with the changing world and its technology. Be clear about what you're trying to accomplish, how and where Web 2.0 can help your business, how much you're willing to invest and what time frame you are working on. Plan ahead!

2. Good content is the key

Web 2.0 is the social web, but it's still content-driven. And the control lies in the hands of the users here, mind you! You might think yourself to be the smartest marketing man this side of the Suez but remember, it is the user who would determine how good or bad you are. Lousy content leads to lousy marketing, no matter how flashy it is. Make your content relevant, interesting and real. Put yourself in your customer's shoes, ask yourself questions you would as a customer and answer those with your content.

3. Be information provider not a salesman

Help, inform, educate but do not sell. Web 2.0 is all about people connecting by helping each other. No salesmen allowed! Think education, not advertising. Deliver useful, nuts and bolts stuff or honest opinions they can believe. That's how you build credibility and trust that lead to new customer relationships.

4. Have a free hosted blog Wordpress and Blogger both have very useful and simple blogs you can setup for free. Use them to start blogging and get a feel for how it works and how people use Web 2.0. Dip your toe in the water to test it before diving straight in.

5. Do it yourself

Web 2.0 is about being real. It's real people connecting with each other. Make sure you or your employees create the content and do the work to start with. And when scales demand it, hire a professional company offering strategic internet marketing services. Still keep tab on what they are doing and what they are writing.

Surf blogs, YouTube, Google Videos, Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati and other social media websites. Get a feel for how they work and who goes there. Become part of some social media communities. Make new friends online. Get in touch with professional web development companies and firms providing internet marketing services well versed in Web 2.0 tools and marketing ways. Immerse yourself in the Web 2.0 culture so you know how it works and where and how it fits in smoothly with your marketing plans.

About the Author
Partho Mondal is the CEO of Wisitech, a leading professional web development, search engine marketing, Pay per click (PPC) management services provider in India.

Source: Web 2.0 Service Oriented Architecture SOA information at goarticles.com

Is A Myspace Friend Adder Essential For Web 2.0 Marketing?

SOA Service Oriented Architecture Articles : Is A Myspace Friend Adder Essential For Web 2.0 Marketing? by Sam B. Goldebrg

MySpace friend adders will automatically broadcast your profile with friend request to specific people of your choice. Targeted MySpace marketing gives you an astonishing benefit. After the automatic friend request is delivered the amount of prospects that view your profile has no choice but to swell. I recommend using a tool like the Myspace Marketing Tactics Manual so you can mold your profile accordingly. MySpace has firm regulations for promoting a business on there but everybody does it. You just need to know the rules for promoting your business or MySpace will shut down your account. The MySpace marketing tactics manual is a great e-book that helps you avoid those problems.

Stealth Friend Bomber is instantly activated, messaging, groups and mass commenting all in one. This is the ideal software to use because of the number of features you get. They also give you free manuals with the software on how to be successful on MySpace, YouTube and even Craigslist.

Once your MySpace profile starts getting more traffic and people ad you as a friend you can then send them relevant information and messages to subtly promote yourself to thousands of highly targeted prospects. I was so ecstatic when I found out about this software called Stealth Friend Bomber because it was just the tool I needed to spread the word about my business. I like this one better than the others because it is a MySpace bot on steroids.

When using social networks it can become time consuming depending on how many you join and how much energy you give to them. So I searched for ways to still accomplish using the social networks and putting my business in front a targeted audience without spending hours and hours to do it.

Through my search efforts I found a way that most people get thousands of friends to join their profiles by using a Myspace bot. A MySpace friend adder will automatically send friend request to a group of people that you preselect and gets them to check out your profile without you doing anything.

I was so excited when I found out about this software because I figured this is exactly what I needed to promote my business. I didn't think it could get any better. I found the perfect MySpace friend adder bot from Stealth Friend Bomber.

Stealth Friend Bomber has free automatic updates, messaging, instant activation, groups and mass commenting all in one. This is a great value because of the number of features you get with the one software, the capability to build your friends list on Myspace at warp speed, great support staff and the amount of your investment compared to the benefits from the increased contacts you get are exceptional. This paid for itself the first day I used it.

My internet affiliate marketing campaigns went to a new level and now I started using Myspace marketing for my traditional brick and mortar business. Without the MySpace friend adder it would have taken way too much time to achieve what I did in just hours. I feel like I hired an employee that works 24 hours a day for a one time rate of twenty dollars!

About the Author
Proper Myspace Marketing can catapult your business and cash-collections into space, guaranteed! Get large amounts of traffic and sales with the top-rated Myspace Friend Adder the internet marketing experts use! Free demo for a limited time.

Source: SOA service oriented architecture web 2.0 information at goarticles.com

Web 2.0 For Advertising?

SOA Service Oriented Architecture Articles : Web 2.0 For Advertising? by Paul Poole

People responsible for marketing products should realize that there's nothing more important than the internet. Print is no longer as important as it once was. There are many opportunities to advertise your products and services on the internet, plus they are much cheaper and more effective. Also most of these advertising methods make tracking their success easy.

I receive quite a few trade magazines that are mailed to me every month, these normally go straight into the trash. Why? Just because I don't have the time to read them, and also all of the prices and information are changing so fast that by the time I've read it it's already out of date. I therefore ignore virtually all forms of printed advertising, not only are direct mail shots annoying, they're also pretty useless. Few people are even using the phone book because it's all available online, why would you want to flick through a phone book and risk getting a paper cut when you can find much more information on the internet.

Many marketers think that it's really scary that print advertising is dying, but this is simply because print is all they know. With print the results are hard to see, but with the internet you can see exactly how many people click on a link. Internet campaigns are very easy to track. This scares many marketers because they will now be responsible for the results they get, and they are perfectly aware of this.

This doesn't mean to say that publications that are printed will disappear, but I expect print advertising will take a back seat. Nobody takes notice of print advertising, especially when they are all at the back of a magazine. TV adverts are also a thing of the past, DVR's can automatically cut the advertisements from shows, so nobody sees them. And even if they do, most people will get up during the commercial break. Users are finding ways to rid their entertainment of advertising.

Web 2.0 has changed a lot of things, most people are interested in the changes made to online advertising. Businesses understand that advertising on the internet is very worthwhile and so spend a lot of money on doing just this.

Banner advertisements used to be popular forms of advertising, however now the money is being spent on content creation. This content is fed into blogs, case studies, seminars, press releases, and email blasts. People realize that web 2.0 is focused more on getting the word out rather than giving people the hard sell.

Web 2.0 is interested in slowly holding somebody's hand and guiding them through to make a sale rather than forcing them to click a link. Many of the clever marketers are utilizing the social networking tools to spread the word about their products, whether you use MySpace, or many of the others you can get great results. Plus most of these tools are completely free!

You should be willing to accept all of the new techniques of advertising including blogs, video blogs, email, and also RSS feeds. Do not forget about some tried and true techniques such as article marketing. It may be a little slow but it is very effective. If you would like to know more about article marketing e-mail me at mrpaulpoole@gmail.com.

Another part of the internet I love is affiliate marketing. You simply go find a great company that you are comfortable with and sign up as an affiliate. Almost all companies on the internet use affiliates to sell their products or services. I market 6 affiliate companies through my website called The Fat Wallet Online Affiliate Marketing Guide. If you would like to take a look just copy and paste this link: http://www.lineyourpockets.biz

Another thing that I like is blogging. Simple posts, letters, press releases, stories and anything else you can come up with are great to add to your blog. Its even better when other people come to your blog and add their comments. You can actually spread your blog all over the internet if enough people are posting on your blog. That said please, I beg of you! Go to my blog and add a comment. Its called "The Fat Wallet". Here it is: http://wwwthefatwallet.blogspot.com/

Even if it takes begging I'm willing. I need traffic......

Enjoy!

One last thing.

Since you were good enough to read to the end I'm going to give you an excellent e-book. Its called DotComology The Science Of Internet Marketing. Just click the link that says Important Information Free. There is a lot of information in this book. I'd read it all if I were you. It just might keep you from making a costly mistake. Here it is: http://www.pluginprofitsite.com/main-20160/dotcomology.html

Thanks again!!!

About the Author
Paul Poole was happily going about business turning artistic vases and hollow vessels on his lathe a few years ago when he found out that he will become handicapped. That is when I started to look to the web as a source of income. About seven months ago I discovered Success University and joined. Not being satisfied about one month ago I found what I was looking for. This site complements SU and adds a ton of other very useful companies.

Source: SOA Service oriented architecture Web 2.0 information at goarticles.com

Web 2.0 Concepts to Keep Your Members Coming Back

Service Oriented Architecture SOA Web 2.0 Articles : Web 2.0 Concepts to Keep Your Members Coming Back by Jeremy Gislason

Web 2.0 Concepts to Keep Your Members Coming Back Again and Again and Again
Web 2.0 may be the most overused, and misunderstood, term of the decade. What it means, in a nutshell is providing a user driven website. Basically many membership marketing websites are Web 2.0, especially social networking sites. The users determine the content in the form of forums, blogs, article posting, reviews and so on. To further enhance the usability of your website and thus the benefit to your members, here are a some ideas to provide a few interactive extras or member benefits.

Training courses are an excellent tool to provide benefit to your members. There are multiple forms for delivering your courses. You could use email - text or html or both, pdf downloads, website content pages, streaming & downloadable videos and audios.

E-mail training courses - Getting your members to sign up for an e-mail training course that takes place over perhaps eight weeks, is a great way of keeping your members engaged with your site over a period of time. You could make this a free course, a paid course or both. Maybe give them a few lessons for free and ask them to pay for the rest of the course once they are into it.

However, to get maximum exposure giving away an entire course or even multiple courses of good quality for Free will really get people coming back to your site. We do this with some of our own membership sites including MembershipMillionaire.com.

Video tutorials - This is a very effective form of training as it is much easier to show your members what you are doing, rather than trying to explain it. It prevents your students becoming frustrated when they can’t understand what you are explaining, and reduces misunderstanding.

You could do the videos yourself using software or you could hire experts in video creation if you are not comfortable using software or doing videos. You could do simple power point slideshows and narrate them or you could stand/sit in front of the camera and talk.

With many Internet users on broadband or ADSL nowadays and computer processors getting faster and faster videos are now going mainstream.

Teleclasses - Teleclasses are similar to conference calls and are conducted over the telephone. They are an excellent way for your members to take part in live learning, as well as having personal interaction with you and other members of your site.

There are many services out there that provide teleconference lines for you to use. Some are free and some have paid services, you should decide what is best for your business needs. You could even record your calls, have transcripts made and then sell that as another product in itself. To top that off you could offer reprint or resell rights to those calls and sell licenses.

Product reviews - Reviews posted by other members is a fantastic interactive medium. It could also engage heated discussions! Nothing gets traffic faster than controversy whether good or bad. Let your members speak their mind about products and services they've used. This will not only help other members and visitors out but it will add lots of content to your site that the search engines love. Sites such as Amazon.com, SureFireWealth.com and others do this on a regular basis.

Guest interviews - Guest interviews with a well known personality who is connected with your niche subject will add huge credibility to your site. Promote guest interviews on your website and in your newsletter. This is a quick way to get great content.

You could post the interview on your site as website content. Or you could have the streaming audio or video up and even let your members download the interviews. Let them post reviews and comments to the interviews and you've got even more content.

Forums - Forums are a type of virtual community and provide the opportunity for people with similar interests to talk to each other. Your members will already have a shared interest in your niche subject, so creating active discussion forums won’t be too challenging.

Here's a tip, have good forum monitors and admin in place to keep things smooth. Having multiple monitors can help you get your new forum started as well as keep discussions ongoing. You could keep your forums open to everyone. That will be better for search engine traffic but it can also attract spammers and forum hackers. Having a private forum for your members only can keep things more secure and full of like minded individuals.

Competitions - Encourage your members to post on your forum or blog by running a competition. Award a prize each month to someone who has made the best post on your forum, and each individual posting would be an additional entry into the prize draw. Or maybe give a prize to the member who writes the most reviews or posts the most comments each month to your site.

Involving your members in polls and surveys

Member polls - Asking your members to answer a simple question relating to your niche subject is a simple and effective way to get them involved in the site. Have a regular monthly poll and publish the results of the previous month’s poll above the question for the current month.

Surveys - Some niche subjects lend themselves well to surveys. If yours does not you could conduct a survey about your membership site itself. This gives your members the chance to express their views and let you know what changes they would like to see.

Getting feedback can also let you know where to take your membership site. By allowing your members to tell you what they want you can just simply give it to them. We've taken surveys ourselves over the years and they can be very insiteful. The poll or survey data you generate can be gold to your customer feedback system for the future of your business.

Newsletters - Newsletters may be used to highlight forum posts, questions that people have asked, blog posts and even case studies, survey results, success stories and more. Get your community involved in the content both online and in your newsletter. They’ll be invested in the results. We'll get more in depth about newsletters in another article.

For now I hope these gave you some ideas to get going with.

About the Author
Jeremy Gislason is a leading expert on membership sites, marketing and online business. Do you want to market and sell all of your products faster? Free how to business and marketing courses at: http://www.MembershipMillionaire.com

Source: Service oriented architecture SOA web 2.0 information at goarticles.com

Affiliate Marketing with Web 2.0

Service Oriented Architecture SOA Web 2.0 Articles : Affiliate Marketing with Web 2.0 by Jared Heinitz

Web 2.0 has literally exploded into the scene in the last few years and while becoming more popular by the day many individuals are confused to what web 2.0 is and how to use it. Web 2.0 is all about social networking, and bringing people together. Some of the most common of these web 2.0 or social networking sites are MySpace, Facebook, DirectMatches, and YouTube.

The use of these sites is free and only requires an email address to register. Once registered, you are able to control the content of the page you are supplied with. In order to use the funded proposal marketing system, you just need to do a couple of things.

The first task is to design a squeeze page or lead capture site that will capture your visitors attention and be compelling enough that they will want to opt-in for more information on your product or service. Be sure to write the content like a squeeze page and drive them to your opt in form. By accomplishing this you have successfully generated a laser targeted opt-in list of contacts at a minimal expense and often times free of charge.

Another way to use web 2.0 is to search the database for people with similar interests as you. For instance, if you are marketing an ebook on party planning, you can look for people with upcoming birthdays, graduations or anniversaries. These folks will be receptive to information on planning a successful party. Again, you get a lead that is targeted to your product/service and it is free of charge. The chance of a conversion or sale is greatly increased.

The powerful aspect of web 2.0 sites is that they put you in contact with thousands or even millions of people. The networking possibilities are virtually endless. What you need to do is get them to add you as a friend or associate. These social sites allow you to send what is called a bulletin. A bulletin is a message that only reaches your list of friends or associates. This can be used to attract contacts with special offers. The use of a Limited Time Offer can also make for a very powerful call to action.

Whichever way you use web 2.0 sites, you are using a funded proposal so you make a little money along the way to supplement your paid advertising campaigns. Then you offer your higher end product/service. Since the contact already knows you and trusts you as a vendor, you have a good chance of making that secondary sale as well as others in the future.

Using web 2.0 and interactive sites properly will grow your list of contacts. The leads you generate are targeted, interested and ready to buy from you. Add the fact that the customer knows where to find you at any given moment and you have the formula for a powerful relationship with your prospects. This gives them a sense that you are "minding the store" at all times and they can reach you anytime. The ability to contact you is extremely important to your prospects. It builds trust, reliability and credibility to your business.

Get yourself moving on web 2.0 and watch your contact list explode and your sales will follow suit.

About the Author
To read my free report "Top 4 Reasons People Fail in Online Marketing and What you can do to Avoid Failing Yourself" Go Here => http://www.mlmfundedproposalmarketing.com/trk.php?c=9891&u=FUNDED-07 Jared Heinitz is a full time Affiliate & Network Marketer living in Provo, UT. He teaches how to use a funded proposal using free/low cost marketing methods to generate 10-15 leads on a daily basis.

Source: Service oriented architecture soa web 2.0 information at goarticles.com

What can Web 2.0 Marketing do for You

Service Oriented Architecture SOA Web 2.0 Articles : What can Web 2.0 Marketing do for You by David C Skul

The advent of Web 2.0 has transformed the online marketing landscape dramatically. Small and medium-sized businesses can now compete on a level playing field with industry giants like Unilever or websites such as MySpace.

With Web 2.0 you can market your products on social networking sites and blogs at very little cost, while the new technology also allows you to monitor customer trends and measure results.

One of the oldest and most traditional methods of Web 2.0 marketing is targeted advertising on search engines. With this method you can have your ad listed on the search results page or appear within an article on a subject related to your product. These are generally paid for per click, but you can be guaranteed each click will bring a new visit to your site.

A much more recent phenomenon is the use of social networking websites to market products. This method is used by everyone from one man operations to multi-national corporations. A page on MySpace or FaceBook can boost the popularity of your product, but be sure to keep the content fresh and updated. Also, you will generally have a young audience here so the content should reflect this.

Blogs offer similar opportunities for Web 2.0 marketing. This is an inexpensive way to subtly market your product or service on the web. However, good content that is updated regularly is essential. Just talking about your products will drive visitors away. Your blog entries will have to be interesting, informative and well written.

If you feel you have the resources and talents in your organization to make interesting audio snippets, you could try podcasting. Again, you will need to provide something that listeners will want to hear, while promoting your product. For example, if you sell cars or car parts you could produce a podcast on car care tips.

Basically, you’ll want to get news and references to your business out there in as many ways as possible. Web 2.0 allows you to send news and press releases direct to the consumer. For example you could offer a RSS feed on your website, or submit search engine optimized press releases to online news sites.

The real beauty of Web 2.0 marketing is that it can be cheap to do. Not all of the options described above might be suitable to market your business, but a simple blog or MySpace page will cost you very little.

About the Author
If you would like to read other articles and watch videos on topics like this one, you can join us at http://www.relativitycorp.com . We have tons of resources on Web 2.0 Marketing written by David C Skul CEO and Frank J Klein CIO.

Source: Service oriented architecture soa web 2.0 information at goarticles.com

Can You Have SOA without IT?

SOA Articles : Can You Have SOA without IT? by Melissa Peterman

There have been recent conversations whether a Service Oriented Architecture ( SOA) could replace an IT department of an organization. The answer is no. It is common to put SOA governance and IT in the same basket but the two don’t have that much in common.

SOA is an architectural style with a goal to achieve loose coupling among interacting software agents, helping to manage business services, whereas IT governance is focused on managing technology.

For example, SOA is like owning a burger franchise that is also like the other burger franchises, anyone can go to the different burger places and expect to get the same thing, but at different locations. Everything is great as long as the service is running smooth. If there is a bump in the road, say the burger recipe for all of the stores went missing, they would need to call in an expert, (IT help) to find a solution. Once the recipe was found, (the bug fixed by the IT person), the SOA system would then continue to run fine, but IT is an essential part of the SOA ebb and flow. Granted, imagine if an IT person was the only one who manually made sure that each transaction within each burger franchise went smoothly? It would be a burger franchise disaster. Therefore, a service oriented architecture helps keep all burger franchise systems working smoothly with an IT person on call. Can businesses save money by purchasing an SOA system in conjunction with their current system?

Businesses can save money with an SOA system and scale down their current IT department but not remove the IT department all together. In fact, business processes are only streamlined by having the two together. According to a recent report, in 2007, companies spent $1.4 million on SOA. The report found in a survey among IT executives from China, US and Germany that 22% claimed faster speed and less risk was the main reason to get an SOA , 18% claimed reduce IT costs and %17 claimed reuse. An SOA provides all of these things and more. You could say that an SOA is enterprise governance only, not governance over IT. With the two together, businesses are finding so many ways to reorganize, restructure and reuse their current database and in turn create profits.

About the Author
About the author:Melissa Peterman is a web content specialist for Innuity. For more information about SOA go to Mark Logic.

Source: Service Oriented Architecture SOA articles at GoArticles.com

Integrating Six Sigma With Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

SOA Articles : Integrating Six Sigma With Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) by Tony Jacowski

Businesses need to realize the fact that SOA works well only when it is integrated with time-tested quality improvement initiatives such as Six Sigma.

For proof, they just need to look at the work records of businesses that are reaping the benefits of SOA after integrating it with Six Sigma concepts and methodologies.

The Integration Process

SOA basically deals with the planning, conceptualizing and designing of new customer oriented services from scratch in line with organizational goals and objectives. This is why the success of SOA depends a lot on the decisions made by management during the initial stages of SOA implementations. Since SOA does not provide for the necessary checks and balances, it has to depend on highly effective Six Sigma methodologies such as Design For Six Sigma (DFSS).

DFSS may not have been originally designed for use with SOA, but still it helps because it ensures that all decisions related to the design and development of new services are made on the basis of sound logic and verifiable scientific and statistical theories. Explained below are the five phases involved in the Six Sigma and SOA integration process.

Define: In this phase, DFSS helps in defining the goals and objectives of the SOA implementations. When SOA goals and objectives are set using DFSS, the chances of failures get automatically reduced, something that is quite necessary, considering the fact that the set goals and objectives will ultimately have a direct bearing on customer satisfaction levels.

Conceptualize: The conceptualization phase, which involves plenty of innovation on part of the developers, is made easy with DFSS, as it helps the developers to design the best possible services with the available human and financial resources. If DFSS is not applied in this phase, it could easily lead to project delays due to indecisiveness on part of the developers.

Design: In this phase, DFSS helps in charting out the design details of the newly conceptualized customer oriented service. Elaborating on the details helps the SOA implementation team to understand the rationale behind the new service design and how it can be used for satisfying customer needs and expectations.

Validate: If DFSS is used right from the first phase, it is highly unlikely that the SOA initiative will fail to deliver the desired results, but since the probability of errors can never be denied, it makes sense to conduct the validation process. If the SOA initiative passes the validation test as specified by DFSS, then it can be given the green signal for organization-wide implementations.

Control: In this phase, DFSS plays the role of a manager and a controller so as to ensure that the desired results are achieved through the SOA implementations. DFSS is based on the concept of continuous improvements, something that it passes onto SOA so as to make it just as effective and efficient.

SOA certainly holds great potential, especially for businesses that rely heavily on the use of technological infrastructure. By integrating SOA with Six Sigma, businesses can easily unlock the inherent potential of SOA and transform themselves into highly efficient organizations.

About the Author
Tony Jacowski is a quality analyst for The MBA Journal. Aveta Solution's Six Sigma Online offers online six sigma training and certification classes for lean six sigma, black belts, green belts, and yellow belts.

Source: Service Oriented Architecture SOA articles at GoArticles.com

Progress makes another SOA buy

Service Oriented Architecture SOA Articles : Progress makes another SOA buy By Chris Kanaracus

Application infrastructure vendor Progress Software has purchased Mindreef, a Hollis, N.H., maker of tools for testing SOAs. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Mindreef news follows Progress' announcement earlier this week that it plans to buy fellow SOA vendor Iona Technologies.

There will be no interruption to support and service for existing Mindreef customers, and there are no plans at this time to shelve any products, according to the site. The company plans to hold a Webcast in mid-July to explain the strategy behind the deal to its client base.

A Progress executive said Mindreef's catalog is complementary to its own Actional series of SOA management tools.

"Mindreef has been very successful in the [SOA testing] tools and infrastructure for people in the pre-production stage," said Dan Foody, vice president of Actional products at Progress. "Actional has focused more on the production and deployment phases."

Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with the SOA consultancy ZapThink, called the deal "a huge, positive move for Progress" via e-mail.

"Not only does it bolster their ability to deliver high-quality SOA, but it also helps to reinforce the message that SOA is not just about Web services integration and ESBs [enterprise service buses]," he wrote. "SOA is about changing the way we think of and consume IT capabilities, and to do so in an environment of high quality requires a robust platform."

ZapThink expects other SOA platform vendors to move in the direction of quality testing, perhaps through acquisitions of companies like as iTKO, he added.

Mindreef claims to have more than 3,000 customers at greater than 1,200 organizations, including 40 of the Fortune 100.

Source: Service Oriented Architecture SOA articles at InfoWorld.com

Mule offers enterprise SOA governance

Service Oriented Architecture SOA Articles : Mule offers enterprise SOA governance

MuleSource on Monday is releasing Mule Galaxy Enterprise Edition, an open-source SOA governance platform featuring an integrated registry/repository.

The product manages SOA artifacts and also features clustering for high availability and fault tolerance. A query engine is featured as well.

MuleSource introduced Galaxy in January. Capabilities include governance and lifecycle management as well as dependency and artifact management. A Web console serves as an interface.

Also included is Mule NetBoot, for managing and deploying applications. The applications can be loaded remotely from the repository. "NetBoot will sit on each node inside your cluster, and it can grab new updates from Galaxy," said Dan Diephouse, project lead for Galaxy at MuleSource.

Support for Microsoft Office documents, meanwhile, enables users to store and search document related to services and applications.

Galaxy prices start at $7,000 per CPU. Or users could access an unsupported version of the product licensed under the GNU General Public License 2.

Source: Service Oriented Architecture SOA articles at InfoWorld.com

Oracle reveals BEA roadmap

Service Oriented Architecture SOA Articles : Oracle reveals BEA roadmap

WebLogic app server becomes core Java container and SOA is emphasized as Oracle meshes its technologies with those acquired in the BEA merger

Oracle presented on Tuesday a comprehensive roadmap for its recently acquired BEA Systems middleware technologies, making BEA's application server Oracle's strategic Java container and pledging continued support for BEA customers.

In a 105-minute Web conference, Oracle President Charles Phillips and, primarily, Oracle Fusion Middleware Senior Vice President Thomas Kurian covered product plans in the SOA, development tools, identity management and other middleware spaces. Oracle closed its $8.5 billion merger with BEA in late-April.

BEA customers will have investment protection, Phillips said. "There will be no forced product migration at all," he said.

Phillips cited SOA synergies and said Oracle, with BEA in tow, becomes number one in the middleware market.

"We want to provide a complete platform for developing [and] deploying SOA-based applications," Phillips said. The acquisition of BEA made sense because BEA is a pioneer in middleware and a company that "really got SOA," he said.

Oracle's plan categorizes BEA products into three areas:

* Strategic products, which will be adopted immediately with limited re-design into the Oracle Fusion Middleware platform.
* Continue and converge products, which are BEA products being incrementally re-designed to integrate with Fusion Middleware. These products will continue to be developed and maintained for at least nine years.
* Maintenance products, which BEA had put on an end-of-life status and will get continued maintenance for five years. One example is BEA's Beehive applications framework.

Perhaps the biggest -- but most expected -- revelation was in the application server arena. The BEA Weblogic Server Java application server "becomes Oracle's strategic J2EE container," Kurian said. It has been integrated with Oracle technologies like Oracle TopLink for Java persistence and Oracle Coherence grid capabilities.

Application server modernization plans call for modularization based on the OSGi standard. However, "Oracle's own application server continues development going forward," said Kurian.

SOA plans call for integrating the Oracle ESB (enterprise service bus) with BEA Aqualogic Service Bus. This provides a best-of-breed offering for customers, said Kurian. Also, the former BEA Aqualogic Enterprise Repository becomes Oracle's SOA governance repository; with it, SOA artifacts can captured shared and change-managed across the lifecycle, Kurian said.

Source: Service Oriented Architecture SOA articles at InfoWorld.com

Ten ways to tell it's not SOA

Service Oriented Architecture SOA Articles : "Ten ways to tell it's not SOA" -- and a few more

Joe McKendrick knocked it out of the park this week with his latest entry, "Ten ways to tell it's not SOA." A few of my favorites:

"1) If a vendor tells you that you need to buy a suite to get to SOA ... it's not SOA. SOA means complete freedom from suites and integrated packages."

"2) If a vendor is trying to sell you hardware ... it's not SOA. Enough said."

"6) If your CIO is clueless about what's going on with shared services ... it's not SOA. To truly function, SOA-based infrastructures need to cross organizational boundaries, and it takes someone at the management level to bring these efforts together. Otherwise, again, it's services in silos."

"7) If the IT department is running the whole show ... it's not SOA. Sorry IT folks, but SOA needs to have the business heavily involved in the effort as well."

Of course, I have a few more of my own:

11) If this is a change in "paradigm" and not a change in "architecture" ... it's not SOA.

12) If your SOA vendor uses the term "agility" over 10 times in any given presentation, chances are you're not getting agility ... and it's also not SOA.

13) If the enterprise architect is going to enterprise architecture conferences, chances are ... it's not SOA. However, there will be a lot of governance.

14) If somebody calls something an "SOA application," chances are ... it's not SOA.

15) If somebody says "services orient-en-ta-ted," it's not only SOA, but you need to fire that person. (Unless they're British.)

Enough said on my end.

Source: Service Oriented Architecture SOA articles at InfoWorld.com

Are you seeing SOA rage?

Service Oriented Architecture Articles : Are you seeing SOA rage?

I'm getting some reports from a few of those charged with making SOA work within some of the larger enterprises. They are experiencing what I call SOA rage.

SOA rage is the negative reaction some of the architects are getting from those charged with changing existing systems.

I expected some of this. We're doing a few things that could indeed get on the last nerve of existing IT, such as looking at existing inefficiencies, including static and hard-to-change architectures that allow you to determine the ROI of SOA. Many preserve these attacks on systems and processes that they have cared for, for many years, and suggesting that things are not as good as they can be upsetting. Thus, they rage back. In addition some who rage back are in charge of existing enterprise architecture, and they see SOA as change. And they fear change.

While I expect some pushback from existing SOA efforts, the kind of reaction many are seeing out there could be a sign that we're not managing the human element as well as we could. You need to consider the feelings, desires, and expectations of the people you're dealing with, and learn how to act as a productive agent of change, and not someone who is screwing up their world. There is a huge difference.

However, there are times when even if you do all you can do to make sure everyone is happy, it's not possible to please everyone. All you can do is press on in the belief that what you're doing is right and the ends clearly justify the means. I guess there is a certain amount of rage that's going to be a part of any change; it's your job to minimize it.

Source: Service Oriented Architecture SOA articles at InfoWorld.com

SOA Successes out there? Good news, bad news

Service Oriented Architecture Articles : SOA Successes out there? Good news, bad news.

I urge you to check out this article in Tech Target by Michael Meehan covering a recent report from the Burton Group. In essence, SOA is going well, sometimes, but it is not going well all of the time, and people are the issue. We've heard this before (mainly here), but few are catching on and correcting problems within their own organizations.

Great data points to consider as you press forward with your SOA project.

The good news:

"According to Burton Group vice president and research director Anne Thomas Manes, some users had executed nearly perfectly in terms of doing SOA on the IT side, but the initiative had yielded no increased agility, quicker time to market or project savings because the business remained completely oblivious to the initiative. Yet the study also found that users who do break down artificial corporate barriers, install proper governance and involve the business have runaway success stories to tell. "

"'The successes we found are just incredibly inspiring,' Manes told attendees at last week's Burton Group Catalyst Conference.'"

Summary: Work through your issues, consider the business, drive systemic change, and you'll reach SOA nirvana. No tricks about that.

Also, note that changing out the executive team and altering the culture is necessary for success.

The bad news:

"Burton Group found a 50 percent complete failure rate in the 20 companies that took part in the study. Another 30 percent were considered neither successful nor wholly failed.

'Many of them had deployed multiple successful projects, but most of those projects were focused on just one integration problem,' Manes said. 'It was just a bunch of Web services. … The service is only built for one application and it's never going to be used again.'

She noted that such projects amount only to a less efficient method of doing EAI. Instead she recommended users focus projects around quality data, systems modernization or business process automation. "

"Manes listed numerous other failure factors during her presentation, including:

Lack of defined service models
Infrastructure focus
Governance only of SOAP-based systems, if that
Failure of developers to leverage the runtime governance in place
Initiatives led by and solely involving the app dev group
Road maps lacking specificity
Inability to measure ROI
Project-centric culture
An "I'm special" attitude"

Summary: SOA is not tactical. You need to consider the people, and you need to consider the business. SOA is holistic and systemic to the business. SOA is not a project, it's a journey. SOA is not integration, it's architecture. SOA is about business agility, not governance or other technology.

Great points from Anne and Burton. Also good validations of many of the points I've been making here. I urge you to check out that article.

Source: Service Oriented Architecture SOA articles at InfoWorld.com

SOA governance dos and don’ts …or maybe not

Service Oriented Articles Articles : SOA governance dos and don’ts …or maybe not

I had a few reactions to my SOA governance dos and don'ts post of last week. And, for the first time, I agree with them. :-) Perhaps the title should have been "Looking at SOA governance technology."

Fist, I saw this from James McGovern.

"Todd Biske keeps Dave Linthicum honest regarding SOA Governance. Way too many industry analysts view SOA through the lens of products and refuse to expand the conversation. I would like to add one additional principle: Align your SOA to your enterprise information protection policies as so many so-called enterprise services miss this point."

First, he may be right about the lens of products for this particular post. Indeed that is what I had in my head as I wrote it, in reaction to an e-mail I received. Second, I'm certainly not an analyst.

Todd provided more detail:

"Dave Linthicum had a recent post called SOA Governance Dos and Don'ts which should have been titled, 'SOA Governance Technology Selection Dos and Don'ts.' If you use that as the subject, then there's some good advice. But once again, I have to point out that technology selection is not the first step.

My definition of governance is that it is the people, policies, and processes that ensure desired behavior. SOA governance, therefore, is the people, policies, and processes the ensure desired behavior in your SOA efforts. So what are the dos and don'ts?"

Actually Todd is right. The post was more about the tools and not the process or the people. However, I have enough out there about that aspect of SOA governance that for this particular post it was more narrowly focused. I should have been clearer about that.

Okay, consider myself called out and standing corrected.

Source: SOA Articles at InfoWorld.com

SOA consulting: Money-back guarantee?

Service Oriented Architecture Articles : SOA consulting: Money-back guarantee?

You have to admit that SOA consulting, at least from the larger players out there, has been a bit hit and miss. Although I'm sure there are instances where projects are going well, most are over budget and under delivering. I get an e-mail from a frustrated client on a weekly basis, typically asking if budget overruns, changes in the scope of the contract, and delays are normal.

Hard to say what is normal -- we've not been at this SOA stuff for long. I do believe, however, that most SOA consulting gigs out there are run and staffed by consultants that just are not qualified to deliver on the promise of SOA. I bet many big 6 partners are saying "that's not us," when the bad news is that it is.

The core issue is that SOA is holistic and far-reaching within Forbes' Global 2000, and those tasked with building an SOA, typically the first one, really need to have a wide variety of skills and talents. You must be a cross between a super geek and a diplomat, and have some business sense, as well, to be successful with SOA.

The core issue is even more fundamental than that, however. There are many "SOA consultants" that don't have a clue how to approach the problem. Instead they rely on "management by magazine" or "vendor-driven architecture," meaning that they will use "SOA governance," "ESB," "reuse," and "agility" a hundred times a minute, but have no clue how to move toward a true architecture.

So, having said all that, how about a money-back guarantee? I mean if you're learning on the client's dime, perhaps you need to share some of the risk as well. If you're good with SOA then this guarantee should not be a problem. If you're not, you'll be writing some checks. I love pay for performance.

Source: SOA articles, InfoWorld.com