You've just gone to your CIO with a plan to implement your IT organization's
high-profile B2B "Project X" using Web services. Your CIO patiently listens
while you explain the benefits of using third-party Web services as part of
your mission-critical infrastructure, how contracts will be negotiated
electronically without the need for pesky legal departments, how everyone
will outsource all their security and management to providers they never need
to meet in person, and how applications will dynamically assemble and modify
themselves as your needs change.
You confidently sit back, smile, and wait for your CIO to give his inevitable
nod of approval. It's only natural - after all, this model works just like
the electric grid but with software services. After a few moments ... (more)
"Our processes are bulletproof. Nothing gets into production that doesn't go
through the proper and complete approval process." Famous last words uttered
by far too many enterprise architects. Some of them actually believe it's
true - others think that by hoping it's true, maybe, just maybe, they can
make it true.
The reality, as any line-of-business developer can attest, is much less
c... (more)
When I tell customers that my company does Web services management, the
question I often hear is "so what do you mean by Web services management?"
It's no wonder there's so much confusion on this issue, because the term
"management" has been used to mean many different things. For example,
there's business process management (actively coordinating the runtime
execution of business proces... (more)
Day by day, company by company, IT organization by IT organization, today's
enterprise is busy architecting for business-solution agility and the
alignment of key assets around the emerging service-oriented architecture
(SOA) umbrella. The ability to embrace SOA leads to the ability to rapidly
capitalize on future IT investments and leverage existing technologies both
inside and outside ... (more)
As information technology professionals progress in their knowledge and use
of XML and Web services, the question of XML performance persists. In hallway
chats, one might hear that "XML takes up too much bandwidth" or "XML takes
too many CPU cycles to process."
Unfortunately, these beliefs lead to behaviors inconsistent with best
practices for building and deploying Web service-based syst... (more)