As with so much of the landscape of service-oriented architecture, large vendors with extensive marketing departments have tried to prescribe how their software should be used to solve specific problems instead of investing in the bigger SOA picture.
Software is the enabler for the broader SOA project, but you need to have a baseline understanding in place before software becomes practical. At a minimum you need to know the problem you are solving before you choose software packages.
Dave Linthicum blogged about this subject this morning:
The fact of the matter is that SOA governance, and governance in general, is really a people and process thing, with technology only coming into play to automate the processes and support the people. If you don't establish that, you're going to fail at SOA governance and thus fail at SOA, no matter how much technology you invest in.
I would push a bit further (without blatantly shilling) that SOA governance makes a lot of sense to be open source. Instead of forcing users into a technology, open-source tools allow them to manipulate the software to their business. And with frictionless distribution (meaning you can get the software without having to pay license fees first), there is an obvious appeal to enterprise users.
Contrary to what many people think, there are a great many SOA success stories starting to pop up (more on that later--I am doing a Webinar this week). We're now starting to get to the meat of solving enterprise problems rather than forcing models, stacks, and "an SOA" on users.
Disclosure: my company sells an open-source SOA governance product.
There aren't yet many practical demonstrations of how you actually use cloud services like Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2. To put my money where my mouth is, I coerced Kevin, my IT guy, into setting up and deploying one of our products on Amazon EC2.
Disclosure: Lest you think I am trying to shill, we obviously used our own software for this proof of concept. Mule Galaxy is a service-oriented architecture governance platform with built-in registry and repository. It's written in Java and is GPLv2 licensed.
We are using the EC2 instance of Galaxy for customer demo purposes and to prove out the cloud as a deployment option. Odds are most enterprises won't put their SOA governance in the cloud, though there is a strong likelihood that you will have assets that cross your corporate firewall.
The cloud is becoming a more and more realistic deployment option making software consumable in new and interesting ways.
Just how complicated is this cloud thing?
The Amazon toolset has come a long way since the beta launched. In fact, it took us less than an hour to provision a lightweight instance of Fedora 6, install a few missing utilities, set a couple of environment variables, and launch Galaxy.
Here are the basic steps, followed by the nitty-gritty details for each section:
... Read more
I think it's a great thing to see the big analyst firms recognize open source products and companies as key players in today's software world. The fact that Gartner has named MuleSource as a "Cool Vendor in SOA Governance" obviously speaks to the quality of the software, but also to the fact that the analysts who have typically been less open source focused (versus say, Red Monk) are realizing the massive impact that we are having on the market.
According to Gartner, "The cost, complexity and potential vendor lock-in of closed-source technology from infrastructure platform vendors have pushed the desire for open-source technologies past operating systems, application servers and enterprise service buses."
If you read into the Gartner quote, they are now also setting themselves up to be able to talk about open source applications and other infrastructure components. The times sure are changing.
Mule Galaxy is available for download and is licensed under the GPL v2.
Disclosure: I work for MuleSource.
Feeling technically frisky on this cloudy Friday? How about some SOA Governance 101?
SOA (service-oriented architecture) requires many pieces of the puzzle to come together. One of the key components is governance, which often includes the use of a Registry and Repository.
In this eBizQ article I outline the Five Biggest SOA Governance mistakes and how to correct them. We also covered this in a webinar a few weeks back that you can view in the archives.Wondering how to do good SOA? Check out these 10 lessons learned as presented by Ian Koenig, Thomson Financial's senior vice president and chief architect.
My two key takeaways:
-You will be forced to do integration, regardless if it fits into the analyst dream world of immaculate SOA conception
-If Thomson has already achieved an SOA environment and are so focused on governance, than its clearly more important than most people realize
Koenig's Top Ten:
1. SOA requires governance. The only way to control the complexity of an IT infrastructure built out of services is with a governance process based on "a well defined set of interface guidelines and policies," Koenig said.
2. Govern to the policies that matter.
3. People don't communicate.
4. Make governance easy and do it early.
5. Reusability does not come cheap.
6. Interfaces are more important than implementation.
7. Integration is more common than "greenfield."
8. Identify the owner for each service.
9. Be pragmatic.
10. It's all about governance.
Full article: 10 lessons learned on SOA excellence
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