SOA Gets SaaSy?

Joe McKendrick does a great job in following up on my post on "Pay-as-you-go SOA." "There are some examples of the on-demand model for SOA-enabling tools and platforms emerging. In a podcast last year, Dana Gardner, along with Anrai O'Toole, explored the possibilities of what is often referred to as "Integration as a Service." A few months after his podcast with Dana, Anrai practiced what he preached — his company, ESB provider Cape Clear, offered up its ESB into the cloud. The company was absorbed into Workday, an online ERP provider, earlier this year." "SOA tools and platforms from the... READ MORE

 
 

Mashups exploding: SOA is along for the ride

It does not take a rocket scientist to understand that the mashups are moving from something that's conceptual and fun, to something that's productive and businesslike. The fact is developers are leveraging mashups to solve all sorts of business problems these days, and the speed to production and value of these little applications is compelling. However, when one looks at mashups, you're not only looking at the mixing and matching of resources found on the Web and/or within the enterprise, but at a true composite application as we've been defining for years in the world of SOA. Thus, mashups are... READ MORE

 
 

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PROJECT MANAGEMENT INSTITUTE; PMI Scheduling Professional PMI-SPSM Credential Introduced

To meet the growing demand for project managers and to offer a credential for those who specialize in scheduling, the Project Management Institute (PMI) has developed a credential for scheduling professionals who work on project teams. The new credential is the PMI Scheduling Professional (PMI-SP)(SM) credential (see also Project Management Institute).

 
 

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The Pay-as-you-Go SOA Challenge

One of the things I've been thinking about this holiday weekend is the way that people are paying for SOA technology. I mean, if you've selected a vendor, you're paying for the technology before you know it's both the right fit and works as advertised. There is no shared risk. The "pay before play" model is the domain of the on-premise enterprise software vendors, including most SOA vendors. However, there has been a movement in the last few years to software-as-a-service (SaaS), open source, and now platform-as-a-service (PaaS). What's nice about these emerging models is that typically you pay for... READ MORE

 
 

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ERP Implementation: Do It Right or Pay Later

When dealing with clients who want to short-cut their ERP implementation process, one of the Project Managers at our company likes to state that "you can pay now, or you can pay later." This may seem self-promoting since we are consultants earning a living on helping clients with their ERP implementations, but the reality is that it's a true statement. We see many companies that spend hundreds of

 
 

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SAP Licenses Due to Expire

As many of you may be of aware of, many companies have already implemented SAP and are only looking at upgrades, rolling out global templates, consolidations, and extending their existing SAP suites to modules that have not been implemented before (such as HR, PS, BI, etc.). When the SAP certificates expire, companies have to renew them or make a decision in a different direction. Therefore, it

 
 

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7 Key ERP Success Factors

 
 

We recently conducted an ERP poll to identify the factors that ERP experts find to be the most important to successful ERP projects. Based on the findings of the study, here's what percentage of participants find each of the following the most important success factor: Strong Program Management - 6% Executive Support and Buy-in - 19% Organizational change management and training - 13% Realistic

 
 

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Project manager a critical role

The success of any business project, whether big or small, generally depends on one important person -- the project manager. Since companies can spend millions of dollars on such projects, it is not surprising that more and more of them are looking for qualified project managers.

 
 

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Inside IT Project Failure Deadly Project Lust

When an organization falls in love at all costs with a technology project, things have the potential to get pretty messy--and very expensive. It happens often enough. For whatever reason, an IT honcho or a line-of-business manager continues a dud of a project with the persistence of a bulldog holding onto a piece of meat. They just won't unclamp their jaws, even when all signs point to symptoms of potential disaster--whether the technology isn't going to work as designed, it won't fit with the business after all, or it can't be completed on time or on budget. "It's very common to see both IT and the line-of-business folks become enamored with a project and continue, blinded by the risks, when a third-party objective participant would say that there is failure coming down the line out there," says Michael Krigsman, CEO of Asuret, a project-management consultancy in Brookline, Mass.

 
 

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Looking at enterprise architecture

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The realities of SOA (podcast)

This got me thinking or actually remembering that we need to not forget that we need to solve the customer/client problems while focusing on the integration

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Mashups/SOA Pushback

 
 

Wow, you never know until you post. I had a couple of e-mails…okay…let's call them nasty grams around my last post, people who did not want the term "mashups" sullied with the term "SOA." Nobody would go on the record, but the core message is that they view SOA as something that's "enterprisy," and mashups as much more innovative and not really enterprise related. Not sure I agree with that. While indeed mashups are an innovative way of building very cool applications from many available resources, visual and non-visual, they are still composite applications. While I'm seeing mashups that are... READ MORE

 
 

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2008-5-23 Friday

http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid26_gci1307332,00.html
"...we spent 55 percent of our time defining the processes. Fifty-five percent, I found that pretty amazing. Twenty percent of our time was in coding. The remaining 25 percent was in testing and implementation

5 Ways to Speed Through Bureaucracy at Work - US News

Sometimes if you can't get through - dont go there.

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5 Project Points of Failure to Avoid

Sure, falling in love with technology can cause big project headaches, but rarely does technology alone cause an IT project to fail. "Yes, IT sometimes falls in love with its technology, but most failures come about, not as a result of the technology, but as a result of the management of technology," says Michael Krigsman of Asuret, a project management consultancy based in Brookline, Mass. "The consequences of failure can be dramatic, from a technical standpoint and especially from a business standpoint. And the sad part is that most of these failures could be avoided."

 
 

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2008-5-16 Friday

BearingPoint Finalizes HR & Payroll Modernization Project for North Carolina

 
 

BearingPoint, a management and technology consulting firm, announced the successful implementation of a new human resources and payroll computer system for the State of North Carolina. The new integrated system, named BEACON (Building Enterprise Access for North Carolina s Core Operation Needs), replaced North Carolina s antiquated 30-year-old human resource and payroll computer systems with advanced technology that eliminates most paper forms and gives state employees the ability to view and change personal information online. Nearly 86,000 state employees can now perform a variety of typical functions with just a few clicks of a mouse.

 
 

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It's who you know

In business, who you know can be just as important as what you know. For project managers, one of the best ways to network is to join the leading organization in the industry -- the Project Management Institute (PMI). "PMI is set up for people looking at their career development and membership automatically gives you access to a number of peers," says Sean Whitaker, who chairs the South Island branch of the Project Management Institute of New Zealand (PMINZ).

http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=3045&topicId=100050541&docId=l:790588150&isRss=true

How to win with SOA ... finally, focus longer term

Finally, SOA is a long term solution. No ROI will come soon for the majority of enterprises that leverage SOA approaches and technology, thus the value will be understood in years, not months. This is an especially difficult concept when you consider that most American businesses operate quarter to quarter, and budgets and objects change monthly. Thus, longer term projects such as SOA, which are both complex and systemic, are difficult if not impossible to maintain over time in some organizations. What's needed is a much longer term outlook. The best advice is to get investment and commitment from the... READ MORE

 
 

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2008-5-9 Friday

Web Oriented Architecture Webinar Series

I've had a number of you who have asked me to bring back the Webinar series I was doing a year or so ago. So, I'm going to start on 5/13, next week, delivering the first of many Webinars around the notion of Web Oriented Architecture, or WOA. The description is below, and you can register here. It's free, with very little commercial interruption. Come learn about WOA and SOA in the real world. David Linthicum: Delivering Enterprise Data to the Emerging Web Data is the driving force behind the emerging Internet. While the Web used to be a collection... READ MORE

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SAP ERP Solutions

SAP ERP Solutions

Training Groups

http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/eai/implementation/archives/training-groups-24330

2008-5-8 Thursday

SAP
Implementing an enterprise application like an enterprise resources planning (ERP), contact relationship management (CRM), or enterprise asset management (EAM) is almost as complex as undertaking a civil engineering or major construction project. Here are six simple steps to take in order to manage that complexity and achieve your corporate goals.
http://research.ittoolbox.com/white-papers/pdfViewer.asp?r=http://hosteddocs.ittoolbox.com/WP-2007-08%20-%206%20Steps%20to%20ERP%20Implementation%20Success.pdf
6 Steps to ERP Implementation Success.pdf

http://research.ittoolbox.com/white-papers/pdfViewer.asp?r=http://hosteddocs.ittoolbox.com/bcs_ab_SAP.pdf

2008-5-8 Thursday

SAP
http://research.ittoolbox.com/white-papers/pdfViewer.asp?r=http://hosteddocs.ittoolbox.com/bcs_ab_SAP.pdf

2008-5-6 Tuesday

Project Manager what have you done with you time today?
http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/pm/ocm/archives/dear-mr-project-manager-what-have-you-done-with-your-time-today-24275

http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/eai/madgreek/archives/ea-and-ivory-towers-24272

http://www.exubero.com/blog/20070522_The_Business_Case_for_a_Blog.html

2008-5-5 Monday

Those seeking general advice around SOA, and how to win. Here are 5 surefire ways that, if followed, will make your SOA a success. They are: 1. Understand the pain. 2. Define the value. 3. Focus on understanding. 4. Remember the people. 5. Focus longer term. Understand the pain. In many modern global 2000 companies, the enterprise architectures are badly broken and hinder the businesses ability to change. For instance, a recent survey by the Business Performance Management Institute found that only 11 percent of executives... READ MORE
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2008-5-3 Saturday

New Born Blog
SOA
This artical really hits the mark. My EA team mates and I are experiencing this now. Stay tuned for the outcome. http://weblog.infoworld.com/realworldsoa/archives/2008/05/soa_issues_are.html?source=rss Anything new here- sure, like the artical reads,WOA is a new term offering a new way to think about new things, in the context of old things.http://weblog.infoworld.com/realworldsoa/archives/2008/04/why_woasoa_is_m.html?source=rss Web 2.0 Here I Comehttp://weblog.infoworld.com/realworldsoa/archives/2008/04/web_20_here_i_c.html?source=rss
The No. 1 Business Issue: Customer Relationships
http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/d/4/8d41b006-45e6-46e8-9bcd-a82aa9857e10/Commissioned%20Study%20Conducted%20by%20Forrester%20Consulting%20on%20Behalf%20of%20Microsoft_Revised.pdf