Just to let you know – I’ve been in touch with Ashesh Badani (Group Marketing Director for SOA at Sun) who told me that he had had some level of visibility of the work going on around SCA. We’re due to talk again in the New Year, and one of the topics I want to cover is Sun’s potential role in SCA. Once I have the info I’ll post it here!

Just to let you know – I’ve been in touch with Ashesh Badani (Group Marketing Director for SOA at Sun) who told me that he had had some level of visibility of the work going on around SCA. We’re due to talk again in the New Year, and one of the topics I want to cover is Sun’s potential role in SCA. Once I have the info I’ll post it here!

Ian

Ian

We are moving increasingly to open source platforms, and JBoss and Sun’s recent announcements seem to put them in front (and IBM and BEA’s reticence positions them elsewhere) – and barring a more cooperative stance between IBM and the open source world, their management is going to hear a crisp message: we don’t trust your motives.

We are moving increasingly to open source platforms, and JBoss and Sun’s recent announcements seem to put them in front (and IBM and BEA’s reticence positions them elsewhere) – and barring a more cooperative stance between IBM and the open source world, their management is going to hear a crisp message: we don’t trust your motives.

And now that I know you’ve spoken to Wolfgang, I’d better watch what I say! If anything I write below contradicts him, you are probably safe to assume that he is right and I am wrong…

Broadly speaking, my clients (as an ISSW consultant) fall into one of two camps with respect to standards. Some of them are looking to the future and trying to build a flexible, open-standards-based infrastructure. They find the vision of SOA utterly compelling and they’re thinking strategically. For such organisations, implementing a major project on proprietary technology just isn’t going to happen.

The second camp are clients who have a pressing problem that they have to solve right now. A typical example here is an externally-imposed deadline to attain compliance in some area (e.g. number porting time limits, updates to motor insurance database, etc, etc).

In these cases, open standards are nice – but they’re not top of the list; a successful project at an affordable price is the goal. I guess one could say such clients are, out of short-term necessity, more tactically-driven.

Now, the key point here is that the recent SCA announcement is good news for both classes of clients.

Open-standards-based organisations can now consider products such as WebSphere Process Server safe in the knowledge that one of the key underpinning technologies has support from most of the big players in the industry. Likewise, organisations with short-term pressures driving them can now cross another objections off the list when evaluating SCA-based offerings… they no longer have to compromise between “getting the job done now” and “deferring the standards-headache for another year”.

Of course, you’d be doing your clients a dis-service if you didn’t counsel caution :-) But, like you say in the comment on my blog, there is real value in SCA. This means there may be an opportunity cost for those who choose not to use it. This opportunity cost should be considered in relation to the now much-reduced risk with respect to standardisation/industry support.

And now that I know you’ve spoken to Wolfgang, I’d better watch what I say! If anything I write below contradicts him, you are probably safe to assume that he is right and I am wrong…

Broadly speaking, my clients (as an ISSW consultant) fall into one of two camps with respect to standards. Some of them are looking to the future and trying to build a flexible, open-standards-based infrastructure. They find the vision of SOA utterly compelling and they’re thinking strategically. For such organisations, implementing a major project on proprietary technology just isn’t going to happen.

The second camp are clients who have a pressing problem that they have to solve right now. A typical example here is an externally-imposed deadline to attain compliance in some area (e.g. number porting time limits, updates to motor insurance database, etc, etc).

In these cases, open standards are nice – but they’re not top of the list; a successful project at an affordable price is the goal. I guess one could say such clients are, out of short-term necessity, more tactically-driven.

Now, the key point here is that the recent SCA announcement is good news for both classes of clients.

Open-standards-based organisations can now consider products such as WebSphere Process Server safe in the knowledge that one of the key underpinning technologies has support from most of the big players in the industry. Likewise, organisations with short-term pressures driving them can now cross another objections off the list when evaluating SCA-based offerings… they no longer have to compromise between “getting the job done now” and “deferring the standards-headache for another year”.

Of course, you’d be doing your clients a dis-service if you didn’t counsel caution :-) But, like you say in the comment on my blog, there is real value in SCA. This means there may be an opportunity cost for those who choose not to use it. This opportunity cost should be considered in relation to the now much-reduced risk with respect to standardisation/industry support.

I’ve already had some good briefings on Integration Developer – the most recent with Wolfgang Kulhanek. It’s a nice tool – but as SCA isn’t yet a standard I wouldn’t recommend that anyone gets too carried away…

I absolutely agree that tools have to be there, and Integration Developer is a nice indication of where things need to go. But it only makes sense if you’re a Big Blue Shop right now…

I’ve already had some good briefings on Integration Developer – the most recent with Wolfgang Kulhanek. It’s a nice tool – but as SCA isn’t yet a standard I wouldn’t recommend that anyone gets too carried away…

I absolutely agree that tools have to be there, and Integration Developer is a nice indication of where things need to go. But it only makes sense if you’re a Big Blue Shop right now…