A Technical Manager's Perspective

Technology and Management Topics

I know my posts have dropped off lately, however other factors from family to work and the Patriots have consumed my time in the last month. It is not for a lack of topics to write about as I have been digging into a couple of technologies, and pulling together thoughts on others. I have been reading a lot about OpenID and single sign-on and have a number of thoughts and strategies surrounding OpenID and it's impact both inside and outside the Enterprise. Cloud Computing is another technology that is starting to get some hype, and in many ways it may be useful to the Enterprise but not in the manner that is being talked about now.

I am also still very interested in Enterprise 2.0 and SOA from both a deployment perspective and a support perspective. And finally, Management. I am always looking to learn how I can improve as a manager and recently came across a new Management Blog that looks interesting. The blog is called Damn Good Manager and is worth checking out and contributing if so inclined.

Technorati : Technology OpenID SOA Management

Dion Hinchcliffe's Enterprise Web 2.0 Predictions

Technorati : Enterprise 2.0 Web 2.0 SOA SAAS

Predictions for 2008

With the New Year approaching it's a time for predictions. Here are my thoughts on Technology in 2008:

1) I see the continued adoption of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 applications in Business. This adoption will not be across all applications but instead will key on the applications where communication and social involvement will help internal processes. Enterprise 2.0 will become another tool for Business and Applications Analysts to use when considering application upgrades and new deployments.

2) Web Services will continue to grow along with Java adoption and Service Oriented Architecture. A lot of companies have invested in Java, Web Services and SOA. SOA will help to provide a platform to scale larger applications and the adoption of Web Services will help to justify the need for true SOA deployments, which will give developers more options when accessing data and building applications.

3) Identity and Authentication Management will grow and gain greater acceptance. OpenId is just the start of this trend. Once OpenId starts to gain acceptance, stronger authentication tools will be used along with OpenId to maintain a secure Identity. Here is a list of the many Identity Working Groups

4) Cloud based computing will continue to grow with new opportunities in the Cloud Based High Performance Computing market. We will see more Software As A Service applications and as the Cloud Based HPC market grows, more vendors are going to want to move to a SAAS model.

5) We will see more Social Media Projects and new Social Networks hitting the marketplace. New vendors will give Business better choices when deploying internal social networking tools and new features will help the big players like Facebook and LinkedIn. However, I predict that this market will start to slow down in late 2008 with many smaller social networks merging or going away.

6) Mobile Web will gain greater acceptance as Vendors reduce the cost of accessing the Web via your phone and start to offer more services via the mobile network.

7) Open Source solutions will continue to grow and gain acceptance within larger organizations. More vendors will start to offer support for Open Source solutions as this will provide Business with an additional revenue model.

8) The Gaming industry will continue to surge with new adoption in both the Online and Game Console segment. New titles come out every day and there is an increase in softer non-combative titles which are becoming very popular.

9) Google will continue to expand into other markets. We will learn more about Open Social in 2008 but will have to wait until 2009 to see the impact of open social, however Google will continue to diversify and introduce other Business Models.

10) Microsoft will be around for a long time, and their Windows Server 2008 release will be stable and quicker than Windows Server 2003. Adoption will be slow throughout 2008 until the first service pack comes out, however my prediction is that this will be a stable OS that gains adoption in 2009.

11) Acceptance of Microsoft Vista will be very slow and will require multiple Service Pack updates before it becomes a favorable choice. I predict that it will be 2009 before we start looking at Vista as a recommended desktop solution.

12) Prepare for a slowdown. Gartner, Global Insight, and the Wall Street Journal predict a 30-36% chance of a recession in 2008.

Happy New Year

Technorati : Technology Predictions 2008

Web Services 2003 and 2007

While talking with the application folks about the gaps in my understanding of SOA, one of the architects sent me a document called WebServicesProposal that he co-authored in 2003 after attending the Web Services Edge 2003 Conference. I was amazed how their observations from 2003 are so relevant today and thought it would be great to share this document with you. The authors are Joe Frate and Sean Nally and their document defined Web Services, identified what it can do for our company, documented where it would make sense within our company, and concluded that we should start working on Web Services with a quote of “Web Services is a breakthrough technology that should be taken advantage of.”

They went on to discuss ……

In a nutshell, Web Services is a services-oriented architecture that allows disparate and independent software systems to be integrated using standard message-based protocols for exchanging data.  These protocols leverage XML to standardize data representation.

With Web Services, software systems can provide services to each other no matter what platform they are implemented on or what technology they utilize.  For example, a software system implemented in J2EE on Unix could access services (and have its own services accessed) by another software system implemented in a COM environment on Windows.  Such integration is possible not only for modern software systems, but also for any legacy software system that is enhanced to communicate with a Web Service.  This is accomplished by “serializing” the data into a standard XML format, which is then exchanged between two Web Services; this is referred to as “messaging”.  When a software system is accessible through a Web Service, we can say that the software system is “wrapped by a Web Service”.

After reading their document, I can see where they have influenced applications development within our company over the last few years by wrapping web services around some of our older application or by replacing client server front ends with java based front ends while leaving the back end database resources unchanged.

Back in 2003, Web Services implied static html pages with a front end web form talking to a backend database or data repository. The Web and Web Services have evolved since 2003 into more than just static pages, embracing a more open social approach to communication that has been labeled Web 2.0. However, in my mind, the Web Services documented by Joe and Sean in 2003 is closer to an Architectural strategy encompassing Service Oriented Architecture than a social Web 2.0 strategy.

I know that there has been a lot of debate surrounding the differences and strategies between Web 2.0. SOA, and Enterprise 2.0 however, Businesses and large Enterprises take a guarded approach to sharing and manipulating data and that is why I see Web Services as more of an architectural strategy aligned with SOA as opposed to a social open strategy aligned with Web 2.0. I do think that the front end components of SOA could incorporate Web 2.0 characteristics and see Web 2.0 as a part of SOA and not a seperate entity.

In 2003, Joe and Sean identified Web Services as a revolutionary breakthrough technology. After talking with Joe this past week he mentioned that Web Services and SOA is an evolutionary technology.

I agree with Joe.

SOA/ESB Video

Check out this great little Whiteboard video from Ross Mason, CTO and co-founder of MuleSource, and the folks at ZDNet.......

What does it really mean to introduce SOA into an organization? Ross Mason, CTO and co-founder of MuleSource, explains how an enterprise service bus allows different applications to communicate with each other.    Here is the link to the video ...  First Steps of SOA

Initial phases of new SOA deployment

Most of the industry publications, sites and blogs are talking about SOA, trying to describe it and telling folks the best manner to implement a Service Oriented Architecture. I certainly noticed this trend and started digging into SOA and all the technologies surrounding SOA. We were recently acquired, and after the initial gap analysis of all of our applications and processes, Senior Management agreed to invest in rewriting our primary applications. The architecture team has started the process of taking a closer look at a Service Oriented Architecture, and has started the necessary investigative work to determine what works and what does not.

Given my role on the infrastructure deployment/support side of the business, I have little influence over new architecture decisions, but that does not stop me from talking with the architecture folks on a regular basis. I have always had a good understanding of the Front-end delivery side of applications (portals, clients, and web pages) along with the Back-end database servers and repository side, however the area that I need to focus on is the apps/workflow section that is between the portal resources and the database resources in a SOA type architecture.

Senior Management has beefed up the infrastructure team and has started the first phase of investigating products in the SOA space. I have been approached to deliver sandbox type resources (intel and unix servers) to assist the architects in their initial investigation of SOA type products, and I know that this is the opportunity that I have been looking for. I have shared my thoughts, my blog and limited knowledge of SOA, BPM and ESB with the architects who have been extremely open with information and in particular, have shared resources and pointed me to a couple of great resources that I am still investigating.

Over the next few months, I will share with you the resources that we use, keeping everyone up to date on the build-out of the sandbox environment, and communicate our experiences from a first person - ground floor approach.