Gartner predicts that by 2010, 80% of software revenue growth will come from SOA enabled applications. With such enormous potential, IT firms are constantly trying to ramp up their potential to deliver SOA as per their clients' need. SOA is a hard sell as it involves an intimate understanding of both the client's business and their IT landscape.
Continue reading "Challenges/barriers for jumping on to SOA bandwagon for IT firms" »
Recently,in the context of a client request, I had a chance to look at the IBM SOA Security Reference Architecture, described in this redbook. I found some critical gaps in the reference Architecture. I will highlight these gaps in this and subsequent blogs. The first gap is that the SOA Security Reference Architecture, does not consider an Independent Chain of Command for managing Security Policy. The second gap is that it does not explore the use of right architectural building blocks to enable externalization of Security policies outside of applications, portals, databases, data services, service components and; Business Processes, The third gap is that it does not recommend the right set of tools with which enterprise grade SOA Security, based on the the two principles mentioned above can be implemented. With these gaps in place, demonstrating and maintaining compliance with regulations and laws will be difficult. In this blog, I will describe the concept of Independent Chain of Command in detail, I will describe the other gaps in the next two entries.
Continue reading "Gaps in the IBM SOA Security Reference Architecture- Part I" »
I can almost call it a trend as I see it happening again and again, case after the case. As soon as enterprises get active on SOA, apart from SOA technology platform and business service pilot concerns enterprises get their ideas bubbling around ‘SOA competency center’. It is an invariable expectation of having some sort of competency center that will give the enterprises whatever they want from SOA. Let me spend few paragraphs here to bring certain perspective to those who might be seriously attached to the competency center for SOA and might be seeking some direction.
Continue reading "Who Needs the SOA Competency Center in this world?" »
