On IT-business alignment, and related things

Normal service will be resumed shortly

2009-07-10T15:45:00.003+01:00

Some might say it will be difficult to notice, given the (lack of) regularity of my posting here recently - ahem - but over the next couple of days this blog will be unavailable for one or more periods. All should be back up and running by Monday.

The reason is that we're migrating this blog from Blogger to Wordpress as part of a major overhaul of our website and online services. There's a lot going on behind the scenes here, but we'll try and keep any disruption to the site proper to a minimum. Note: customers of our advisory services will be unaffected by the site changes.

Once our new site is live next week, I'm sure you'll notice some major improvements. Our current site is still essentially the same as it was when we founded MWD in February 2005, and our business and research library have outgrown it.

The new site is way easier to read and navigate, and it'll be much easier to explore our research library and see what we have to offer. Also the site will reflect our redesigned logo and updated branding. Be sure to check it out!

See you on the other side...

Links for 2009-07-02 [del.icio.us]

2009-07-04T02:23:00.002+01:00

SOA Center » Oracle 11g Fusion Middleware LiveBlogging and News Analysis
More intellectual jiu-jitsu from Miko Matsumura - "Java is the new SQL". Nice stuff.

Seven elements of Cloud value: public vs private

2009-07-03T12:20:00.004+01:00

In last week's post on the seven elements of Cloud computing's value, I said that the simple model I put forward looked like being a nice way to compare different Cloud approaches and offerings and see what's really being offered. There's a lot of people jumping on this particular bandwagon, and a lot of the time it's not easy to see what's really going on.

In this blog entry I want to use that model I introduced last week to try and clearly demonstrate the difference between "public" cloud offerings (third party owned and managed, remote installations that you rent capacity from) and "private" cloud offerings (infrastructure that you install and own, but that implements many of the technology platform features found in large "scale-out" server farms run by public cloud providers). I'm not diving into the technology detail here, but rather showing how the value you get from each type of offering is different.

In the diagram I've drawn lines around each of the "cloud value element". Thicker lines mean that more emphasis is placed on that value element; where the value element appears fainter, the value element is de-emphasised or missing.

So, in a nutshell: public cloud offerings typically major on the strategic and economic value elements, and quite often - although the architectural value elements can be there - they're not talked about quite so much. Private cloud offerings, on the other hand, are *all* about the architectural value elements - virtualised resources, management automation, and (in some cases) self-service capacity provisioning.

Another slightly simplistic way to think about private cloud offerings is that they're basically like 21st Century mainframe computers. Built using commodity hardware, yes - but layered with virtualisation, sophisticated SLA-driven management, capacity management, billing/chargeback... this looks awfully like a mainframe (again, from a value perspective, not from a deep technology perspective).

So: public and private cloud offerings: "like chalk and cheese" (as we say here in the UK). That's not to say that one is better than the other: just that they're different, and it pays to understand the kind of value you'll receive from each.

Just like I said in my last post: I don't pretend to have all the answers here, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Please let me know what you think!

The seven elements of Cloud computing's value

2009-06-25T10:00:00.000+01:00

Last week I was invited to speak as part of the London leg of TIBCO's NOW roadshow, which focused primarily on Cloud computing and TIBCO's new Silver offering (you can see what we think about that specifically in this report).

My job was to talk about "articulating the value of Cloud computing". This was a fun challenge: so much of the talk about Cloud today starts by arm-waving at the 30,000ft level - and then zooms right down to the level of "virtualised compute resources" and "dynamic scalability". What I hadn't seen so much of was an attempt to map out more of a big picture of the value that Cloud computing can potentially deliver in the context of other approaches to consuming IT infrastructure resources.

So after reading countless blogs, conference proceedings, customer stories and news articles, I sat and stared at a blank piece of paper for a while, thinking about how I could pull all the different perspectives together to show one picture that captures all the different ways in which Cloud computing can potentially deliver value. This is what I ended up drawing and presenting in my talk:

You can see that there are seven elements of value I've highlighted, and they fall into three "value types": economic, architectural and strategic.

The economic value of Cloud is largely about being able to align the timing and size of the investments you make with the value you receive - variously referred to as "pay as you go", "pay as you grow". You don't pay $millions for infrastructure that only delivers value months or years later; you pay for what you actually need, when (or soon after) you use it. And you don't purchase an asset that then depreciates (like crazy).
The architectural value of Cloud is about having an simple, consistent abstract environment presented to developers and operations folks that hides a lot of complexity, making it much quicker and easier to develop and deploy applications.
The strategic value of Cloud might be easily conflated with the economic value, but I think it's different. It's this: Cloud platforms help you focus on what makes your organisation more effective and different, and leave all the other stuff to a third party that is dedicated to doing a great job for a competitive price. This is about focus and it's also about avoiding having to train people to do things that fundamentally don't add value to your organisation (think "Lean IT" if you like.)

Have I captured all the potential elements of Cloud computing value? I'm 90% sure I have - but if I've missed something please let me know! Either way, the discussions I've had around this picture so far make me think that it's a useful model for exploring different Cloud propositions as stated today and comparing them. What do you think?

Next up: I'll post another version of this picture that contrasts the value of "private" and "public" Cloud propositions. Both types of propositions have value - but it's important to be clear about what that value actually looks like in each case.

Links for 2009-06-09 [del.icio.us]

2009-06-11T02:41:00.002+01:00

More BPMN in the Cloud - Signavio
YAWBMT (Yet Another Web Based Modelling Tool) - still, looks interesting
Three Years, 90 posts, a New Name « Thoughts on Collaborative Planning
"Automating an organization is important, but the real value is in agility, and agility does not come from elaborate plans, but rather very simple ones." Very nicely put from Keith - and vocalises some of what's started to make me a bit nervous in BPM as we've done more and more industry research

Links for 2009-06-02 [del.icio.us]

2009-06-04T02:36:00.002+01:00

As real as it gets at IBM Rational Software Conference 2009 « Software Delivery news
Nice post from our Software Delivery blog looking ahead at what's expected at RSC 2009

Links for 2009-05-27 [del.icio.us]

2009-05-29T02:27:00.002+01:00

Application Platform Strategies Blog: SOA: It's Dead, Jim!
Oh no it isn't... oh yes it is... sheesh
Service Architecture - SOA: Hypocrites are alive Jim
I was waiting for this contribution from Steve! Go Steve. Really interesting comment from Peter Evans-Greenwood also - many practitioners push Big Projects because they look good on resumes. What can we do to change this?
Now is the time to invest in IT Governance say IT leaders - Debate - CIO UK Magazine
Some really interesting feedback from our recent CIO UK piece on IT Governance and the downturn

Links for 2009-05-20 [del.icio.us]

2009-05-22T03:25:00.002+01:00

Webinar: Beyond Model-Driven Development: Delivering on the Promise of BPM « BPM service news
From our BPM blog: details of Neil WD on IT Toolbox BPM webinar. What do you need to scale BPM efforts beyond the first couple of projects?
Collaboration service news » Blog Archive » Unravelling the social software hype
From our Collaboration blog: details of new social software research. A really good read, this.
elemental links: @ Interops Enterprise Cloud Summit: Drew Bartkiewicz, The Hartford, Cloud Insurance
Fascinating insight from Brenda Michelson on Hartford providing insurance for Cloud providers

Micro Focus gobbles Borland, Compuware assets

2009-05-08T16:03:00.004+01:00

Earlier this week, UK-based application modernisation technology vendor Micro Focus announced that it's purchasing Borland, as well as the testing and quality management software assets of Compuware.

Bola Rotibi, our Software Delivery Principal Analyst, has a great piece on this over on our new Software Delivery blog. Please check it out - Borland acquisition: it finally happened – but not how we expected.

You can also subscribe to MWD's Software Delivery blog feed here.

Links for 2009-05-05 [del.icio.us]

2009-05-07T03:25:00.002+01:00

Corporate Tweets and the SEC: Sometimes It’s Better To Keep Your Mouth Shut
TechCrunch article on the potential risks of the use of social media by corporates.

Software Delivery InFocus podcast - the challenge of software quality

2009-05-06T21:35:00.002+01:00

This is the fourth in our Software Delivery InFocus series of podcast episodes, starring Bola Rotibi - the Principal Analyst of MWD's Software Delivery competency area. In this episode, she discusses the thorny issue of software quality. This is something the IT industry has talked about for decades - so why is it still so patchy? Bola's guests are Madelyn Bryant McIntire, Principal Group Manager, PQO Product Quality Management, Microsoft; and Justin Spencer, Development Manager at Lend Lease (a large publicly listed international property group).

Producing quality software code is undoubtedly a desired goal of any software delivery team - irrespective of whether the delivered application is for commercial sale or internal business use. Software quality is regularly placed in the top five demand requirements of the software delivery team, yet the quality of software is regularly highlighted as a major failure point and the basis for much end user dissatisfaction. Here, Bola talks to her guests about the main points of failure in software delivery processes; the actions that Microsoft and Lend Lease take to improve the quality of delivered software in a business-driven environment; where the next challenges will come from; and what tools suppliers could do better.

You can download the audio here or alternatively you can subscribe to the podcast feed to make sure you catch this and all future podcasts!

Links for 2009-05-04 [del.icio.us]

2009-05-06T03:26:00.002+01:00

William Vambenepe’s blog » Blog Archive » A post-mortem on the previous IT management revolution
As we get all excited about Cloud APIs, William reminds everyone just what a macrame-mess the previous "paradigm" gave us

A quick take on Oracle and Sun

2009-04-20T21:50:00.004+01:00

Earlier this year IBM (and reportedly) HP both took Sun Microsystems out for first dates but neither decided to take things any further (though IBM arguably got to second base). Now it seems Oracle is prepared to go the whole way with the iconic dot.com technology brand. Are we looking at a beautiful wedding on the beach in Maui, or a drunken fumble in a dark alley followed by recriminations, tears and vengeful fathers?

It's telling that in this era of instant communication I feel under pressure to say something incisive and erudite, even though it's only a few hours since the acquisition was announced and hundreds of other commentators have heard the same conference calls and read the same press releases. So what is there to say beyond "blimey, I never saw that coming"? (Because it's true, I didn't – and I never would have put Oracle on the list if I'd been asked to draw one up). I'll take a deep breath.

I think the most telling take-away I got from all the materials available from the two parties today was the balance of information about earnings, assets and market shares vs. information about shared vision and customer value (there was a bit of the latter in evidence from Jonathan Schwartz and Chuck Philips, but it sounded distinctly lacking in energy). By contrast Oracle CFO Safra Catz was by far the most animated exec on the call, particularly as she explained how Sun would contribute more operating income in its first year as part of Oracle ($1.5bn) than BEA and PeopleSoft did combined (an interesting side note: Oracle paid more for BEA than it intends to for Sun, despite that tasty financial upside. Aren’t stock markets fantastic).

I wouldn't go as far as Vinnie Mirchandani (executive summary: Oracle is just after making a quick buck and has a poor track record of sustaining innovation following its acquisitions), but I remain to be convinced as to whether this has any positive implications for customers of either Oracle or Sun. You could argue that with Oracle as banker, Sun customers can now have more confidence about the future of their technology choices: but squeezing out $1.5bn operating income out of a company that's only occasionally managed to turn any kind of a profit in the recent past is going to mean quite a lot of "shrinkage" – the kind of shrinkage that cuts much deeper than the back office. So a future rich in systems innovation is far from certain, at least in the short-to-medium term. And in the current environment, with data center economics shifting so fast, the short-to-medium term is likely more than enough time for Sun's customers' heads to be turned towards its competitors. This is a very fast-moving marketplace, and innovation has to be in evidence for any vendor wanting to avoid a slippery slope towards the Systems Supplier Graveyard.

Of course, Oracle's intention could be (as RedMonk's Cote among others have noted) to strip out Sun's hardware and sell it off - instead focusing on the software assets (Java, primarily). In which case it will hardly care about what happens to Sun's systems customers.

It's important to be balanced though.

With my optimistic hat on, I can see that there are nice things that could come out of this. Sun could effectively tick a box that Oracle probably has on a strategy document somewhere called "Cloud Computing strategy"; despite Larry Ellison's public dismissal of the hype, we all know that makes sense for Oracle to continue to move forward from its current position on Cloud. Sun's virtualisation, datacenter-in-a-box and nascent Cloud platform offerings, combined with the "integrated apps-to-disk" proposition Oracle and Sun talked briefly about today, could sow the seeds of a story that could bridge the interests of mainstream IT shops, leading-edge startups, ISVs and outsourcing providers.

At the moment, it's too early to tell – we'll have to wait until the summer, when the deal closes, to cast the runes again. Until then, let's get on with our lives. Now, what's on YouTube today?

Links for 2009-04-15 [del.icio.us]

2009-04-17T02:02:00.002+01:00

Multi Headed Chicken Syndrome - Oliver Marks
Oliver Marks discusses the conflict between departmental and strategic investment in collaboration and Enterprise 2.0.

Is there room for architects and architecture in BPM?

2009-04-09T09:17:00.000+01:00

With much of the early development in the Business Process Management (BPM) market being driven by technology vendors selling products for one-off departmental projects to line-of-business heads, and with IT stakeholders often being brought in only after the deal is done, lately we've been wondering - now that there's no doubt that BPM is becoming more mainstream - what's the role of IT architects, and IT architecture, in today's BPM initiatives? There's a lot of talk in the BPM technology vendor community about enabling customers to "scale up" their BPM initiatives - and it seems to us that IT architect involvement is likely to be a key factor in shaping how that happens in practice.

Behind the scenes we've recently built a great relationship with the not-for-profit International Association of Software Architects (IASA), and so we asked them if they'd help us explore this question. We've worked together to carry out a web-based survey - and although all IASA members have now been invited to take part, I wanted to make sure that you had a chance to take a look and offer your thoughts, too. If you're in an IT architecture role, or know someone who is, we'd be delighted to have your involvement: you can find the online survey here.

Once the survey is complete, we'll create an in-depth report drilling into the survey findings and correlating them with findings from our other BPM research work. Everyone taking part in this survey will be eligible to receive a free copy of the report. We'll also create an IASA-only webinar, based on the survey results and adding other best-practice insights. All IASA members will be able to access this webinar free of charge.

So - if you're an IT architect or know someone who is - we'd love to hear from you! And if you're interested in the IASA webinar we're creating - it's easy to become an IASA member...

Progress Software - getting past "Who"?

2009-04-01T09:30:00.001+01:00

A couple of months back I had a brief Twitter exchange with David Bressler of Progress Software (@djbressler), following a comment I'd seen from Judith Hurwitz (@jhurwitz) at Progress' analyst day regarding the lack of brand awareness that the company has out there in industry. What I said was: "Progress is a bit like Unilever - top-level brand is vanilla, sub-brands have chops". What I meant is that these days, there's little knowledge of what Progress does (a typical response is either "Who?" or possibly "oh, they used to sell a 4GL and a database in the 1990s, didn't they") - whereas there's much more recognition of brands like Sonic (SOA infrastructure), Actional (SOA management / governance), IONA (middleware, SOA infrastructure), Apama (event processing), DataXtend (data integration) and DataDirect (data connectivity, legacy application integration).

David replied that Progress is a technology company's company - which is absolutely correct: Progress has a long and successful history of providing a platform for other software vendors to embed in their application offerings. And he followed up with this blog entry, saying "We'd love for the Progress brand to have some chops, and we're trying but it's not trivial."

Well, for a few weeks I'd been meaning to write a blog post of my own exploring this - but in the general headlong rush that we've been experiencing so far this year, I'd forgotten to write that post. When I saw today's news that there's been a change at the top at Progress, though, I was finally prompted to write some thoughts down. (Thanks for the pointer Miko).

The main thought in my head all those weeks ago was that it's all very well for Progress to be a bit like Unilever - with the sub-brands (Sonic, Actional, Apama, DataDirect, and so on) having much more visibility in industry than the parent brand - as long as the company doesn't want to start pulling together broader IT and business infrastructure propositions that tie together pieces from the different brands. Unilever is well-known for owning a vast portfolio of products, many of which actually compete with others in the portfolio (Dove v Lux; or Persil v Surf, for example. The invisibility of the parent brand is fine for Unilever, but it's bad news for Progress if it wants to really make the most of its potential within enterprises (by cross-selling or bundling its products to help customers with broader opportunities, for example).

So this is the point where the company has to undergo a pretty radical shift. As reported in PCWorld, the new Progress Software CEO (formerly the COO) has established a target of doubling the company's annual revenue to around $1bn, by "reorienting sales towards multi-product suites, as well as aiming marketing messages more at business executives than IT workers" - that is, precisely what it's not currently suited to doing.

This goal makes absolute sense, and in fact it has made sense for ages. The majority of the markets where Progress' brands play are growth markets where there's real opportunity, right now; and what's more, the combination of the offerings could have real power, too.

The required shift will be no picnic, but there are worse times for Progress to be trying to make it happen. There's a new man at the top with a new broom, no doubt; and what's more, there's still a small window of opportunity open for another medium-to-large-sized specialist infrastructure software vendor to pick up business, following BEA's acquisition by Oracle a few months back. TIBCO and Software AG have recently been making much of BEA's disappearance as an "independent" infrastructure software vendor, and it's surely no coincidence that both these companies also have aspirations to reach $1bn in annual revenues (Software AG has been particularly vocal about this of late). Progress has long had the potential to join Software AG and TIBCO as a serious contender for enterprises wanting to avoid getting into bed with the MISO pack (Microsoft, IBM, SAP or Oracle) for whatever reason, but until now it just never seemed to be able to be bothered to do what was necessary.

With a new CEO at the top, it'll be fascinating to see whether Progress can move up a gear. If it succeeds, then enterprises wanting to avoid giving too much technology supplier power to the MISO pack may well have a new choice - and in a market where consolidation has recently been rampant, more choice would be refreshing for everyone.

IT Governance: how much are we walking the walk?

2009-03-20T22:27:00.003Z

The "G" word is one of those words that's bandied about with increasing abandon these days - but for many, "governance" is just a more sexy way of saying "management" (in the same way that "architecture" is quite often used as a sexy way of saying "design").

So how much are organisations really walking the walk with IT governance initiatives? This is something we're expending significant effort on finding out through 2009, and one of the ways we're doing it is through surveys like this one, which we're carrying out in conjunction with CIO UK magazine.

We'd love to know your thoughts. We'll make sure we point to the results back here (they'll be published at cio.co.uk) and we're sure they'll throw up a load of interesting insights.

Why we need ALM: industry's dangerous flirtation with software quality

2009-03-20T10:04:00.010Z

Yesterday I spent the evening at a dinner in London as a stand-in for my colleague Bola Rotibi, talking about Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and governing software delivery to a group of around 20 senior IT leaders. Due to my own disorganisation I'd not realised that this was a stand-up talk with no visuals or projection, and I'd created a slide deck for the talk. So, on the train to the event, I was frantically reverse-engineering my slides into a set of brief stand-up notes. Although it was a pain, it ended up being fortuitous because the act of having to reinterpret my slides made me see a couple of points worth making that I hadn't spotted before.

The point I was making is that today's industry interest in ALM represents an interest in delivering high-quality outcomes from software delivery work, but that's hardly a new thing. However the need for ALM today is made more pressing by industry's historic failure to consistently address quality as a concern. It's what I called "industry's dangerous flirtation with software quality" - kind of a perpetual "get away, come closer" posture that has by and large failed us. Although there's now 50+ years of racial memory somewhere out there in industry about why software quality is important and how to achieve it, the problem is that fundamentally, the IT industry is a fashion industry - and each new fashion wave brings a new set of devotees, few of whom are particularly interested in taking notice of what the devotees of previous waves learned.

Let's look at a picture.

What I'm trying to show here is how disruptions in technology platforms and architecture patterns typically lead to the baby being thrown out with the bathwater. As any given approach starts to have mainstream applications and matures, the importance of quality becomes more visible. Then, though, a new platform arrives and we start all over again. Think about how, in the client-server era, we started with hacking in PowerBuilder and VB; then, "second-generation" client-server tools took more CASE-like approaches and helped organisations deliver more scalable, robust apps more quickly. Then came the web, and it seemed that we suffered from a mass "memory wipe" before grabbing hold of the nearest Java IDE and hacking again.

We've been through this cycle at least three times: from mainframe to client-server; from client-server to first-generation web; and from first-generation web (simple consolidated server deployment; simple web-based client deployment) to where we are now (I'm desperately trying to avoid typing the web-two-dot-oh thing, but I'm referring to web-based services with multi-channel front ends, mashups in the mix, back-end web-based integration, etc).

Of course, so far I've really said nothing you probably hadn't thought about already. But what also struck me yesterday was how each "turn" around the cycle has added more complications to the process of software delivery. There are three parts to this.

Firstly, consider that each time we've turned through the cycle, the overall IT environment has become more complicated. This has happened in two ways. Each new platform/architecture has brought more distribution, federation (moving parts) to the equation; and nothing ever dies - mainframes, client-server systems, and first-generation web systems still abound. They're part of the operational and integration environment.

Secondly, each time we've turned through the cycle, there's been a decreasing scarcity of "hard" resource - that meant that we naturally had less innate desire to control effort and quality than previously. Back in the early days of mainframe development, CPU cycles were expensive and access to those cycles was exclusive; it was absolutely obvious that the cost of the assets employed was so high that you had to get things right first time.

Today, for the price of a sandwich, I can get some tools, rent some server capacity, and build and deploy an application that might end up playing at least a bit part in the way a business works. The kicker is that although the cost of "doing stuff" is rapidly tending towards zero, the cost of software failure is at least as high as it's always been - but the tendency in industry to perpetuate the artificial "wall" between software development and IT operations means that we can easily forget about the cost of failure - and the overall risk to software delivery outcomes - until it's too late.

Thirdly, each time we've turned through the cycle, the distinction between "software" and "service" has become more and more blurred, as business services have come to depend increasingly on software automation internally, and be delivered to consumers through software-based interfaces externally.

These three factors all point to the desperate need for organisations to be able to better link activities across the whole of the software delivery lifecycle - from upstream activities like portfolio management, demand management and change management right through development, test and build all the way downstream to IT operations.

We need to turn software delivery into a business-driven service - and that means ensuring that business priorities are reflected in *what* work gets done; ensuring that business priorities are reflected in *how* work gets done; and ensuring that individual projects are carried out in the context of a "big picture" of business service delivery. That's what ALM is all about.

If you'd like to read more about Bola's thoughts on this subject, check out The dilemma of "good enough" in software quality.

Links for 2009-03-04 [del.icio.us]

2009-03-06T02:06:00.003Z

Technoracle (a.k.a. "Duane's World"): How to work with Adobe
Really thoughtful resource from Duane Nickull that pulls together all the resources and programs available for those wanting to take build on the Adobe Flash platform. How many other vendors have done this?
Jeff Jonas: Ontology And Why I Am Not Obsessed With This Fancy Little Overrated Word
Another blow against ontology and the semantic web... oof

Cloud computing, SaaS and SOA - the universal service network

2009-02-23T09:53:00.000Z

Something that's been sloshing gently around in my head for a little while came into focus the other day on reading a post by Brenda Michelson: Unintentional Cloud Watching >> Cloud Computing for Enterprise Architects. Namely, that the link between cloud computing and SOA has multiple angles.

It's becoming clearer that, true to Tim O'Reilly's initial Web 2.0 noodling, by providing open infrastructure services and APIs, the poster children of the Web 2.0 era - Amazon, Salesforce, Zoho, and so on - are now treading the path that companies like StrikeIron started out on in 2002.

As a result, as other commentators have noted, it looks like the bulk of the service-oriented IT that many organisations will interact with will be "stuff from outside" (commercially provided services) rather than "stuff from inside" (internally developed services). And it's not just hosted SaaS providers who are playing here of course: there's the issue of newer versions of on-premise commercial packaged application software products and integrations between them - SOA is coming in by the back door there, too (see SAP's ESOA, Oracle's Fusion Architecture). In fact, perhaps unsurprisingly, there are strong parallels here with the component-based development (CBD) hype-wave of the 1990s - a lot of the initial hype was around tools and development for enterprise IT groups, but ultimately the vast bulk of development was actually carried out by commercial software vendors, for consumption by enterprise IT teams. What we're seeing here is a repeat of "componentware" market development, with a 21st Century twist.

Regardless of where services come from (and indeed because they will come from multiple places, creating cross-enterprise service networks), it's increasingly the case that in order to deliver effective IT capabilities in the 21st Century, you need to understand SOA principles and build technology and management structures that really support the principles of service orientation. Much has been written about the "consumerisation of IT" and how new generations of people entering the workplace are asking difficult questions about why enterprise IT applications are so unintuitive to use. But what happens when business teams that are using SaaS-based offerings learn about the infrastructure side of the story - how easy they can be to customise, extend, and integrate with - and ask why internally-developed systems don't exhibit the same qualities? Another slab of SOA pressure, that's what.

Back in 2006 I was doing some research for an event that we were considering running on "IT Sourcing in the 21st Century". As part of trying to work out what might be in scope and what might be out of scope, I drew this picture:

As the picture attempts to show, from a technology architecture point of view, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model relates to the prior Application Service Provider (ASP) model in much the same way as SOA relates to monolithic on-premise applications - to deliver value, both SaaS and SOA need to "crack the box open" and enable IT capabilities to be customised, composed and remixed while also being shareable/reusable. There's much I disagreed with about Anne Thomas Manes' recent "SOA is dead" post (see Schrodinger's SOA), but she nailed this parallel between SaaS and SOA pretty well I think.

With the increasing visibility of cloud-based infrastructure and application services in mind, anyone seriously pursuing SOA should be looking to the world of SaaS for insight, or at least inspiration. In the IT industry's rush to SOA, many of the nuances and implications of SOA have often been condensed into simplistic advice targeted at software developers (something that's been written about a great deal, not least by us). One of the themes we've returned to again and again in our SOA advice is that the concept of a "service" isn't primarily about something you build - it's about something you experience. If you're going to deliver business value from your SOA efforts, you have to grasp the implications of this and make the necessary changes - not only in terms of tools and technologies, but also (crucially) in terms of your governance approach. One of the most popular posts from arch-architect Todd Biske, on ITIL and SOA, digs nicely into how it's crucial to consider the full service lifecycle when you do SOA, and drive governance to ensure that you can deliver "real service" - not just code wrapped in XML-based interfaces.

The providers of cloud-based services should have this idea etched on their brains - and there are plenty of examples of this principle in action for any eager student of SOA. Witness the grumbles that echo when Twitter barfs, for example, or see the grumpy users trying to get to grips with Zoho's CRM API in the face of almost non-existent documentation. These are great examples of situations where the provider's idea of service doesn't match the consumer's expectation.

The rise of cloud computing and SaaS should entice us to revisit our development-centred assumptions about SOA and search for a "bigger picture" that focuses on consumer expectation and value first. The pressure to deliver business value from IT capabilities, and the increasingly diverse mix of IT capability sources, demands that we do so.

Collaboration momentum building in 2009; what do CIOs think about IT Governance?

2009-02-19T11:41:00.000Z

A few days ago the results of our second CIO UK poll were published in this piece - CIO Debate: Collaboration is building momentum in 2009. The poll corroborated earlier research that we carried out for our Collaboration advisory service in the summer of last year, in conjunction with the guys at Freeform Dynamics.

The headline findings: despite all the hype, collaboration adoption is still just getting underway. A big part of the reason for this is the difficulty of justifying big up-front infrastructure investments. Where collaboration is growing fastest, though, it's business activities "at the edge" - those involved in interactions with external parties - which seem to be driving things along. There is a significant amount of appetite for collaboration technology, though, and our research indicates that 2009 will be quite a strong year for collaboration technology adoption.

Our third CIO UK poll is now live at cio.mwdadvisors.com, and this time we're asking a handful of questions about approaches to IT Governance. How many organisations are pursuing formal IT Governance programmes, and if so what are the reasons? Are they basing their efforts on established frameworks like COBIT and ISO 38500? And what are their plans going forward? Those are some of the questions we're looking to explore.

If you're a CIO or IT Director - or you know someone who is - please take 2 minutes to provide your input (or send your contacts the link)! We'll be publishing our CIO UK Debate piece on this topic in the next few weeks.

Links for 2009-02-13 [del.icio.us]

2009-02-15T01:02:00.002Z

James Governor’s Monkchips » The REST of The Cloud
Thought-provoking stuff from Mr Governor.

Links for 2009-02-09 [del.icio.us]

2009-02-11T01:02:00.002Z

Is the BPMN/BPEL Debate a Dead Horse? « Go Flow
Wow. Very nicely put, Keith.

The cost benefits of listening and relationships during economic gloom

2009-02-04T07:05:00.011Z

Over the last few months I have heard and read commentary after commentary about how to weather out the recession. Whilst there is no silver bullet, there are plenty of good tips to follow that, valuable during good times, are essential in the bad.

The global financial meltdown means that IT vendors are facing the same hard times as the rest of us. But, what will be key in their rhetoric is not only "what they can do for you" by way of their products and services, but "what they are going to do for you" by way of helping you weather the tough times too. What initiatives or programs are vendors providing and how sensible and pragmatic are they in ensuring that you achieve the most out of your IT investments (past and future) and don't unnecessarily burden you with technical debt? Strong, effective and long lasting relationships are forged by the level and type of support provided in tough times as well as during good ones. Large suppliers may be able to offer more in way of financial incentives, but smaller players can often offer more flexible and accessible support.

So what are the vendors' strategies for helping businesses during these tough times? One example of a vendor that has been actively talking and listening to CIOs, employees and its customer base to help direct a strategy towards helping both its client base and the wider end-user market is Microsoft. At the close of 2008, I caught up with Gordon Fraser, Microsoft's UK MD to hear more about how the company was responding to calls for help with saving time and money and improving productivity. We will be publishing the interview in more detail later this month. For now, here are some of their key directions:

Don't work harder, work smarter - Microsoft has developed features to enable smarter use of its technology with features that already exist in many of its products already in use within organisations. Most enterprises using the Windows server platform already have access to virtualisation technology that could help reduce the number of servers needed to carry out the workload or move workloads to more power efficient locations. Products like System Center target operational efficiency and excellence, whilst the company's collaboration and communications tools (e.g. Live Meeting with online video conferencing) are freeing up travel time, cutting costs and helping to reduce environmental impacts.

Consider alternative delivery models - Cloud computing and hosted solution offerings are current hot topics because of their flexible business models for the licensing, usage, maintenance and management of IT collateral. Both technologies are high on Microsoft's priorities for engaging effectively with its client base and helping them to do more with less. The company continues to forge ahead with its "Software plus Service" offerings and announced its own cloud based server offer, Windows Azure at its 2008 Professional Developers Conference (PDC).

Play a brighter tune with new financial instruments - To help ease the burden of obtaining credit the company has launched a number of initiatives to ease the payment costs for its technology and products. BizSpark, launched in November 2008 offers the full range of Microsoft technology and products, delivered through its partner ecosystem and deferring costs for up to three years. In a bid to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Microsoft UK has introduced a low cost financing programme for buying IT infrastructure and tooling that is tied to the bank of England base rate (currently 1.5%).

Undoubtedly, Microsoft is aware of the importance of listening and relationships, especially considering that along with other IT vendors, it is already feeling the pinch from restraints placed on IT spend. Maximising its ability to support CIOs and their IT organisations, SMEs and its own partner and community ecosystem is not surprising considering the company's vested interests. Microsoft clearly has an arsenal of solutions, services and well intentioned financial incentives at hand. Although pro-active in its messaging and smart with its incentives and product feature sets, Microsoft is by no means the only software vendor capable of offering such support. Listening and relationships are two way processes. So it is not just about vendors listening to their customers' during these hard times, but also about customers being receptive to what their vendors may have to offer them in terms of support. This will help the relationship blossom (which may bear additional fruit later on). Therefore it would be wise to check out what is being offered by vendors already in your supply chain before looking elsewhere.

The fact that vendors like Microsoft are keen to talk and listen to their communities and the wider end user market is important for strengthening the overall relationship between the IT supply chain community and the businesses that they serve. Addressing calls for being as flexible in their licensing models and easing the burden of total cost of ownership and operational support, through hosted and virtualisation solutions can allow organisations to think more creatively in their strategies for applying their IT spend during these tough times. Customers are also well advised to look at what technology that they already have in place, since they may not be using them all to their full extent, before spending additional revenue.

A couple of questions that I'd like to throw out to our readers for feedback are: what further support would they like to see from the vendor community as we face what looks set to be a tough economic and financial climate for the foreseeable future. What type of support matters the most?

Software Delivery InFocus podcast - Developing in the cloud

2009-01-30T17:08:00.002Z

This is the third in our Software Delivery InFocus series of podcast episodes, starring Bola Rotibi - the Principal Analyst of MWD's Software Delivery competency area. In this episode, she discusses the opportunities and challenges associated with using cloud-based software development services. Bola's guest is Debbie Ashton, Product Director for CODA - a provider of both on-premise and SaaS-hosted financial management applications.

Although there is a lot of hype surrounding the concept of "cloud computing", there also appears to be real value to be gained in some usage scenarios. The obvious financial benefit of renting software service (being able to remove up-front capital expenditure and instead account for software as an operating expense) is coupled with the scalability that's possible (you can pay as you go, and pay as you grow) and together it looks like cloud-based offerings will be especially attractive in the tougher economic climate that nearly all of us look likely to be experiencing for quite a while. Many organisations today are tempted to think only of the quick advantages of Cloud – partly as a result of the hype coming from the vendor community. However, whilst the potential and advantages are well documented and clear for people to see, the disadvantages or the challenges of use are not. In this podcast we look specifically at the challenges of developing applications for delivery from cloud-based software platforms. What practices if any should organisations take on board in developing applications and solutions using cloud-based development services? What processes and methods should organisations be putting into practice to get the most out of cloud development services?

CODA developed its SaaS-based offering, CODA2go, on Salesforce.com's Force.com platform - and in this podcast episode we hear what Debbie and her team learned about developing in the cloud along the way. Thanks to Debbie for some great insights. You can download the audio here or alternatively you can subscribe to the podcast feed to make sure you catch this and all future podcasts!

As with all the episodes in this podcast series, we've also published a companion report which summarises the discussion and "key takeaways". You can find it here, and it's free to download for all MWD's Guest Pass research subscribers (joining is free).