Recently in SOA Category

A recent article providing SOA implementation tips argues in part, that SOA is a transformational technology with great value – but transformation comes with prerequisites for careful planning and implementation as opposed to something that is just dropped into an IT shop. For example, the operations and management of both the architecture and newly developed services need to be considered by IT operations.

More often than not, I find most IT operations groups are aware that a SOA is being designed, services (versus applications) are being developed, and business processes are being modeled and mapped to these services. However, IT operations groups often have ITIL process improvements and BSM initiatives underway and want to know how this new technology architecture will affect current operations, processes, and how they should plan for the future.

As such, I’m often asked, “Does your technology support SOA?” Quite simply, the answer is yes, Managed Objects can manage the new SOA infrastructure; provide bi-directional integration to a SOA-based infrastructure; and manage SOA services via integration mapping processes and transactions/activity to supporting technology.

However, the more important question that should be explored deals with dependency. What impact will this new architecture have on projects such as configuration management – as in the CMDB (also referred to as the configuration management system or CMS)? If IT operations thinks current CMDB projects are challenging – consider for a moment “decomposing” those legacy applications into many smaller pieces like Lego blocks: the complexity of the CMDB just exploded in scale and in the sheer volume of CI’s and relationships.

The future challenge and success will rest upon building sound change, configuration and CMDB foundation today. A well constructed CMDB will reap many rewards going forward regardless of new technologies and architectures.

SOA is dependent upon a CMDB that is constructed with the least amount of constraints and is flexible enough to receive inputs from different technology in the future to deliver to the requirements of the future as they evolve. Maximum control with the least amount of data is the best rule of thumb and do not be constrained by today’s technology and requirements.

- Michele

There were a lot of acronyms and keywords being bandied about at Gartner ITxpo this year. A Google search on the minds of the attendees would have generated a lot of hits on SOA, Globalization, Sourcing, Enterprise [Web] 2.0, “Free” Software, SaaS, and Cloud Computing. Social Networking was also an interesting thread that passed through all the other topics that attendees were abuzz about.

A large majority of the exhibiting vendors of course tagged their displays, demonstrations, and 30 second pitches with these terms to ensure that they too garnered as much attention as possible. I had a number of discussions with existing Managed Objects customers as well as parties interested in BSM about these trends and how to incorporate them into a cohesive strategy.

The BSM approach to dealing with these varied (and sometimes opposing) technologies is to focus on the service as a whole vs. individual moving parts and silos. As a customer of the power company, I expect that a flip of a light switch produces a predictable outcome every time – the lights come on. If they don’t, I don’t expect to hear details from the power company about all the potential issues that they are looking into ranging from failures in relay stations, downed power lines, problems with grids in neighboring states, etc. I count on them knowing the scope and source of the problem very quickly and getting it resolved. Electricity is an essential service and that level of understanding of what’s going on in the various moving parts of the power business is crucial.

Translating this type of operational model to IT management is what produces an effective BSM strategy. With IT becoming more complex (SOA, Enterprise 2.0, open source) and diffuse (Globalized, xSourced, SaaS, Cloud Computing) simultaneously, it is crucial to provide the best-of-breed management solutions for SMEs in each of these areas. Stopping here, however, leads to the all too common trap of too many tools and not enough answers. The key ingredient is a federated system that combines KPIs from each of the specialized solutions and allows a business level view to be constructed from it, that is, a true Manager of Managers with customizable dashboards for all parties with a vested interest in service availability and performance.

Implementation of this BSM strategy requires access to data connectors that span multiple vendors’ management solutions, expansion opportunities for the next generation of platforms, and most importantly – an analysis engine that can handle the complexity of the combined data feeds and make it available to a flexible presentation layer for the users of the system.

Although there were many different solutions to these challenges presented at ITxpo, a successful BSM deployment should offer a simple and personalized iGoogle-like experience for managing and viewing content of underlying IT infrastructure and the applications that run on top of it, and that’s one thing that everyone agreed on.

-- Abbas