Friday, June 15, 2007

Nashville Gartner Spring Summit 2007 - First (and ONLY it seems) Thoughts

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I was thrilled to be able to attend what I believe is currently an influential gathering of IT thought leaders. I met some of them and exchanged wonderful stories (best practices) from leaders at GM, EarthLink, Lowes, IDS-Scheer, Progress, University of Illinois amongst many others. IMHO, It is this gathering of global thought leaders that makes this conference attractive.

Here are my observations from the event. I hope you find them useful.

Gartner AADI Summit 2007 11-13Jun2007
Application Architecture, Development and Integration

Gartner EA Summit 2007 13-15Jun2007
Enterprise Architecture

Nashville, Gaylord Opryland Resort.

Session 1 - 10Jun Pre Conference Session – AJAX Limits, RIA Tech Risks and User Experience Possibilities.

Broke down the categories for RIA into this taxonomy:

RIA
Browser
No-plugin
AJAX
Plugin
Flash/Adobe/Laslo
.NET Silverlight
Java
Outside Browser
Short
Java
Webstart
Digital Harbour
.NET
Tall
Flash/Apollo
Java
Eclipse
IBM
.NET


The levels of AJAX adoption are:
Level 1 – snippets like validate postal code
Level 2 – widgets like a popup calendar
Level 3 – Client side framework
Level 4 – Client and Server side framework

The most benefit from AJAX is when it is used to automate simple data entry applications and pre-defined multi-step processes. This accounts for 80% of the applications that are required. Other technologies may be considered for the more complex needs (the other 20%), if this would provide value to the business and adequate support funding is in place to warrant the investment.

The concept of ensuring solutions go through usability processes and are vetted against what was called a User Interaction Patterns set of best practices. The things that should be considered when holistically designing the user interactions with the technology.


Session 2 – Complex Event Processing

This session disappointed me somewhat since it started the mantra of separating the idea of event driven architecture for the realm of SOA. In fact, that was the main theme of the keynote address. In any case, complex event processing is way cool and right on the mark regarding the need for abstraction. This abstraction is represented in CEP (Complex Event Processing) through 3 maturity levels:

Event Processing – publish and subscribe (MOM, WS, ESB, E-mail, RSS)
Basic Event Mediation – Transform, route
Complex Event Processing – Filter, Aggregate, Correlate

I consider this a great way of explaining basic abstraction concepts that didn’t really need a new term (CEP I mean). But if this wakes people up to the need to build this kind of abstraction into simple tool interfaces, I am all for it.

Here the definition of what is SOA, that pissed me off. It must match these criteria:

Engineered modular services
Modules/services can be distributed
Modules/services have formal interfaces
Module/services are reused/shared

Notable quotes:

“How many centres of excellence do you need?”
“Make EDA part of your SOA strategy”

“To be a Ninja, one must be a wizard. This means that he can "stop the world" and "see
with the eyes of God."
Ashida Kim, Secrets of the Ninja, DOJO Press 2000

Session 3 – Keynote – Challenges of Irresistible SOA

I gathered quite a number of nuggets of information from the keynote. Here they are in point form.

- SOA and EDA have been split and a new discipline emerged, known as CEP.
- Salesforce.com was quoted as a great example of an emerging trend SAAS (Software As A Service).
- WOA is defined as Web Oriented Architecture (REST/POX + WWW and web services)
- Emerging technologies are RSS, BLOG, AJAX and WIKI
- Multi-step integration challenges are being forefront on the minds of technology leaders.

Integration patterns were discussed, with a prediction on the types of integration being solved at organization around the world now (2007) and in 2012. These are the predictions:

Point to Point 2007 – 60% 2012 – 30%
Hub and Spoke 2007 – 30% 2012 – 45%
Distributed 2007 – 10% 2012 – 25%

Great speaker Ben Lheureux

Same analysis was done for the BPM activity. By the way, I don’t agree with these numbers in particular. The use of BPM models to only model process and not monitor and even allow the runtime environment to be changes, given a model drag and drop operation is a key fundamental belief I hold regarding the vision for SOA. It must happen sooner or the simplicity we need to deal with the increasingly complex automated technology will not provide the business value we anticipate. Anyway – stop ranting. Here are the numbers.

Model Process 2007 – 30% 2012 – 60%
Monitor Process 2007 – 20% 2012 – 40%
Execute 2007 – 10% 2012 – 20%
Orchestrate (I added this level since Gartner missed it !!!)

Data Integration numbers were provided as well:

Batch 2007 – 80% 2012 – 50%
Near real Time 2007 – 15% 2012 – 40%
MDM 2007 – 5% 2012 – 10%

Notable quotes:

“Just Enough Process” – seems this is the mantra of Gartner this conference. Just enough modeling, just enough as-is evaluation, just enough whatever and then get on with solving the business problems. Show results!

“Governance is a weasel word”
“Six Sigma is TQM in sheep’s clothing”

“The Ninja do what must be done, then it is forgotten. Princes and kings may gain some
temporary advantage through Force. But, the only lasting accomplishments are achieved
through Love.”
Ashida Kim, Secrets of the Ninja, DOJO Press 2000

Get IT done.
More conference proceeding to follow. It’s time for me to head to the airport.
Stay tuned – I attended an Oracle presentation by Dave Chappell – very cool!
The SOA Integration Ninja

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