elemental links

SOA Adoption and Value Survey -- MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research

Jeanne W. Ross, Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research, and co-author of the excellent book Enterprise Architecture as Strategy, is conducting a survey investigating SOA adoption and value.  

“The survey asks architecture leaders to share their views in 4 key areas: SOA adoption, current practices, value and results, and barriers to SOA success. We also intend to understand linkages, if any, between SOA initiatives and company financial performance. Our objective is to help those responsible for architecture better understand how their organizations stack up on a variety of key SOA metrics: investment, progress, reuse, and others.

The survey – which will take 10-15 minutes to complete – is available here.   The survey will be available on line through the end of May.

This survey is a joint effort of MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research and Diamond Management and Technology Consultants.  All responses will be kept completely confidential. Only research team members will know the responses from any organization, and findings will be reported only in aggregate. Of course, you will receive a complimentary copy of the full report."

Please consider participating in this survey.  Personally, I'm looking forward to the results, especially on the linkage of SOA initiatives and company financial performance.

Streambase continues to stack the deck with CEP Pioneers

If you are of the opinion that organizations with the most talent tend to win the day, and you have a business need that could benefit from Complex Event Processing (event-driven architecture, business event processing), you should keep an eye on Streambase.  In January, Colin Clark of Kaskad joined Streambase as VP for Customers, and this week, Mark Palmer of Apama joined Streambase as President and COO. 

For those that follow the CEP space, you'll find these hires interesting because both Colin and Mark are (colorfully) on the public record stating an SQL approach is not the only way to do CEP.  However, an SQL approach is at the core of Streambase.  So, obviously something compelled Colin and Mark to Streambase.  In my recent conversations with Colin, he has called out Streambase's customer base and his self-made mandate to demonstrate value every month of 2008.  Perhaps Colin will invite Mark to join our April call.  I'm definitely intrigued...

[Disclosure: Neither Streambase or Progress Apama are clients of my company, Elemental Links.  Kaskad was a client of Elemental Links]

SOA Consortium and CIO magazine Case Study Contest

Do you have a SOA story to tell?  One that speaks to business value generation, rather than the singular pursuit of technical nirvana?  If you answered yes to both, consider participating in the SOA case study contest from the SOA Consortium and CIO magazine.   Ripped from my own post on the SOA Consortium Insights blog:

"The goal of the SOA case study contest is to highlight business success stories and lessons learned to provide proof points and insights for other organizations considering or pursuing SOA adoption.

Case study submissions must be for completed projects that used a SOA approach to deliver business value.   In keeping with our charter, we are not looking for dissertations on the technical beauty of the architecture and implementation. Rather, we are interested in the business story, the business value generated, the degree of cross-organizational collaboration, and the usages of SOA approaches and supporting technology.

For more information on the contest and participation, please go here."

[Disclosure: The SOA Consortium is a client of my company, Elemental Links]

Jack van Hoof's IT Services Stack collaboration experiment

Jack van Hoof contacted me about his IT Services Stack collaboration experiment.  Jack, as many know, is an enterprise integration architect and author of the popular eda-soa blog.  In his email, Jack asked if I would let my readers know of his experiment and offer my feedback.  Since the work will remain in the public domain, I'm happy to do both.

The Initiative

The best way to describe the work, is to excerpt from Jack's post and show his picture in progress.

"It is not always easy for an enterprise IT architect to keep scope and hold the complete picture. As we have several architects with different competences I felt the urge to develop an IT Services Stack. The IT Services Stack is a picture of a layered view on all aspects of IT from a component perspective."

 

"I would like to make this premature IT Services Stack more consistent and supply an extended view on every component mentioned in the picture. The model should be defined one level deeper, with the following attributes:

• Function of the component

• Relationship with other components
       
• Sub-level components and models
       
• Related open standards
       
• Innovative products in the market"
   

Jack then asks for community help, that's us.  So, if you are inclined, jump over to Jack's blog and offer your comments.  Or, as I'm about to do, post your comments and link to Jack.

My Three Cents

I suggest the addition of a new (leftmost) column, IT Business Management.  This column would contain components related to the 'business of IT'.  Top of mind components are:

   
• Business & IT Collaboration: Strategy, Architecture, Planning
   
• IT Offerings - the products and services IT provides to the business.  The supplier might be a third party.
   
• Demand and Supply Management
   
• Portfolio Management - Budget, Project and Asset
   
• Talent Development

The Hardware section caught my eye, only because I wonder how much hardware will continue to be under direct management of IT.  Beyond interaction devices (laptops, keyboards, mice, pdas) and networking equipment, does hardware ownership and management by IT organizations become obsolete?  Do we care about the hardware?  Or, just the technical infrastructure services at the next layer up?

In respect to the SOA box, the SOA Consortium's community of practice is working on a planning framework.  I sense some sharing in our future.

[Disclosure: The SOA Consortium is a client of my company, Elemental Links]

Green IT Ingenuity at Cork Internet Exchange

Let me preface this post with the obvious, I am not an engineer. But, it would be fair to say I’m green. So, consider what follows information sharing, but definitely not analysis. Other than, “Hey, what Cork Internet Exchange did is cool”.

I’ve always wondered if there was a green opportunity in data centers. Instead of expending all that energy cooling down data centers, couldn’t the generated heat be redirected for good, such as heating the building? Maybe not the best idea in Florida, but certainly applicable here in the Northeastern US.

Now, not being an engineer, I wasn’t sure if this was a really good question, or a really dumb one. But, since I’m more interested in learning than being right, when people talk of Green IT, I ask my question. This morning, on Twitter, I asked it of James Governor (RedMonk, GreenMonk). In response, James sent a link to a post about Tom Raftery’s data center redesign at Cork Internet Exchange. An excerpt follows, is mine.

“What was the design decision that makes all the difference at Cork? Well you see a normal data center has hot aisles (backs of servers) and cold aisles (fronts of servers), but the data center has an average ambient temperature based on convection and flows of these air streams. Indeed most data centers are pretty much designed and run with the ambient temperature in mind. So what did Tom and team do? They put a cork in it. They sealed the cold aisles, which means that when you walk into the data center you’re hit with a blast of 30 degree celsius air. For humans the temperature is very high, but where it has to be cold, it is. Which is pretty smart if you ask me. Of course this idea would never fly in America where humans can only stand a very small ambient temperate range between 65 and 70 degrees F. But in Europe I can certainly see some organisations trying something similar. To be clear- the data center heat is also used to warm the offices and hot water at cix. Says Tom: “Our central heating is powered by Intel”. The crack about Americans and air-conditioning above is a little unfair- after all- Cork has the native advantage of not being as hot as California, or locations where many US data centers are located. But still- it surely makes sense to concentrate on cooling machines rather than people when you’re designing a data center.”

For readers who are engineers, check out the details here. Perhaps my brother (an engineer) will explain it to me!

So, I’m (continually) curious. Are other organizations redirecting generated data center energy? What other creative Green IT initiatives are folks undertaking? Are these initiatives adding environmental and business value? Or, do you feel greenwashed?