SMB not fit for SOA?

During a training class I was leading today, a very interesting question came up which is "All this SOA stuff we have been talking about today is great for a large company but seems to be overkill for the SMB (Small / Medium Business). Since SMB makes up a much larger percentage of the business world then traditional business, why should we care?".

Well one way to look at the problem is that services are permeating the cloud computing space, in fact last week's SOA Symposium co-hosted a Cloud Computer Conference. Cloud computing is becoming a game-changer for SMB in providing a variety of tooling from productivity (documents, email, etc.) to CRM (i.e. Saleforce.com) to HR (i.e. Workday) to Infrastructure (i.e. Amazon/Azure). The one common aspect in these is the ability to interact using service APIs and thus the need for SMB to be adept at service consumption and composition.

Versioning Podcasts

As part of my work with SOA Systems / SOABooks.com, I was asked to support Podcasts on versioning based on my participating with David Orchard (formerly BEA). Check the two podcasts out and fire over some questions if you have any.

Flexible Contracts?

After having delivered SOA Training to various clients this summer and fall many have asked how to deal with change. The contract is the center piece of services and with an effective versioning strategy it can be difficult to alter due to coupling that occurs with service consumers. David Orchard, James Pasley and others have been documenting versioning strategies. From my work with David on the SOA Patterns book(Erl 2008) and my consulting with organizations employing Agile Methodology, contract refactoring/change is a mandatory requirement.

Identifying a versioning strategy such as Strict, Flexible or Loose along with Versioning Identification and Compatibility design patterns provides a foundation for indicating change and providing consistency in managing the consumer impact.

For further details check out a presentation related to mixing Agile along with SOA Design Patterns and Meet in the Middle Strategy.

SOA Symposium 2.0: Rotterdam, Netherlands

It is amazing another year has passed and SOA Symposium 2.0 is around the corner. As part of the presentation work, two areas that I have focused on in blog postings and customer work is in Agile Methodology and Service Hacking. Check out the presentations and feel free to post any questions.

East Coast Architecture Group: Cloud Computing Seminar

The past couple years has seen an increase in the discussion and interest in Cloud Computing. In my own experience it started with Salesforce.com in 2003/4 and then Workday which acquired Cape Clear in 2008. More recently I have been tracking the use of Amazon EC2/S3 etc. and the impacts that IaaS is doing to the IT community. To help customers and architects that I have interacted with in the past 10 years, my company is hosting / starting an Architecture User Group. The first topic to be discussed is Cloud Computing and people that have experiences with this medium. The following URL provides specifics on the topic and dates:

East Coast User Group: November 4th, 2009, Waltham, MA