"Proving the Business Value of SOA Investments"

Speaker: Anne Thomas Manes (Burton Group)

Day 1: The Business of Service-Orientation

Deep in the grip of the economic crisis, IT groups are being hard pressed to prove their value to the business. They must provide hard evidence to justify expenditures from the shrinking funding pool. If a project will not produce a rapid return on investment (ROI), it isn't likely to receive funding for the foreseeable future. Strategic investments such as SOA have been especially hard hit. Organizations don't execute IT projects just "because". They invest in IT because they expect to gain benefits from the investment. i.e., The project must deliver some business value. Project leaders must always remember that they are playing with other people's money. These people want some reassurance that the money is being used effectively. Metrics provide the means to measure the business value of IT investments. The strongest metrics are those that quantifiably measure business value in terms of contributions to the corporate bottom line: increased revenues or decreased expenses directly attributable to the IT investment. This session will discuss SOA benefits and examine metrics that can be used to measure and quantify the business value generated by SOA investments. October 22, 2009 - 13:15 Room: Goudriaan 1 Click Here to View Speaker Profile

"Exorcising the Evil SOA: A Necessary Step Towards Next Generation SOA"

Speaker: Thomas Erl (SOA Systems Inc.)
Special Guest Speaker: Anne Thomas Manes (Burton Group)

Day 1: Next Generation SOA

The first chapter in the life of SOA has been a rollercoaster ride with many highs and many lows, the deepest of which has been a nagging, on-going identity crisis. Depending on who you talked to or what you read or what you heard, SOA was either a technology trend or an architectural style, a product or a paradigm, a buzzword or a concrete model. Many agree that SOA has been all of these things, but how can this be? How can one thing have contradictory identities? It can't, which is why it has finally been determined that there have actually been two SOAs all along. On the surface, they have identical acronyms, but underneath, they are very different. One is good and real, but the other... it is deceptive, seductive, and always looking for trouble. So bad are its intentions that it is, in fact, pure evil. They are twins, but fortunately, due to advances in modern paranormal science, they are now separable. Witness the first ever IT exorcism, as we confront the Evil SOA and attempt to banish it from the service-oriented computing industry. (Warning: Attendees may be required to hold hands and chant.) October 22, 2009 - 10:15 Room: Mees Click here to view photos from this session. Click Here to View Speaker Profile of Thomas Erl
Click Here to View Speaker Profile of Anne Thomas Manes

"The Reincarnation of SOA"

Speaker: Anne Thomas Manes (Burton Group)

Day 1: Second Opening Keynote

The death of SOA at the beginning of 2009 stunned many. SOA was supposed to be the saviour of IT. How could it have died? How could things have gone so wrong? Many SOA initiatives have stalled, and most have failed to deliver demonstrable value to the business. SOA fatigue turned into disillusionment: business people now view SOA as expensive and ineffectual, and they aren't interested in investing in it anymore. Nonetheless, SOA is a prerequisite for the future. It provides the foundation for SaaS, Cloud Computing, BPM, mashups, and all other approaches that rely on services. As it turns out, the untimely death of SOA has proved fruitful. It was a wake-up call to the industry. It made us realize the error of our ways. The SOA of the past decade has been too focused on silly technology debates and products. People were looking for a quick fix. They wanted something to buy that would solve their agility problems. But history has proven many times over that technology, by itself, cannot solve these problems. It's good that the old SOA died. It makes room for a new and improved SOA that might just deliver on the original promise. This reincarnated SOA is focused on architecture, principles, and practices rather than technology and products. This Next Generation SOA will pave the way for IT systems going forward. October 22, 2009 - 9:00 Room: Rotterdam Hall Click Here to View Speaker Profile

"SOA is Dead, Long Live Next Generation SOA"

Day 1: Expert Panels

The emergence of Next Generation SOA as a successor to "old" SOA marks a pivotal milestone in IT history. The panel will discuss what exactly warrants this transition and why the maturation and adoption of formal practices, principles and patterns is so critical to making the most out of what modern services technologies and platforms have to offer. Panelists (in alphabetical order): John deVadoss, Anne Thomas Manes, Joe Mckendrick (Moderator), Stefan Tilkov, Clemens Utschig

"Today's SOA Governance Platforms: Are They Mature Enough?""

Day 2: Expert Panels

Governance has been repeatedly touted as one of the most critical success factors for SOA initiatives, especially in pursuit of realizing long-term benefits and value from services. There are obvious organizational challenges to establishing an effective governance model, but what about governance technology platforms? Different vendors offer tools for the administration, monitoring, and scaling of services, but how mature and reliable and sophisticated are they? Are we where we need to be with governance platforms, or are there still gaps that need to be filled? Panelists (in alphabetical order): Harold van Aalst, Paul Brown, Nicolai Josuttis, Steve Pope, Dirk Krafzig, Anne Thomas Manes, Joe McKendrick (Moderator)