SOA is Dead, Long Live ECM?

So, you've probably read the posts from a bunch of people lamenting the passing of SOA to the next world. The thing is, SOA is a fantastic technology that provides so many benefits and capabilities to the modern organisation that it shouldn't be allowed to die without so much as a lowering of the corporate flag or the echoing sounds of a muted trumpet!

Now, most of you know I'm the Blog's content expert - so you're probably asking yourself what does SOA have to do with me.....? The thing is, you see, SOA is really, really important for ECM from the integration and goverance perspective. If I had a dollar for each time I've been told 'ECM is really difficult to implement and enforce' I would have $12 (probably). ECM can be hard to deploy and get user buy-in simply because it adds a layer of complexity to the user and we all know, users' really don't like change. But, what if leveraging an ECM solution was simplified - what if adding, changing or deletion content was easy and looked/felt/smelt no different to the tools being used by the workforce today? This is probably the easiest example of how SOA and ECM can work effectively to enable the deployment of an unstructured content solution for the enterprise.

SOA, by definition, allows services to be built in a manner that promotes reuse. They also help simplify the process for interacting with a solution - like ECM. Most people in the industry understand basic SQL - SELECT, INSERT, MODIFY and DELETE are standard functions that allow the interaction between an application and records within a relational database. But when it comes to unstructured content that is managed within an ECM solution - there are a lot more features and functions that could be called, i.e. security, version-management, rendition-management etc. The API calls required within an ECM solution go beyond the 4 basic concepts that SQL provides and this is where the power of SOA comes into play - allowing the combination of complex API calls within a simplified service layer where an application 'simply' requests that a document be stored or retrieved from the repository. Where an organisation creates (or buys) a library of ECM-related service calls - the integration of the ECM repository to a large number of difference applications (or uses) becomes more straight-forward and allows the 3rd generation ECM model of an Information Infrastructure to be truly deployed. SOA makes this, and other types of integrations, much easier to implement - maybe it is time for a rebranding of what is one of the most useful tools in the IT kitbag - SOA certainly hasn't died!

Paul

SOA is just fine…thank you

"The rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated" Mark Twain

So…SOA is dead. Apparently it died on the 1st of January 2009, so said Anne in her Burton Blog. With the recession, SOA budgets are being slashed; countless failures abound, with the odd success peaking above the sea of despair. The doom and gloom prophets are all saying, “we told you so”. So we turn our heads to some new saviour, the SOA offspring of mashups, SAAS and clouds.

The wrong approach
So why is there so much disillusionment? Probably because a lot of people just did not get it and the approaches they took were wrong. The recession has been a great opportunity for business to bullet wayward IT strategies that were not aligned to their business. So it is not a bad thing really. In my books, it is a good reality check. On the other hand SOA is old news, and our industry is often guilty of needing something new to talk about. But lets not go and run off to something new, when all it takes is understanding what we have today.

Getting back to basics
There is nothing wrong with SOA; in fact the intention of SOA to support transformation of organisations is pretty profound, but probably overwhelming for some. I agree with Anne when she said that SOA needs to be part of something bigger, such as organisational transformation. I have seen too many instances where organisations think that they are doing SOA, but all they are doing are technology projects focusing on aspects such as service-based integration, resulting often in poor ROI, no service reusability, and achieving no business alignment.

We have been afforded the opportunity, through many years of SOA experience, to reflect on what is required and what to avoid. Anne highlighted 10 reasons why SOA fails ranging from a lack of business alignment and case, through to skills and governance. Her arguments are sound and should be read by everyone who is interested in understanding what issues you need to address. David Linthicum in his five things articles talked about bigger issues at play, such as misrepresentation by vendors, and the requirement of strong leadership. While we can’t change some of things he spoke about, it is still good to be aware of what to watch out for.

Will SOA evolve, yes it will. That is a definite. But even with new approaches, we will still have to have the ground rules in place. There is no quick fix or magical elixir.

In the coming weeks the Red Room Team will discuss some key issues that need to be addressed if SOA-assisted transformation is to be successful.

Your Web Presence in 2009

Hi All

There's lots of talk around the Global Financial Crisis and the impact it is going to have on businesses around the world this year. To remain successful, your business must acknowledge its web-presence and the importance it serves to your audience - your customers and partners. Knowing who your audience is and what they are interested in reading will help you publish the right content, keeping interest in your organisation and your products and maintain and grow sales. An interactive site, driven using Web2.0 technologies will go a long way to achieving this, allowing customers and partners to provide you feedback - that you hopefully take on-board rather than ignore - will help you remain relevant to your marketplace. But, equally as important is the content that you publish itself - this is what drives people to keep coming back to your site (assuming you don't just sell widgets online that-it!).

Your web-presence is your online marketing platform. Tell your audience regularly what you are doing, which direction you are taking and what you hope to achieve. Invest in getting your content right - not just on cool technologies within the website that actually provide little value - high-quality, informative and relevant. Your content should be targetted towards your audience and its effectiveness measured. Look to experiment, don't be afraid of failure and try to avoid over-personalised content where possible.

Happy online marketing

Paul

Happy New Year and Here's to 2009

Happy New Year to all our readers around the world from the team here in Australia.

First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to update you on our contributors here at Oracle. We would like to thank Barry Matthews and Steve Williamson for their contributions during 2008. Barry and Steve have moved to different roles within the organisation. We do welcome 3 new regular contributors to the Blog though, may I introduce to you...

Sean Boiling - who joins us from the Oracle Sales Consulting team. Sean has been contributing to the Blog for some time now and now becomes a regular contributor. Sean's interests lie in Fusion Middleware covering SOA, Enterprise 2.0, BPM, and the BEA-products we acquired during 2008.
Richard Ward - who joined Oracle Asia-Pacific in November 2008. Prior to this, Richard spent time with Oracle South-Africa - his homeland - and with one of our partners here in Sydney. Richard will focus on SOA with Saul Cunningham.
Marc Caltabiano - who is Oracle's Director of Enterprise Architecture for Australia and New Zealand, based in Melbourne.

Sean, Richard and Marc will be posting to the Red Room and join Carl, Saul and myself as regular contributors for 2009. Gareth Llewellyn, our roving-reporter in waiting, will continue to contribute on a specialist basis as he did during 2008 for the Oracle OpenWorld.

We aim to deliver more content, more regularly during 2009. We reach our 1-year anniversary in February and look forward to celebrating (virtually) with you all at that time. We have some special features coming up this year - starting with a 10-part series around SOA Governance that we know so many people are interested in (from the feedback you give us). We will continue with the Enterprise 2.0 product stack - talkling about our portal offerings and giving some real-world examples of where we have deployed the products for our customers and discussing some of the benefits that have been gained. IDM and Enterprise Architecture will also get some significant coverage this year - driven by some of the current business-challenges faced by organisations trying to support Web2.0 initiatives for example.

Here at the blog, we think that 2009 is going to be an incredibly interesting year around the world considering the current economic environment and the changing drivers for businesses as a whole. There will be a lot of consolidation, merging and acquisition during 2009 and beyond as organisations are challenged to respond to changing conditions and external pressures. This activity will affect our customers, our partners and our competition - the global marketplace for our technologies, products and solutions will change - our challenge is to prepare for this and be in the best position possible when it happens.

The greatest possible challenge for organisations is going to be adapting a business model to the Web2.0 way of doing business. During 2008, it was reported on several occasions that successful businesses were addressing end-user requirements through a collaborative approach. Rather than trying to second-guess what might be popular - these organisations actually listed to what their customers ask for and address these needs. This is based upon the simple principal that if you are selling something that somebody wants at the right price - they will probably buy it!

A Web2.0 approach introduces challenges for an organisation. There is structured and unstructured information to be managed, CRM and ERP systems to be intergrated with, Portals to be deployed and mass-security to manage. Ever-increasing storage requirements need to be met and the IT department is challenged with Green issues. Organisations want a complete solution from a single vendor, it has to be able to be integrated into any legacy system or application and must support an open standards approach to enable ease of development and supportability.

During 2009, we will concentrate on how organisations address these requirements and talk in-depth around Oracle's products and solutions in a non-sales manner. We realise that many of our readers want to learn about our offerings and this approach should provide some context for you all. Of course, if you want us to concentrate on something else - let us know and we welcome any feedback on the blog you want to give us.

We wish you a prosperous New Year

Paul, Carl, Saul, Richard, Gareth, Sean, Marc.

the red room review for 2008

The red room was founded for several reasons, to communicate with Oracle customers and the general IT community was one. But to make this communication more interesting we wanted to explore how new WEB 2.0 technologies could assist. Could these largely social utilities add any value for Oracle, our readership and our customers?

The answer is a resounding yes. Technologies that worked very well included Twitter with live feeds from Oracle Open World OOW08, Linkedin to participate in group discussions around areas like security and compliance, and the content hosting sites like iTunes, Podbean and Scribd.

Sure these sites would enrich the experience on the red room for our readers. The real bonus is that each of these technologies has their own unique communities to tap into. For example the red room had over 5,000 visits from July this year, scribd which hosts our presentations had over 2,500 views from scribd users. So you see we reached potentially another 2,500 readers by placing the content in multiple sites and 632 people downloaded a podcasts from podbean.

Our readership includes 50% from Australia and New Zealand which validates that people are interested in reading localised content and not just from news from the USA. Other countries include France, Turkey, Japan, Italy and Spain (i need a field trip) with 74 countries in all.

The Oracle news highlights for me this year included the acquisition of BEA and Oracles first hardware appliance The Database Machine.

Our top 5 articles this year

1.       SOA or Not

2.       Unstructured Information Management

3.       Australian Federal Government and WEB2.0

4.       Oracle Role Management

5.       Oracle Universal Archive

Other notable articles include

·         The Clumsy Human PT 1&2

·         Open World Final Day and the Joy of X

·         Oracle and BEA – Full Circle

·         iPhone and its impact on Information Management

·         Have your ignored PCI

In 2009 we will have more contributors including a 10 posts series on SOA Governance. Look our for our new years eve posts from Paul Ricketts for more on this and what the future will hold for the red room in 2009.

Its time i bid you farewell, presents to wrap and no doubt a cold beer also. Have a joyous holiday with your friends and family, try and avoid the news so you can rest and recharge for what will be an interesting 2009.

Cheers

Carl

 

 

 

FaceBook Used to Serve Legal Documents

This is probably a world first! Lawyers in Australia have used FaceBook to serve legal documents to two defendants through their FaceBook Pages according to livenews.com.au. The ACT Supreme Court authorised the legal firm to use the FaceBook system once it was satisfied that it presented a 'sufficient method of communication'. Lawyers from the legal firm, Meyer Vandenberg, came across the idea themselves after investigating alternative methods of contacting individuals. They researched FaceBook and found the two defendants pages and established through their system of 'friends' that they were acquainted. Notice was then served on the two defendants through their FaceBook pages.

This follows recent and well publicised activites around FaceBook - one event occured when a group of restaurant patrons left without paying. Thanks to one of the waiting staff who recognised one of the patrons - FaceBook was used to track down the group, their employers identified and contacted and the bill settled in full with a large tip left.

The world is getting smaller and there are fewer places to hids

Paul

The Perfect ECM Architecture - Part 2

Hopefully you enjoyed Part 1 of this article and had a giggle at the analogy!

How should an organisation execute on their ECM requirements - well, to draw upon a similar analogy you need a vehicle and visit your local showroom. You are shown a real-vehicle, go for a test-drive, negotiate the price and when you get to the delivery day - the vehicle you selected is waiting for you with a full-tank of petrol ready to drive away. All you have to do is tune in your favourite radio stations, put the drivers-seat in the right position and set the mirrors correctly. Buying an ECM solution should be as straight-forward - the solution architecture you get should be like the car you buy from a dealer - the parts come from one manufacturer, have been designed to work together seamlessly from day-1 and all you need to do is configure it to your requirements. There should be no need to bolt the solution together and hope it all works, you shouldn't need to spend time and money with 3rd party suppliers to help you get it running!

We believe that the perfect ECM architecture should look something like this....


So, how should this all work???

The ECM solution should provide the ability to manage ALL of your unstructured information as easily as you manage your structured information. Managing unstructured data across a relational database AND a file-store(s) AND an index is painful, time-consuming and costly. Managing unstructured data WITHIN a relational database is easy, cheap and occurs using the common database management tools and processes you have already developed and deployed for managing structured data. Unstructured data should be stored, managed and protected within the repository and able to be leveraged by other systems including enterprise search using a common set of open-standards tools and APIs.

The ECM platform should be singular in its architecture and approach. You should not have to use different tools and interfaces for managing different types of unstructured data. It should be easy and seamless to create a new HR policy, for example, through MS-WORD (and SharePoint?) review and approve the policy using a template-driven workflow, convert to PDF (or HTML), publish to your portal, intranet or extranet, apply a retention policy appropriate to the document-type and its context and apply digital-rights all through a single solution.

The ability to archive any information from any system should be a component of the ECM solution. A lot of data exists in file and email systems for example. The ability to ingest this data, leaving a 'stub' of metadata is a deliverable that most IT managers will be interested in as it provides back-end benefits. Integrations with ERP and CRM systems to archive data and deliver data is crucial in the improvement of business processes - an example of this is Accounts Payable/Receivable where delivering a digitised image of an invoice, for example, reduces organisational risk and speeds up the payment process. This is driven by image capture, which is ideally also provided as a part of the ECM solution and delivers the ability to acquire (the process that occurs immediately after capture/scanning/eFax-delivery) physical information, tag/categorise/classify, and ingest into the repository.

Underpinning a deployment of Microsoft SharePoint is another area where a complete ECM solution will provide real benefits to an organisation. We all know what SharePoint is good at and most organisations are rapidly becoming aware of its limitations. As a user-interface supporting office-level collaboration SharePoint is great. However, for a larger organisation - its deployability presents some concerns, typically around the number of repositories it can create to support scalability. Providing a true-enterprise repository to support these multiple silos of unstructured data means that common and consistent records and storage policies can be applied and that data can be shared and leveraged by the organisation as a whole.

An organisation may already have tier-2 or tier-3 solutions in place to manage components of ECM such as records or web-content. A complete ECM solution will provide the capability to integrate with these environment to perform one or more of the following functions. Migration, easily support the rapid migration of unstructured information into the enterprise repository enabling the legacy solution to be decommissioned. Federating ECM functionality, such as unified records management, into the legacy repository enabling the application of common and consistent records policies to be applied to unstructured data without the need to migrate information. Leveraging the legacy solution through enterprise search enabling the organisation to find unstructured and structured data through a single search regardless of the repository where data is stored.

Finally, end-user content consumption and interaction through the organisational web-presence environments is becoming a key-focus for businesses around the world. Recent reports have highlighted that in order for a organisation to be successful in the current and projected economic climate, a closer relationship with its customers and partners needs to be established. This occurs in two key ways - publish and interaction.

The first of these, Publish, predominately supports the Internet or any other web-presence where content-consumption is the lead requirement. Content is created and managed within the ECM solution and then, as a part of its lifecycle, published to a website. End-users access the site and either navigate or search for information and land at the published content. In order for this to be successful and for the organisation NOT to end up with a management overhead because they selected a separate app-server/portal-server and ECM solution from different vendors - the ideal solution is to have a single solution in place. This enables the website and the ECM solution to be integrated in such a way that management and administation occurs once. New content, with potentially new categorisation resulting in a change to naviagation, is created, managed and published and ALL changes required around the content occur naturally and automatically. New classification results in the navigation hierarchy being modified - the user, or administrator, does NOT need to create a new 'node' on the menu manually.

The second, interaction, enables multi-directional web-based communication between an organisation and its customers and partners. Recent developments in web-technologies resulting in the adoption of Web2.0 and the popularity of social-networking sites such as FaceBook and mySpace have raised questions with organisations around how this can be of real-benefit to the business. Qualification has taken place around the investments required to return value to the business and organisation like Oracle have invested in initiatives like SocialCRM and its Enterprise 2.0 offerings. The interactive environment will allow employees, customers and partners to consume and contribute information within an easy-to-use (i.e. minimal training required) environment and is totally integrated with the ECM solution. Information from varying systems should be accessible through this single environment - allowing the mashing together of data, e.g. from the ERP, CRM and ECM environment to provide better context around information and participation within the creation and review process.

All of this functionality and capability is available from a handful of tier-1 ECM vendors including Oracle. Tier-2 and tier-3 ECM vendors can offer part of the overall ECM requirement but do so through an imperfect architecture - often requiring multiple UI's or repositories to be deployed or compromising on functionality or capability in some way.

I look forward to reading your questions and comments about this article - I'm sure it will raise many amongst our readership.

Paul