Cloud computing, SaaS and SOA - the universal service network
Something that's been sloshing gently around in my head for a little while came into focus the other day on reading a post by Brenda Michelson:
Unintentional Cloud Watching >> Cloud Computing for Enterprise Architects. Namely, that the link between cloud computing and SOA has multiple angles.
It's becoming clearer that, true to
Tim O'Reilly's initial Web 2.0 noodling, by providing open infrastructure services and APIs, the poster children of the Web 2.0 era - Amazon, Salesforce, Zoho, and so on - are now treading the path that companies like
StrikeIron started out on in 2002.
As a result, as other commentators have noted, it looks like the bulk of the service-oriented IT that many organisations will interact with will be "stuff from outside" (commercially provided services) rather than "stuff from inside" (internally developed services). And it's not just hosted SaaS providers who are playing here of course: there's the issue of newer versions of on-premise commercial packaged application software products and integrations between them - SOA is coming in by the back door there, too (see
SAP's ESOA,
Oracle's Fusion Architecture). In fact, perhaps unsurprisingly, there are strong parallels here with the component-based development (CBD) hype-wave of the 1990s - a lot of the initial hype was around tools and development for enterprise IT groups, but ultimately the vast bulk of development was actually carried out by commercial software vendors, for consumption by enterprise IT teams. What we're seeing here is a repeat of "
componentware" market development, with a 21st Century twist.
Regardless of where services come from (and indeed because they will come from multiple places, creating cross-enterprise service networks), it's increasingly the case that in order to deliver effective IT capabilities in the 21st Century, you need to understand SOA principles and build technology and management structures that really support the principles of service orientation. Much has been written about the "consumerisation of IT" and how new generations of people entering the workplace are asking difficult questions about why enterprise IT applications are so unintuitive to use. But what happens when business teams that are using SaaS-based offerings learn about the infrastructure side of the story - how easy they can be to customise, extend, and integrate with - and ask why internally-developed systems don't exhibit the same qualities? Another slab of SOA pressure, that's what.
Back in 2006 I was doing some research for an event that we were considering running on "IT Sourcing in the 21st Century". As part of trying to work out what might be in scope and what might be out of scope, I drew this picture:
As the picture attempts to show, from a technology architecture point of view, the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model relates to the prior Application Service Provider (ASP) model in much the same way as SOA relates to monolithic on-premise applications - to deliver value, both SaaS and SOA need to "crack the box open" and enable IT capabilities to be customised, composed and remixed while also being shareable/reusable. There's much I disagreed with about
Anne Thomas Manes' recent "SOA is dead" post (see
Schrodinger's SOA), but she nailed this parallel between SaaS and SOA pretty well I think.
With the increasing visibility of cloud-based infrastructure and application services in mind, anyone seriously pursuing SOA should be looking to the world of SaaS for insight, or at least inspiration. In the IT industry's rush to SOA, many of the nuances and implications of SOA have often been condensed into simplistic advice targeted at software developers (something that's been written about a great deal,
not least by us). One of the themes we've returned to again and again in our SOA advice is that the concept of a "service" isn't primarily about something you build - it's about something you experience. If you're going to deliver business value from your SOA efforts, you have to grasp the implications of this and make the necessary changes - not only in terms of tools and technologies, but also (crucially) in terms of your governance approach. One of the most popular posts from arch-architect Todd Biske, on
ITIL and SOA, digs nicely into how it's crucial to consider the full service lifecycle when you do SOA, and drive governance to ensure that you can deliver "real service" - not just code wrapped in XML-based interfaces.
The providers of cloud-based services should have this idea etched on their brains - and there are plenty of examples of this principle in action for any eager student of SOA. Witness the grumbles that echo
when Twitter barfs, for example, or see the
grumpy users trying to get to grips with Zoho's CRM API in the face of almost non-existent documentation. These are great examples of situations where the provider's idea of service doesn't match the consumer's expectation.
The rise of cloud computing and SaaS should entice us to revisit our development-centred assumptions about SOA and search for a "bigger picture" that focuses on consumer expectation and value first. The pressure to deliver business value from IT capabilities, and the increasingly diverse mix of IT capability sources, demands that we do so.
Labels: architecture, cloud computing, ITSM, SaaS, service, SOA
Collaboration momentum building in 2009; what do CIOs think about IT Governance?
A few days ago the results of our second CIO UK poll were published in this piece -
CIO Debate: Collaboration is building momentum in 2009. The poll corroborated earlier research that we carried out for our
Collaboration advisory service in the summer of last year, in conjunction with the guys at Freeform Dynamics.
The headline findings: despite all the hype, collaboration adoption is still just getting underway. A big part of the reason for this is the difficulty of justifying big up-front infrastructure investments. Where collaboration is growing fastest, though, it's business activities "at the edge" - those involved in interactions with external parties - which seem to be driving things along. There is a significant amount of appetite for collaboration technology, though, and our research indicates that 2009 will be quite a strong year for collaboration technology adoption.
Our third CIO UK poll is now live at
cio.mwdadvisors.com, and this time we're asking a handful of questions about approaches to IT Governance. How many organisations are pursuing formal IT Governance programmes, and if so what are the reasons? Are they basing their efforts on established frameworks like COBIT and ISO 38500? And what are their plans going forward? Those are some of the questions we're looking to explore.
If you're a CIO or IT Director - or you know someone who is - please take 2 minutes to provide your input (or send your contacts the
link)! We'll be publishing our CIO UK Debate piece on this topic in the next few weeks.
Labels: CIO, collaboration, governance, MWD, poll
The cost benefits of listening and relationships during economic gloom
Over the last few months I have heard and read commentary after commentary about how to weather out the recession. Whilst there is no silver bullet, there are plenty of good tips to follow that, valuable during good times, are essential in the bad.
The global financial meltdown means that IT vendors are facing the same hard times as the rest of us. But, what will be key in their rhetoric is not only "what they
can do for you" by way of their products and services, but "what they
are going to do for you" by way of helping you weather the tough times too. What initiatives or programs are vendors providing and how sensible and pragmatic are they in ensuring that you achieve the most out of your IT investments (past and future) and don't unnecessarily burden you with
technical debt? Strong, effective and long lasting relationships are forged by the level and type of support provided in tough times as well as during good ones. Large suppliers may be able to offer more in way of financial incentives, but smaller players can often offer more flexible and accessible support.
So what are the vendors' strategies for helping businesses during these tough times? One example of a vendor that has been actively talking and listening to CIOs, employees and its customer base to help direct a strategy towards helping both its client base and the wider end-user market is Microsoft. At the close of 2008, I caught up with
Gordon Fraser,
Microsoft's UK MD to hear more about how the company was responding to calls for help with saving time and money and improving productivity. We will be publishing the interview in more detail later this month. For now, here are some of their key directions:
- Don't work harder, work smarter - Microsoft has developed features to enable smarter use of its technology with features that already exist in many of its products already in use within organisations. Most enterprises using the Windows server platform already have access to virtualisation technology that could help reduce the number of servers needed to carry out the workload or move workloads to more power efficient locations. Products like System Center target operational efficiency and excellence, whilst the company's collaboration and communications tools (e.g. Live Meeting with online video conferencing) are freeing up travel time, cutting costs and helping to reduce environmental impacts.
- Consider alternative delivery models - Cloud computing and hosted solution offerings are current hot topics because of their flexible business models for the licensing, usage, maintenance and management of IT collateral. Both technologies are high on Microsoft's priorities for engaging effectively with its client base and helping them to do more with less. The company continues to forge ahead with its "Software plus Service" offerings and announced its own cloud based server offer, Windows Azure at its 2008 Professional Developers Conference (PDC).
- Play a brighter tune with new financial instruments - To help ease the burden of obtaining credit the company has launched a number of initiatives to ease the payment costs for its technology and products. BizSpark, launched in November 2008 offers the full range of Microsoft technology and products, delivered through its partner ecosystem and deferring costs for up to three years. In a bid to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs), Microsoft UK has introduced a low cost financing programme for buying IT infrastructure and tooling that is tied to the bank of England base rate (currently 1.5%).
Undoubtedly, Microsoft is aware of the importance of listening and relationships, especially considering that along with other IT vendors, it is already feeling the pinch from restraints placed on IT spend. Maximising its ability to support CIOs and their IT organisations, SMEs and its own partner and community ecosystem is not surprising considering the company's vested interests. Microsoft clearly has an arsenal of solutions, services and well intentioned financial incentives at hand. Although pro-active in its messaging and smart with its incentives and product feature sets, Microsoft is by no means the only software vendor capable of offering such support. Listening and relationships are two way processes. So it is not just about vendors listening to their customers' during these hard times, but also about customers being receptive to what their vendors may have to offer them in terms of support. This will help the relationship blossom (which may bear additional fruit later on). Therefore it would be wise to check out what is being offered by vendors already in your supply chain before looking elsewhere.
The fact that vendors like Microsoft are keen to talk and listen to their communities and the wider end user market is important for strengthening the overall relationship between the IT supply chain community and the businesses that they serve. Addressing calls for being as flexible in their licensing models and easing the burden of total cost of ownership and operational support, through hosted and virtualisation solutions can allow organisations to think more creatively in their strategies for applying their IT spend during these tough times. Customers are also well advised to look at what technology that they already have in place, since they may not be using them all to their full extent, before spending additional revenue.
A couple of questions that I'd like to throw out to our readers for feedback are: what further support would they like to see from the vendor community as we face what looks set to be a tough economic and financial climate for the foreseeable future. What type of support matters the most?
Labels: economy, Microsoft, technical debt
