Articles by Jason English

Will SOA Fold into Cloud Computing?

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 23:45:00 EDT

This is certainly the case, whether or not SOA is a leading indicator of SaaS. However, it will take a while for SaaS in a Cloud Computing model to catch up with SOA (see ReadWriteWeb’s post - Fastest Growing US Companies are Rapidly Adopting Social Media for a presentation of this particular Gartner Hype Curve.) One obstacle for the pure plays in the cloud to join SOA is to recognize and deal with the increased testing and validation of data from even more diverse sources, as well as the governance and validation of all the underlying technologies that contribute to specific business outcomes.

Some More Good SOA Business Blogs

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 13:27:00 EDT

I have now written a six part series on software community blogs. This has included some of our larger partners such as Oracle, TIBCO, and Software AG who maintain multiple blogs with a community. I also covered the Agile Commons blog by our partner, Rally. We have some other partners... Jason English

Skytap's Cloud Computing and ITKO LISA as an Initial Partner

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:00:00 EDT

Skytap allows companies to run their existing applications and virtual machines unchanged to take advantage of cloud economics without a major application rewrite. The company's Web services API and one-click VPN functionality allow organizations to create a "hybrid" IT model whereby cloud resources can be used and managed as an extension of existing onsite IT environments. With the introduction of the Skytap ISV alliance program, customers can now also access software from leading ISVs within the Skytap environment and gain the benefits of a pay-as-you-go model for the ISV software

SOA World Expo - Turning SOA Whining into Debate, Planning, and Action

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:00:00 EDT

SOA can create agility and some incredible efficiencies, but there are a lot of issues to resolve before plunging in, unless you want to do a lot of pew pew (e.g., damage). For example, because of the complexity that comes with orchestrating multiple services, work out governance issues in advance.

Cloud Computing – Adding a Fifth Dimension

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 04:15:00 EDT

Dan Woods provides an interesting analysis in Forbes, Parsing The Cloud, on where Cloud Computing may be going next. He makes a good case that the cloud will become more complex and diverse. He offers four drivers of this diversity. First, compliance is going to happen. Governments have already stepped in. The Swiss banking laws dictate that computers storing customer information must be housed inside its borders. Other countries may follow so they can tax, inspect, or otherwise exert control.

The ESB - SOA Hullaballoo

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:15:00 EDT

With multiple ESB platforms, you are still providing a very good way to bring underlying business applications and transaction systems to bear with an integration and messaging framework, sometimes with business process management as well. Yes they are different systems, but they can be pulled together effectively as long as the validation is there, and as long as the multiple teams have a means to virtualize their dependencies and continue developing and testing new functionality.

Service-Oriented Virtualization - Can Virtual Environments Take Performance & Load Testing?

Tue, 27 May 2008 09:45:00 EDT

The initial uses of Service-Oriented Virtualization were to allow the development and testing team to regain agility much earlier in the lifecycle - so they could do their needed functional and regression testing against Virtual Services instead of constrained live applications - the essential services, databases and mainframes in the environment. But that same virtualization is perhaps even more valuable in the performance lab, if you can apply serious load testing to it.

SOA World - Does Virtualization Allow Performance & Load Testing?

Fri, 23 May 2008 15:00:00 EDT

But that same virtualization is perhaps even more valuable in the performance lab, if you can apply serious load testing to it. The constraints of having a realistic environment and test data to test and develop against is holding these teams back from finding performance issues much earlier - so we can gauge SLAs (service levels) at the component level. And in SOA - where you are dealing with services and underlying systems that are distributed and constantly changing, replicating that whole environment is incredibly costly and time consuming.

New SOA Testing Survey from Aberdeen Group

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 19:30:00 EDT

We've been looking for some research to benchmark the maturity of SOA Testing efforts in isolation of SOA Governance as a whole. So when I heard Perry Donham was doing this over at Aberdeen, we wanted to participate in underwriting the survey and asking our users to contribute. 'SOA and Web Services Testing: How Different Can It Be?'

An Introduction to SOA and Virtualization

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 08:00:00 EDT

The second type of virtualization is virtual service end points. In a sense what you?re doing is creating a virtual location for your consumers to access in order to invoke the service when in fact you're completely shielded from the actual end point of the service itself. So there is more disconnection between the consumer and the producer in that kind of virtual service end point. Again, I'll tell you why you?d do something like that and what the pros and cons are on a future blog.