This, my slightly captivated audience, should serve as enough of a warning to all of you; especially if you are information technologists who believe that the phenomenon of the Cloud and Cloud Computing are just evolutionary steps from message oriented middleware, integration brokers, application platform suites, enterprise service Buses, SOA Suites, Etc.. If you believe that simply putting an enterprise service bus on an external server hosted by your local Internet service provider, will give you the capability to offer the same functionalities (including elasticity, flexibility and agility) as true Cloud platforms, then you are mistaken.  And you have made a mortal error if you fail to see the evolutionary trail of enterprise infrastructure and middleware has dwindled.

I fully expect to see that the chasm, which may be more like a deep bottomless pit, between enterprise stuff and true infrastructure for Cloud services, filled with the bodies and careers of men, women and analyst (sometimes we can be above sexuality) who failed to detect and comprehend the radical shift in existence necessary to consume and provide the proper mechanisms and methodologies necessary for survival in this new era of Cloud services and Cloud Computing.

In turn this means the fight for leadership in Cloud platform and Cloud service infrastructure markets is far from over and there are no incumbent leaders or even visionaries.  So if you provide application integration technology today by all means adapt your technology for Cloud service infrastructure but be forewarned; your competitors will come from the world of integrated service environments, multi-enterprise collaborative gateways, manage file transfer technologies, Web 2.0 platforms, productivity suites, business process management suites and even entire operating systems. Take nothing for granted.  Unlike SOA and to a lesser extent BPM, the Consumerisation of the IT will not let enterprise infrastructure and middleware providers and vendors dilute and shift the Cloud’s core value proposition, strengths and legacy has a defining shift in information technology.

And in my Google browser

I was ordering from eBay

Because I am to busy to go to a real mall (Hey I never said this would rhyme!)

After using PayPal to send money to 5 different sellers in a 24hr chain, the governance mechanisms of PayPal kicked off processes that sent emails to the seller that said…

Ahhh wherever eBay and the PayPal guys learned it they learned well! Looking at my virtually inactive PayPal account that was over foyur years old but seldom used, PayPal’s monitoring systems showed some strange transactions all within the same 24 hour period. I mean could it really be Frank Kenney that bought:

• A new bass guitar,
• Refills for Propellerhead’s Reason,
• A Gwen Stefani L.A.M.B. watch and bracelet,
• A limited addition DVD of Duran Duran’s Rio (Ohhh don’t start! YOU KNOW YOU WANT A COPY),
• And some perfume???

I mean no interactions for the better part of 2 years then a flurry of activity. So here I am getting emails from sellers telling me that they were not going to send my presents out until PayPal said it was ok. All in all the process worked very well. In fact it worked too well.

But I did authorize the purchases and they were paid from my checking accounts. Hmmm so much like air travel and the dreaded “SSSS” (The airlines way of flagging you to the TSA) I was on a list that I didn’t deserve to be on. Worse yet with eight days until Christmas there was a real chance that I would not have the gifts in time. Oh what to do?

Oh, I called the 800 number, authenticated my self and a very nice man, very quickly executed a process that removed me from the bad guys list and sent out emails to the sellers. Problem solved.

Moral of the story? Automated governance processes are way cool! In fact if it wasn’t me buying all that merchandise, then I would be ecstatic that PayPal stopped the entire process and more importantly protected my money. The best policies and processes are those that have very clearly defined exceptions.

I would like to thank all of Gartner’s clients and associates who helped us stay successful and I look forward to another 400K of travel. Seriously, lets do it again.

Oh by the way… Cloud Governance…. Hehehe you know you want to know more… Stay tuned!

-f

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To the CIO, CEO, CFO, CTO and shareholders,

As a result of the following I can now only deduce that SOA is a failure and any attempts at SOA will result in failure. Under my direction:

• I have failed to associate our SOA initiatives with our business needs, therefore I cannot show any value for the hundreds of services we have created ,
• I have failed to properly create and support an SOA Center of Excellence, Steering Committee or Competency Center,
• I have failed to enlist the executive staff as true supporters and evangelistscfor our SOA efforts.
• I chose to buy an ESB prior to truly understanding our SOA infrastructure needs (In reality this wasn’t my fault, the vendor said it was super duper necessary)
• I have failed to provide my developers incentives to reuse artifacts,
• It was not my responsibility to follow what was going on next door where there was a separate team dealing with BPM, I mean they are two different initiatives,
• I firmly believe that SOA is nothing more than fancy CORBA or COM.

Despite all of the things I have NOT done, SOA has failed. My additional failure to recognize and implement best practices that have been proven successful in many other companies worldwide also play into the failure of SOA.

Oh well, we should move on and try something new. On the bright side 70% of our initiatives fail anyway. The failure of SOA is SOA’s fault not mine.

Thanks for understanding and I’d like to declare in advance that Cloud Computing, Virtualization and SaaS will be failures under my direction as well.

Thanks for listening

XXXXXX

Project Manager, EA Artchitect, Lead Developer (Choose One)

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Email this to the largest DL you can find, and rejoice in the fact that you are not alone. Many others feel the same way.

 -f

 P.S. You failed, not SOA. Now go resign.

1)      CEO Karl-Heinz Streibach opened the session with a discussion about alignment. Interesting he took down an unfamiliar part discuss the fact that while IT and business has to be aligned, it’s the business that needs to work better at aligning itself. We aren’t just talking about B2B but the domain to domain silos that need to be broken down. The good news is that he was hitting on a new topic that many companies are struggling on. The bad news is I don’t believe that we are going to solve this issue by rolling out the same products and methodologies that have been tried before. Let’s elevate the conversation from BPM and BI into something larger…

2)      Next up Enrico Benni gave an informative session on a number of topics around globalization. He gave great examples of why companies have to place a large effort on having a presence where they do business, not just depend on a foreign support and call center. The most interesting aspect of his presentation though was around IT talent and the fact that it exists globally.

3)      Mark Cressy, from Liberty Mutual gave a great presentation that basically highlighted that there was a need to have an ultimate view of the customer as it relates to the value change. He’s also targeted internal change from drivers outside the organization, like B2B partners.

4)      Then I moderated a panel with Avid, Liberty Mutual, Avnet, and Dish Network. Here are my findings:

a.       Each one of the CIOs had some driver to align business and IT

b.      Each one of the CIOs had at least 1 SOA CoE if not multiple ones

c.       The panel was split on how to deal with changing the culture at their companies; 2 CIOs were all about punishment and the other two were about rewarding good behavior. I still believe its about having and doing both

5)      Jim Adamczyk from Accenture came up next and hit on a few points worth repeating.

a.       The success of transforming business and IT will depend on-

                                                               i.      Visibility

                                                             ii.      Being inspirational

                                                            iii.      Being realistic

                                                           iv.      Being targeted

                                                             v.      Being consistent.

b.      The concept of a Business Process Factory that provides interfaces with IT for service creation, design and maintenance.

c.       Since IT however bad is still the best way to cross all the silos in your business CIO and COO should lead the charge.

All in all it was a decent 1^st day. As I talk to clients I will try to bring you more as the week progresses.

Thanks

-f