Howard Smith

The Component Based Development Forum, an analyst firm and think tank covering business software creation, reuse, and management, recently wrote, "Service Orientation - So What?" They went on to explain, "First we had Web Services. Then we realized that Web Services were simply a technology, and we needed architecture to manage the loose coupling of pretty much everything. For a time SOA was top of the toy box. Then we started to see Service- Oriented Programming and Service- Oriented Design. All very sensible, even if it is a bottom-up process of discovery. Of course the logical conclusion to this is that we are progressively establishing a comprehensive approach to architecture, modeling, design, programming, deployment, interoperability etc., that is service oriented." Really? We see something else. The industry is progressively establishing a comprehensive appro... (more)

Making Business Processes Manageable

What has surprised everyone in the past few years is how challenging it has been to actually do e-business. One of the reasons why this is so is that companies have found it difficult to manage their business processes, especially when they stretch across multiple systems, software applications, companies, and countries. That's about to change. It must change, because shareholders still expect companies to fulfill the promise of e-business. As Doug Neal of CSC's Research Services reports, "Companies are under pressure to perform better, faster; to do more with less; and to be su... (more)