There's a phenomenon I've witnessed again and again in my years building
systems. I call it "Guerilla IT." Listen to my description and see if you've
witnessed it inside your organization.
You are an IT professional serving your constituency. They are satisfied with
your support of their business, but there are a few projects that are lower
priority and small enough to fly under your radar. They implement a little
"solution" themselves to help get their work done. They are proud of the
quick, simple, and cost-effective solution and innocently wonder, "Why can't
they get things done this fast?" It works well for them for a little while,
but then as the business grows or changes or both, they find they're spending
too much time maintaining and enhancing their "little solution". Now they
want to hand it over to you to enhance and support.
There are probably a hundred v... (more)
Much has been written recently about the business-to-business aspects of Web
services, but what about the region between the Web service and the desktop?
Above All Software lays claim to this "last mile" by providing a platform for
delivering composite applications.
Gartner defines a composite application as "a software assembly that
implements one business function (one step) and where the component parts are
heterogeneous in their information architecture." I prefer to define a
composite application as one that does not manage any data of its own, but
brings together data from... (more)
(SYS-CON Media) - We last looked at the Active Endpoints Inc. product suite
back in May of this year. Since then, the team at Active Endpoints has been
busy working towards the 3.0 release of its ActiveBPEL Designer and engine.
The biggest and most interesting enhancement is full support for all WS-BPEL
2.0 constructs. This feature will let users gain early access and experience
with the upcoming OASIS standard.
The folks at Active Endpoints carefully thought through how to support users
in their move to WS-BPEL 2.0. This resulted in the ability of BPEL 1.1 and
WS-BPEL 2.0 process... (more)
When I first looked over MagooClient from Magoo Software, it was difficult to
categorize. I expected that it would be another composite application
builder, but that's not what I found. Instead I found a tool that not only
allows users to interact with business processes, but that also becomes part
of the business process itself. MagooClient can not only reach out and
perform Web service requests, but it is designed to also be inserted in the
path of XML messages.
XML Messaging Client
Magoo Software describes MagooClient as an XML messaging client. That is very
fitting, since it... (more)
Adeptia has released the latest version of its BPM server. The Adeptia BPM
server is another entry in the fast-growing market for Business Process
Management Tools.
People unfamiliar with Business Process Management servers can think of them
as replacing the typical maintenance-heavy point-to-point systems
integrations that let data flow through corporate machinery. The business
process engine executes a well-defined business process and shepherds
information through those complex multistep processes. I've heard BPM
characterized as Enterprise Application Integration on steroids... (more)
Paul Maurer is a principal in the financial services practice of a leading consulting services company.
Scott Sellers
David M. Adler
Anthony Franco
Daniel Morris
Wayne Walls
Niki Acosta
Jereme Hancock
Oren Michels
Marvin Wheeler
Douglas Kim
Ken Guiberson
