Softstar Research Blog

The Case for Enterprise Architecture

Thanks to CIO Magazine, The case for Enterprise Architects; Kim S. Nash, CIO, December 23, 2008 

When technology infrastructure lines up with business projects like musicians in a marching band, you know you have a good enterprise architect on staff. But will you keep him when it’s time to start handing out pink slips?

The essence of the job “is about improving communication between the people with the problems and those who would solve them,” says Leon Kappelman, cochair of the Society for Information Management’s enterprise architect working group. “That’s vital.”

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Virtualization Discussion

The other day I overhead a discussion about Virtualization.  Somewhat of a water cooler discussion that revolved around the risks of using such a new technology. “New technology?” the discussion started.

“Why this technology has been around for close to 30 years.  It’s just been ported along a long evolutionary path to a smaller hardware platform”.

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10 Reasons SOA Fails

Thanks to CIO Magazine (http://cio.com/article/print/438413).– Mike Kavis, CIO,July 18, 2008

When I read this article by Mike Kavis, my first though was “Here’s someone who’s actually done this before”. Here’s a reprint of his article from CIO magazine. In time I’ll be adding more content and comments based on my own experiences, much of which expands on Mike’s Top 10.

10 Reasons Why People Make SOA Fail

Several recent articles have discussed why many SOA initiatives are failing. In early July, when vice President and research director Anne Thomas Manes presented at the Burton Group’s annual Catalyst conference, she said most SOA failures are due to people and cultural issues more often than for technology issues. I totally agree with her assessment, as I have been blogging about this same issue for a long time.

So now we know who to blame for failed SOA initiatives. It’s the people, stupid! But just why do people make SOA fail? Let me count the ways.
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Saving Chrysler

In response to the article from CIO Magazine titled Saving Chrysler, here’s my suggestion for the troubled automaker.

Start investing in small start-up companies that are focused on alternative fuel vehicles.  Tesla Motors comes to mind as the first acquisition.  Seems like a marrige made in heaven.  The style alone should fit in nicely with Chrysler’s limited edition production series of specialty vehicles.  And the cost would be justified by looking not only at the Tesla current order backlog, but also at the marketing potential to fill them with current production facility bandwidth (that’s code for the Unions get to keep their jobs).

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