Bronze Sponsor

Strategy Track

Session Descriptions

IT Drivers for Business Process Management
Peter Varhol, Senior Member of the Technical Staff, Progress Software
Workshop   May 15, 1 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Business Process Management (BPM) goes beyond the legacy technologies of workflow management and enterprise application integration. BPM automates the routing of both information and processing logic into a flexible and predictable processing of complex information into a decision-making and execution framework. This workshop focuses on the technology underpinning BPM and its impact on enterprise architecture. It looks at designing business processes, automating and executing those processes, orchestrating those processes into a workflow, and analyzing data and events that make up the processes to optimize and ensure the reliability of a complex set of processes. Participants in this workshop will understand the technologies inherent in BPM, the architectural considerations of building and maintaining that BPM, and how to analyze its operation to ensure efficient execution. It will include discussions on BPM frameworks, rules engines, process and event engines, and process analytics.

Metadata: The Key to Understanding IT
Darren Ehlers, VP Products and Corporate Development, Clever Machine
May 16, 4:45 p.m.
Metadata-driven applications can be described as providing the capability to understand entirely what there is to know about an information object at any level of aggregation. Emerging technologies are enabling businesses to accumulate metadata related to business information objects that allow an entire organization to better understand itself. Similarly, metadata about IT information objects can be used to manage and execute IT projects much more efficiently and productively, which in turn allows an organization to better understand and appreciate IT. In this presentation, we'll discover how IT can use metadata to accumulate business and technical wisdom and connect business requirements to real data.

Joining Enterprises with the Global SOA
David S. Linthicum, CEO, Bridgewerx
May 17, 10:30 a.m.
As we learn to accept that many services we leverage within an enterprise are services we may not host, the notion of building bridges to service providers and managing the interaction will become more commonplace in 2006. Clearly, the technology is appearing today. Thus, we need to define and refine our approaches now, including architectures, enabling technology, and use of standards. Most enterprises are way behind. The use of the Global SOA or Web 2.0 will create many opportunities, including better agility and the ability to operate a business with fewer IT resources. In essence, we're moving to the next generation Web, where service delivery over the Internet will be added to information delivery as the key strategic value of the Internet to business. However, to make this strategy a reality we must learn how to bridge the gaps among our enterprise systems and SOAs and service providers that exist across the Internet. Special consideration must be given to connectivity, interoperability, security, and share processes—problems that are easily solvable with the right technology and approaches.

The Data-Centric Enterprise: A Blueprint for Enterprise Architectures
Natty Gur, CTO, dao2com
May 17, 11:45 a.m.
Patterns have been in use for quite some time to work with system architecture and software design. Currently, enterprise architecture is one of the more complex undertakings in many organizations, and there are many enterprise architecture frameworks that organizations can adapt and use for the task. While those frameworks can be helpful for specific approaches and methods, they are not helping with the content of the outcomes, which very often is a task they have to work with alone. Enterprise architecture patterns should help with the outcome's content. Patterns suggest a set of blueprints for each one of the different architectures, and therefore decrease the resources and time needed to get successful and agile enterprise architectures. A simple and clear way of finding a match between enterprise and pattern is by using style. Styles employ a simple life metaphor to describe much more complex activities. This presentation will provide a discussion of design patterns, architecture patterns, enterprise architecture patterns, and styles. In particular, the discussion will provide insight into a new style that describes data-centric enterprises and provides the blueprints and proven concepts for business, information, system, and infrastructure architectures.

Selecting SOA Infrastructure
Chris Haddad, Practice Manager, Burton Group
May 17, 2:00 p.m.
Your organization is embarking on an initiative to layer service-oriented architecture infrastructure on top of the existing application platform. Chris Haddad, Burton Group Practice Manager, will present how to best prioritize, deliver, and execute an SOA infrastructure strategy. The session will cover how to align architecture components, tooling, governance frameworks, and project methodologies with service-oriented architecture requirements. Chris also will recommend sample RFI evaluation matrixes, proof of concept project plans, and implementation road maps.

SOA Operations and Governance to Move Applications to the Network Architecture
Andrew Nash, CTO, Reactivity Inc.
May 17, 3:30 p.m.
|Application deployment, operation, security, and transaction loads have traditionally impacted the network through a narrow and well-understood set of interfaces. With the advent of service-oriented architecture and Web services, applications are no longer restricted to large chunks of logic running on specific servers. Instead, the application is itself moving toward a system of small, reusable network components. At the same time, proven networking techniques have now been adapted by application-level protocols, and for the first time large-scale, network-level intermediaries can manipulate, control, monitor, and provide direct value to applications at a very fine-grain level. This presentation describes the new network devices that will be introduced to support and control applications as they move into the network architecture. We'll examine how these changes have taken place and what the impact is from a network operations and corporate governance perspective.

Use a Services Networking Approach to Build a Scalable and Extendable SOA
Frank Martinez, Chairman, CTO, and Cofounder, Blue Titan Software
May 17, 4:30 p.m.
How do organizations balance near-term project success with long-term infrastructure reliability as they build service-oriented architectures (SOAs)? By employing an incremental approach based on a well-planned enterprise-wide SOA architecture, architects can be successful with their enterprise SOA initiatives. We'll address how to approach SOA deployment and management for multiple lines of business from a process point of view, and we'll cover implementation of SOA at the project level to enable delivery of immediate benefits while allowing room for expansion to an enterprise-wide SOA. Learn how real customers have leveraged a services networking approach to SOA to simplify the scope of their business processes, seamlessly span heterogeneous technology environments, mitigate the variances of business processes, and exponentially accelerate the speed of business process implementation.