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Dana Gardner,
a senior analyst with The Yankee Group, and the facilitator
of a round table discussion at Enterprise Architect
Summit shared his thoughts with editors of FTPOnline.
To learn more about this and other presentations at the Enterprise
Architect Summit click here.
Dana
Gardner
Senior Analyst,
The Yankee Group |
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FTPOnline: What's the biggest
issue faced by enterprise architects today?
Dana Gardner: Management of the resources, assets,
components, services, and platforms/servers is the single
biggest issue facing architects today. Web services orchestration
and interoperability can quickly become complex and unwieldy.
A comprehensive and standards-based orientation to managing
the many disparate elements of a Web services activity would
help the adoption rate significantly.
FTPOnline: How successful have
most enterprises been in using Web services to integrate applications?
Can you cite an example?
Dana Gardner: Many enterprises have saved
a lot of time and money using Web services to expose and integrate
internal resources and operations. Web services are helping
to craft business processes from disparate and unconnected
applications. Wachovia Corp. has been using Web services to
expose internal customer information across applications to
provide a "common definition of a customer" across
applications and processes.
FTPOnline: Can you give us a
preview of some of the questions you'll be asking the panel "Web
Services Interoperability: Open Standards in a Market-Driven
Economy" you're facilitating at the Enterprise Architect
Summit?
Dana Gardner: Here are some sample questions:
Many architects are seeking "ready-to-consume" applications
and Web services, but how many new applications are being
created to fill this need? What standards do you view as most
critical to advancing interoperability? Do you worry about
SOAP, WSDL, or other standards from being tied to a proprietary
platform or corrupted in some way? Web services certainly
save money, but how do you expect them to make money?
What are some new business models for Web services? Which
vertical industries will be there first? How much is UML being
used in your app dev efforts? What new tools would you like
to see?
FTPOnline: What do you think
enterprise architects need to do to move their organizations
ahead, with regard to Web services?
Dana Gardner: Architects need to designate
best-of-breed tools, practices, platforms, and business models
for Web services. They need to begin assigning infrastructure
for how they expect to be using Web services in two to four
years. They need to define and hire the talent they think
they will need for Web services. And they need to decide what,
if any, part of this to outsource.
About Dana Gardner
Dana Gardner is a senior analyst
with The Yankee Group, in the Application Infrastructure
and Software Platforms group.
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