SOA, EDI: and the beat goes on...

TalkBack 1 of 1:

• Thread View
• Flat View

Forget EDI - Look Ahead

It seems a little disingenuous, to me, to set up old EDI service providers as the bad guys.

EDI was of its time, and many positive lessons were learned from its use. Anyway, I don't see a huge rush away from dedicated network infrastructure:
- www.radianz.com; and
- www.anx.com

... spring readily to mind - and there are plenty of others.

Neither am I especially impressed with Rearden Commerce. I haven't worked in this area for a couple of years, so I hope you'll forgive me if Rearden are really making a step forward - though judging from their Web site that is not the case. Although they've been through the 'dot-bomb' ringer VerticalNet (www.verticalnet.com) have been doing much the same for a lot longer and, although Rearden talk a good talk of more up-to-date technology (XML schema and so on), I am still less then convinced that their solution is any less proprietary.

I don't know about you, but I didn't just work through the last ten years of thrashing out new standards, from packets to process-automation, just to back the next IBM or Microsoft. If SOA is really going to deliver on its promise we need ZDNet to step back and be a little more analytical.

May I make a suggestion? In a recent conversation with an old pal of mine the vexing question of where to draw the line came up. The line in question is the one that will have to be drawn between the kinds of commodity process automation covered by Rearden, the kinds covered by industry-specific processes (www.exchange-handbook.co.uk/articles_story.cfm?id=47681) and the kind that senior managers and company directors would like to retain the freedom to make on a daily basis. To be fair you did touch on this "Rearden will face fierce competition, ... from software-as-a-service vendors, ... enterprise software vendors, and ... internal IT departments that prefer and build their own SOAs."

In my experience, which is obviously limited given the current state of play, the competition will not be a simple win-or-lose situation. The reality is going to be that many (most?) will have to try and strike a balance between these three legs of the same SOA stool. But what do these process-automation silos look like, and how do we integrate them (and if someone writes in suggesting I'm asking for Websphere or BizTalk I won't be responsible for my actions...)? This mix is complicated, of course, by the fact that the commodity processes, and most of the industry-specific, will be best outsourced at some point in the near future. Although I am familiar with a little of the work that some of the suppliers are doing, and with a lot of the standards in one or two industries where I specialise, I am still a little in the dark as to where we are on the service standards and the 'hooks for innovation' that are required between the industry-specific and the IT Dept (a.k.a. the Technology Innovation Department). Actually, come to think of it, the very word innovation ougt to mean that Rearden should be providing hooks for innovation too...

Posted by: Stephen Wheeler   Posted on: 03/07/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Key Strategies for Federal Agencies - Safe and Cost Effective Migration for Legacy Hardware GovConnection The federal government has mandated that federal agencies reduce energy ... Download Now
• Building the Virtualized Enterprise with VMware Infrastructure VMware VMware virtualization software has been adopted by over 120,000 enterprise ... Download Now
• Using Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS to Achieve Highly Available, Load-Balanced Clusters Dell The Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS operating system integrates Cluster ... Download Now