‘Genesis’ breathes life
into enterprise mash-up
Social computing takes on a new role with
Web 2.0 as the vehicle for delivering business
applications By Vawn Himmelsbach
SAN FRANCISCO
We”re on the cusp of a
new era in enterprise
computing, one where
Web-based applications
are tailored to
individual employees, said Alfred Chuang,
founder and chairman of BEA Systems,
at BEAWorld earlier this month.
Mash-ups — where we integrate
applications or content into a single
browser interface — are starting to
move from the consumer to enterprise
space. So what are the implications of
this changing landscape? “The era of
traditional packaged enterprise applications is over,” said Chuang.
This is the basis of BEA’s “Genesis”
announcement — though execs were
unable to comment on specifics at this
time. Essentially, the emphasis will be
on WorkSpace 360 with a combination
of other technologies, as well as support for more scripting languages such
as Ruby and Perl. This will allow for
flexible, real-time composite applications that help organizations respond
to changing market conditions in days
instead of weeks, he said, and can be
tailored to individuals. “SOA was never
meant to be the final destination.”
Social computing is moving beyond
Facebook into the enterprise. Along with
business process management (BPM),
based on a service-oriented architecture
(SOA) foundation, there are productivity
gains to be had.
Sony Pictures Entertainment is one
customer interested in the upcoming
Genesis. At its core, the company finances, acquires and distributes intellectual
property. It now has 400,000 titles in a
single global IP master.
“Despite how far we’ve come,
everything’s going to change in the
next 18 months,” said David Buckholtz,
vice-president of planning, enterprise
architecture and quality with SPE.
The entire business model is changing
— from digital theatrical distribution
to user-generated TV content. And the
realignment of home entertainment
distribution will require an architected
approach to service delivery. “We see
room for us to take it to the next level
with Genesis,” he said.
Common interfaces into information
sources and applications can help ease
interoperability challenges that limit
collaboration and knowledge sharing,
said David Senf, director of Canadian
security and software research with IDC
Canada. “This value proposition of SOA
to drive social networking should help
lift the market in Canada.”
level of control, but employees aren’t
restricted too much. So, as an employee
creates and searches information and
tags it, other people can find it — giving
applications a more dynamic nature.
But management often has valid
reservations about social computing,
such as IP protection (how well protected is information in blogs and wikis,
for example). Organizations are testing
these boundaries right now, said Beack,
but if you restrict employees, they’ll
likely find a way to get around it anyway.
It’s also hard to determine ROI. But if
you’re trying to innovate, social computing can increase stickiness, he said, and
potentially get unexpected results.
SOA can be done ad hoc and quickly
in one-off projects to save costs, said
IDC’s Senf. In fact, some of it can be
done without expensive tools (assuming
a strong knowledge in XML schema).
Nothing comes for free, though, so it
becomes a case of “pay me now or pay me
more later.” If the goal is simply to connect a couple of applications or information sources, then corners and costs can
be cut. But if the firm wants a broader
use of services within the context of
business processes, then “cheaping out”
might not be a good idea.
OMEGA sharing
One step at a time
Controlling chaos
But there’s a resistance to the ad hoc,
organic growth of applications that are
not strictly controlled by IT, said Theo
Beack, BEA’s deputy C TO. One solution
is “controlled chaos,” where IT has some
Start small, said Shane Pearson, BEA’s
vice-president of marketing and product
management. Expose two or three services first, then show the ROI. If you’re
trying to boil the ocean, you’re going to
have a hard time, he said.
A trio for Web 2.0
By Paul Krill
In July, BEA Systems shipped three
products featured in its social
computing suite geared for Web
2.0: AquaLogic Pages, AquaLogic
Ensemble and AquaLogic Pathways.
AquaLogic Pages is a mashup builder
for business users to put together
simple Web apps, while Ensemble
is for building developer-oriented
mashups featuring Web resources.
Aqualogic Pathways features social
bookmarking, tagging, and the ability
to form social networks in an enterprise context.
BEA has been able to communicate how the suite can make
a business become more efficient,
said Frank Kenney, research director
at Gartner. But it’s lacking in details
on how governance and control are
maintained over apps built with
the products, he said. “I think that
I haven’t seen enough detail about
the mechanics of the technology.
For instance, BEA hasn’t given me
a message or hasn’t told me about
how these technologies fit into their
overall SOA governance initiatives.”
After the initial upfront investment,
organizations can start to see savings
when reusing applications. For Avis
Budget, its goal was to be more responsive to changing market conditions,
while maximizing ROI using SOA by
extending the life of legacy IT assets.
Avis developed OMEGA, an SOA
platform for delivering shared services
across applications. “Prior to OMEGA,
converting core processes such as rental
returns to a paperless task would have
been impossible,” said Ashok Kumar,
director of services architecture information technology with Avis Budget
Group Inc.
It created an e-receipt service, where
hurried travelers can drop off their
vehicles and walk away, and a receipt is
e-mailed to them within seconds. This
service is now being reused to develop
other applications. As a result, Avis
Budget has reduced reliance on main-frame-based applications, resulting in
further cost savings.
eBay’s events
For eBay, IT is the business. With
thousands of transactions per second,
application uptime is critical — losses
are equivalent to $2,000 per second,
said Scott Clement, enterprise architect
for eBay.
So the company built a complex event
processing (CEP) engine using WebLogic
Event Server to discern complex event
patterns or correlations across different
event sources — such as server issues
or fraud. “We’re proactive,” he said.
“We’re not waiting for something to be
detected.” 076133
