tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19287670.post113469285298744668..comments2006-03-25T20:04:37.416+00:00Comments on The lost outpost: SOA and the IBM product stackUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19287670.post-1135095551279786042005-12-20T16:19:00.000+00:002005-12-20T16:19:00.000+00:00glad you picked that up in your response to the re...glad you picked that up in your response to the response andy. i was worried i was being taken for grantedAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19287670.post-1134741327844057712005-12-16T13:55:00.000+00:002005-12-16T13:55:00.000+00:00Thanks for the comment, Mark - nice to know I have...Thanks for the comment, Mark - nice to know I have another reader. Completely agree with you here. As James Governor has said over in <A HREF="http://mainframe.typepad.com/blog/2005/12/boy_that_must_h.html" REL="nofollow">the mainframe blog</A>, IBM makes it clear in the marketing that SOA is hard. We recognise the myriad of systems that customers have, and (since I've been here, at least) we've always been about helping to integrate them. Open standards can only make this easier.<BR/><BR/>I like the way you rephrased this, too - it isn't complexity of approach, it is completeness. That's great. I'm going to use it in conversation :-)Andy Piperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07666427891464758843noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19287670.post-1134740004208588032005-12-16T13:33:00.000+00:002005-12-16T13:33:00.000+00:00The real challenge though that IBM faces, is not t...The real challenge though that IBM faces, is not the complexity of our products, but the complexity of our customers.<BR/><BR/>If we were &Ampersand. small software company, or an organisation we could do just a single product and say "there, thats SOA/ESB" its great like it or lump it.<BR/><BR/>However, that wouldn't be much use for the millions of customers over dozens of OS's, and four hardware platforms, built up over 30-years, who want to embrace SOA. Sure, many of them can and will do it without our help. Heck, some of them even do it without our products ;-( but generally while we have often intimate knowledge and understanding of their systems, they still want a shopping list of options rather than just do what we say.<BR/><BR/>So, that leads not to complexity, but rather to completeness. Many products with interfaces to, and programability for services based applications and infrastructure.<BR/><BR/>As always, people would like a single message, a single voice, but mostly customers don't want a single product unless its the one they currently heavily exploiting. Even then they want something else to integrate to it, with it, or from it.<BR/><BR/>This is why open is key. Emracing web services, getting involved and implementing WSRF, WSDM et al. will pay off in the mid-term for both the customers and for IBM. The ability to implement applications around a services base, with a strong mediation engine, that participates in and can support a robust set of open industry standards is key.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com