David Linthicum

While the hype rages around cloud computing, most cloud implementations go the way of the private cloud and avoid the public clouds for now.  Private clouds are exactly what they sound like.  Your own instance of SaaS, PaaS, or IaaS that exists in your own data center, all tucked away, protected and cozy.  You own the hardware, you can hug your server. However, what defines a private cloud these days could also mean systems that are remotely hosted but dedicated to a single enterprise, and, in some cases, provided out of a public cloud data center as a virtual private cloud.  Thus any cloud infrastructure that's dedicated to a single organization is getting the "private cloud" label.  This includes the emerging relabeling of existing enterprise software and hardware solutions, looking to deliver cloud-in-a-box private clouds. If this sounds confusing, it is.  The te... (more)

Is Your Client Rich?

As we look to make more practical use of Web services, the need has emerged for a better user interface; one that's neither too fat nor too thin. An interface that allows developers to make the most out of the client's native features, while at the same time, not bogging the client down with services that are better kept at the back end. We call this new hybrid interface a rich client. A rich client is a small piece of software that runs on the client to leverage and aggregate back-end Web services, allowing them to appear as a single, unified, native application. Indeed, a new ... (more)

SOA 2 Point Oh No!

Here we go again. While the paint is still wet on this new Web 2.0 stuff, many SOA vendors and large analysts firms are calling their market SOA 2.0. It's one of the silliest things I've heard in a long while, and both the analysts and vendors who use this term should be ashamed of themselves. I get Web 2.0 because the Web is well over 10-years-old and we've been successful in using this pervasive technology and now we're moving to newer and more exciting stuff such as AJAX and RSS thus the new version number. However, we've yet to get large-scale traction with SOA so SOA 2.0 is ... (more)

Understanding SOA Architectures and Models - Part 1

A few people who have been reading my blog and this column, and listening to my podcast, as well as reading other SOA blogs and articles, have become a bit confused pertaining to the notions of: SOA Reference Model(s) SOA Reference Architecture(s) And how all of this works and plays with Enterprise Architecture I spent a few hours of my weekend attempting to research and define these concepts a bit better, in essence, taking everyone's opinions and normalizing them so they make better sense. What I found were many of the same notions, defined differently, but all attempting to s... (more)

When You Need to Cancel a SOA Project

Many SOA projects are created out of hype, not need. Clearly many enterprises are "managing by magazine" and are more concerned about doing something cool rather than doing something helpful. You know the difference, and I'm sure there are both types of projects in your organization today. Indeed SOA has become popular, but not in a good way. Tactical, on-off projects are sprouting up all over the place with poorly defined values and strategic direction. Thus, they bring very little to the architectural party and could be making the enterprise take a few steps back. Bad SOA, even... (more)