Kevin Mullins

Enterprise Web 2.0

Last month I wrote a post on Web 2.0 where I attempted to explain Web 2.0. I pointed out that we see tremendous support and adoption of Web 2.0 applications on the consumer/internet side, but the adoption within the enterprise has been slow and somewhat cautious. In my definition of WEB 2.0, the focus of WEB 2.0 is the web interface, and in enterprise applications, the interface (web or other) is just on piece of the application puzzle.

Last week I started piecing together a topology strategy that I labeled a SOA topology. I tried to document each piece of this topology and came to the realization that I was wrong and SOA is not the topology but a architecture and a real piece of the Application Delivery puzzle. I realizing that there is more to application delivery than Web 2.0 and SOA and my User->Portal->BPM->SOA->EIM model is more of a methodology than a topology, and this methodology already has a name: Enterprise Web 2.0

David Precopio, a strategic and technical Marketing Executive from cio20.com writes about Enterprise Web 2.0 and defines Enterprise Web 2.0 as:

Enterprise Web 2.0 -is a complete business methodology that increases collaboration and access to information and people, enhances the end-user experience by embracing the latest web technologies, and takes advantage of legacy applications and data either through prepackaged applications or through composite web applications built on and with Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Business Process Management (BPM) and Application Integration.

After reading David's blog cio20.com, I realized that SOA is an architecture built around Web 2.0, Business Process Management and some sort of DataBase Integration. I can see the shift in the industry away from older client server and web 1.0 technologies toward Enterprise Web 2.0 methodologies, however I realize that most large Enterprise's move very slowly and their rate of Technology adoption is 2 to 3 years behind the smaller more agile businesses.

Another source of good Enterprise Web 2.0 discussions and strategy is Dion Hinchcliffe's Enterprise Web 2.0 blog at ZDNet. This week Dion writes about how enterprises are not jumping at Web 2.0 applications but points out that big software firms are starting to get into the game and they will influence the enterprise......

Big software firms take aim at Web 2.0 by ZDNet's Dion Hinchcliffe -- While 2006 was a big year for Web 2.0 in the consumer space, it was barely on the radar in the enterprise world. That didn't stop volumes of press coverage, speculation, and debate about how applicable Web 2.0 technologies -- from Ajax to social networking -- would actually be to the business world. However those in the enterprise who wanted to go ahead and experiment or conduct pilot projects to see how Web 2.0 concepts work for them were largely stuck with very consumer-oriented Web 2.0 applications to try out. That's because until recently, the major software makers that supply the application platforms that run in the vast majority of the business world haven't had applications that specifically focused on Web 2.0 patterns and practices, things like social networking, tagging, mashups, architectures of participation, and so on.

Finally, I am really beginning to understand this methodology. My interest comes from my attempt to understand how these applications will be designed, developed and deployed, and identifying what the impact will be to our organization. I see adoption at the enterprise level as limited and restricted by older rigid applications that make porting to a Enterprise Web 2.0 strategy difficult. In my opinion, the best strategy will be to build new applications using Enterprise Web 2.0 methodologies and stay away from a porting or wrapping strategy that will force you to adopt a half and half strategy that includes a Web 2.0 front-end and an older application for your back end.

Please feel free to comment .....

Technorati : BPM, Enterprise Web 2.0, SOA

SOA Refinement and Application Delivery

In my last post I spoke of exploring an SOA model and all of the components that I think are part of an SOA model. If I make any mistakes or should you disagree with my though process or this model, please feel free to comment or send email to me at kevin@kmmm.net.

Here is the model from my last post:

Users -> Portal -> BPM -> SOA -> EIM

Users: We all know what users are, most of us are users of one application or another. Users are the folks in the Call Center, or in accounting, or doing order entry. In a non-enterprise environment they are the folks looking at Utube or connecting to Linken-In.

Portal: Portals have really changed in the last 10 years to be flexible, with user configurable interfaces and no client side installations, portal have grown past Client Server repositories to flexible front ends, configure by Applications Support folks.

A good example of a portal is the Liferay Portal. The Liferay Portal is an open source enterprise portal with integrated security and many variations for flexible deployment. It is an off-the-shelf Portal that will allow most companies to be up in running in hours as opposed to developing Portal technologies within the enterprise.

Here is Wikipedia's definition of an Enterprise Information Portal:

Enterprise Information Portals are one of the most popular ways in which enterprises can allow their employees and customers to search and access corporate information. It is a single gateway for users, such as employees, customers and company's partners to log into and retrieve corporate information, company history and other services or resources.

BPM: Business Process Management: When I think of BPM I think of Business process refinement. In large enterprise's, I see BPM as a Workflow, built into applications or a Workflows built into a process.

Here is Wikipedia's definition of BPM:

The term Business Process Management (or BPM) refers to activities performed by organizations to manage and, if necessary, to improve their business processes. While such improvements are hardly new, software tools called business process management systems (BPM systems) have made such activities faster and cheaper. BPM systems monitor the execution of the business processes so that managers can analyze and change processes in response to data, rather than just a hunch. BPM differs from business process re engineering, a management approach popular in the 1990s, in that it does not aim at one-off revolutionary changes to business processes, but at their continuous evolution.

SOA: Service Oriented Architecture.

Kevin's definition of SOA: SOA is a flexible application development and deployment strategy. It is an architecture and a topology that introduces new business tasks and applications into the enterprise in a consistent flexible manner.

Wikipedia Definition of SOA:

Service-oriented architecture (SOA [pronounced "sō-uh" or "es-ō-ā"]) describes a software architecture that defines the use of loosely coupled software services to support the requirements of business processes and software users. Resources on a network^[1] in an SOA environment are made available as independent services that can be accessed without knowledge of their underlying platform implementation.^[2]

A service-oriented architecture is not tied to a specific technology. It may be implemented using a wide range of technologies, including REST, RPC, DCOM, CORBA or Web Services. to read more follow SOA link.

EIM: Enterprise Information Management

EIM overview and whitepapers from TechRepublic:

A coherent EIM strategy is a fundamental requirement for managing the huge volumes of data businesses accumulate. An EIM strategy will allow business users to have access to many and different types of information coming from multiple data sources across the enterprise. The information can then be accessed, in many cases, through an information portal being fed with data from operational data stores.

Application deployment and SOA

I work in a application delivery and support group and I am very familiar with Network and Operating system setup and support. I understand the tiered architecture approach and the majority of the applications that I support are Client Server based, with my team supporting the middle tier.

Recently while sitting in a long 2 hour meeting, I had a conversation with our Application Architect concerning SOA, and Web 2.0. I was looking for examples of Web 2.0 and SOA in our infrastructure and at first he was somewhat reluctant to talk about SOA but I pressed him further and we agreed to meet after the meeting to discuss.

Once we met, I told him about my blog and I explained that I was interested in better understanding real word examples of SOA as opposed to digging into any possible new application strategies introduced by our recent merger. He understood and told me that there were more components in a SOA topology than just Web 2.0 and SOA.

We spoke about how older applications had been designed and written to complete 10 to 15 different but similar tasks. In a SOA topology, each one of the 10 to 15 different tasks are broken down into an individual task and delivered as flexible services. He stepped thru the following Application Model within a SOA topology:

Users -> Portal -> BPM -> SOA -> EIM

In the next couple of weeks, I am going to attempt to dive into this model and share my recent understanding of an SOA topology, and try and give real examples of each component.

Consolidation Strategy

We have about 900 employees in our office complex and 62 were given a severance package on Tuesday. Only one person within our division was impacted and at this point my staff remains in place. The severance notices came out the day before a Company wide Town Meeting, and the overall impact was less than expected.

Tuesday was a real edgy day. No one really knew was was happening, rumors were rampant and slowly but surely the facts came out. My Director called me and let me know what happened and I communicated that to my folks, however they knew before I officially told them.

The Town Meeting went well as they identified a centralized consolidated strategy for all groups and applications. They identified a time frame of one to two years to complete the consolidation which was a relief to most folks. On Thursday we had a all IT meeting and I asked if there would be further consolidation on the system/infrastructure side. Our CIO stated that they were concentrating on the divisional and application consolidations and when that is finalized they will look at the remainder of IT and identify where they may gain additional efficiencies. That was a long answer for not at this time, however what this means for my staff and myself is, we do not have to worry about being lay-ed off in the next couple of months which will give us to time to show the new management team how we work and what we can do.

Company wide Town Meeting

We were recently acquired by a small healthcare company who came in and communicated that they would need 90 days to pull together a clear strategy for our company. There is a company wide Town Meeting set up for next week to deliver their new strategy and there is a lot of speculation that some folks will be terminated next week.

My team supports the Middle Tier of applications deliver within our company so we are fairly safe at this point in time. We have met with our new owners on multiple occasions and it appears that they will need our services through some sort of integration period and then there could be some shake out within the group.

A concern I have for my group would be the impact of watching folks from other groups terminated, especially if the terminations occur with no communication before the company Town Meeting. It is hard to watch coworkers that you have worked with for many years leave, especially when they have no choice in the matter.

It is going to be a rough week, however hopefully, we can stat to move forward and will have more information on our new organizations with some clarity surrounding where we fit into the big picture within the new company.

Inspiration and Influence

I am a big fan of building influence in the workplace an wrote about Influence this past July with a post called Building Influence. This past week Lisa Haneberg, a professional management, leadership, trainer, coach, and organization development consultant who maintains a blog called Management Craft, posted a great list for anyone looking for help inspiring or influencing others. The post is called "10 Ways to Inspire Others" and is well worth the read.

The Management Craft blog is written with Managers as the primary audience, however everyone can benefit from this list. In my opinion, you build influence by building and maintaining strong relationships, by communicating effectively and by being fair and consistent across all groups in the organization.

Lisa writes that you inspire people by:

1. Be a role model of courage. When our managers demonstrate courage, this will inspire us to do the same and we will respect them all the more.
2. Take a stand. Share your perspective and be open. The most inspiring leaders have a strong vision for how things ought to be.
3. Reject politics! Many of us are sick of politics and would gladly follow and respect leaders who rejected the mucky muck - even if we do not agree with him or her all the time. The wishy washy spin speak is nauseating.
4. Listen more, speak less. Show your employees that you value input and collaboration. This applies to your team members and peers - show them you respect and include your peers.
5. Beat your goals and don't rest until you do. Managers who are OK with mediocre performance (even if they can make the case that it's not their fault) are uninspiring. People want to work for successful leaders.
6. Spend time in their shoes. In fact, swap places with your employees every now and then. Show them you want to understand what their world looks and feel like. Bonus: You will learn tons!
7. Reject over the top perks. OK, so you earned the promotion. Don't flaunt your trappings and take a stand to reject perks that separate you from your team. Think about how you felt when you were in their positions. Try to spread the wealth on great experiences like conferences, trainings, product offerings, and other perks.
8. Represent your employee's needs to senior management and with your peers. Take the initiative to make things better. Wow, that will speak volumes about your intention to serve them and this is very inspiring.
9. Be the best expression of your unique style. We are all different, so don't turn into a corporate clone. That said, be the classiest version of you possible. Like a fine grape varietal, be the fullest expression of you.
10. Be inspired by others. Share your role models and why they inspire you.

This is a great list that highlights how we can continue to grow and get better at what we do whether we are a individual-contributers, project leaders, project managers, managers, directors, VP's, CIO's or CEO's.

I really enjoy and relate to Lisa's blog. She writes with a purpose for helping others and concentrates on strategies that help you grow as a manager. Lisa blog Management Craft has inspired me to think about what I do on a daily basis and helped me to refine my influence.

New Years Wish

I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year along with Health, Happiness and Success in 2007.