WebSphere Technical Exchange 2006 Keynote

The WebSphere Technical Exchange 2006 keynote was "Service Oriented Architecture: The Evolution of an Industry." It was presented by Tom Rosamilia, Vice President of WebSphere product development. Here's what he had to say:

SOA is about enabling business to drive change. IT is the limiting factor slowing down change and innovation. SOA makes IT more flexible so that it can more easily change for business innovation.

SOA is a style, a way of solving a business problem. SOA entry points: People, process, information, connectivity, and reuse--the first three are business focused, the latter two are more technology focused. A lot of service development comes from wrapping existing CICS applications with service interfaces to make their functionality available from other applications.

IBM's SOA roadmap helps you start small and build on initial success to tackle more difficult opportunities. The WebSphere roadmap is based on WAS and continues to improve with regular product releases. IBM's SOA Reference Architecture shows how products, from IBM and/or other vendors, fit together to enable and support SOA applications.

IBM's SOA Lifecycle--Model, Assemble, Deploy, and Manage--shows how to use products together to develop applications. The WebSphere SOA portfolio of products address each step in the lifecycle.

• WebSphere Business Modeler addresses the Model step; it helps business users diagram how (they think) their business works, and then simulate changes to determine which ones actually improves things. Modeler also produces, well, a model, which can be exported and imported as code into other tools like Rational Software Architect and/or WebSphere Integration Developer.
• WebSphere Integration Developer is one of the Assemble products; it's a toolbox for building composite applications, especially SCA service components. The next release will add support for WebSphere Service Registry and Repositry and have better performance.
• WebSphere Application Server is one of the Deploy products. WAS is focused on improving ease of use and quality of service, before adding additional functionality. WAS 6.1 Feature Packs--for Web Services, SOA, etc.--will make new functionality available sooner for development purposes. Web Services includes WS- standards for asynchronous, reliable Web services. SOA includes SCA and SDO for WAS (not just WebSphere Process Server). WAS for z/OS will add 64-bit support and a new IBM HTTP Server built on the Apache HTTP server (for z/OS!).
• WAS CE (Community Edition) is IBM's lightweight J2EE compliant app server; free to download and use, support from IBM available for a fee. What's new: JDK 5.0. WAS spectrum:
  • WAS ND is low risk, low TCO
  • Apache Geronimo is low acquisition cost and low time to value
  • WAS CE, in the middle, is a mature Geronimo build with proprietary value add components
• Open Service Oriented Architecture (OSOA) and Apache Tuscany: Two efforts to make SCA and SDO standards. OSOA is lots of vendors working together to develop the specs. Tuscany is open source code that implements the specs.
• Web 2.0 technologies: Mash-ups, lightweight programming model, feeds (RSS/Atom), wikis, rich user experience (AJAX).
• WebSphere Process Server is another deployment option, primarily for the BPEL engine and human tasks. WPS 6.02 will be available by the end of the year.
• WebSphere MQ is the messaging backbone for your SOA: reliable, secure, high speed, and most widely connected. What's new: More GUI admins, XMS clients, integration w/IBM support assistant.
• ESB: Pattern or Product? Both. Routing, converting, transforming, and handling. WebSphre ESB is improving performance and works with WSRR. Message Broker for traditional transaction processing systems. New release will be simpler to use, work with WSRR and WebSphere Transformatrion Extender.
• WebSphere Adapters service-enable existing applications. Connect non-messaging applications to your ESB (WESB or Message Broker). New adapters implement J2EE COnnector spec.
• DataPower is an applience you plug into your network and use. XI50, XS40, and XA35 provide ESB-like capabilities.
• WebSphere Registroy and Repository (WSRR): Publish, find, agility, manage, and govern. Encourages reuse in the Assemble step, enhances connectivity in the Deploy step, and enables governance. Manage SOA metadata, enrich SOA runtime interaction, and enable cross-product integration.
• WebSphere Tranformation Extender (aka Mercator, DataStage TX) is a universal transformation engine, with codeless development, reuse and deploy anywhere. Supports EDI and industry standards.
• WebSphere Portal is a (deployment) platform for composite applications. Integration with IBM WebSphere Portlet Factory (aka Bowstreet).
• WebSphere Business Monitor addresses the Monitor step of the lifecycle. Achieve real-time visibility into processes. Provides scorecards, collaboration, busines alerts, reports and analysis, and external information. What's new: Business activity monitoring (add CBE events to existing apps), improved admin and testing environment.
• WebSphere Extended Deployment--more than just WAS, also portal, WESB/WPS, WebLogic, JBoss, etc. Virtualization of SOA infrustructure (increased CPU consumption), mixed application types, mixed server environments.

Business Process Management (BPM) – Five key pillers:

• Modeling and simulation
• Monitoring (BAM)
• Process Execution
• Rules and Pre-built Frameworks
• Content and Collaboration

BPM is better with SOA. Services are the building blocks for business process.

Any industry can benifit from SOA. Lots of industries are already doing so: banks, telcos, auto, electornics, retail, health, insurance, SMB, etc. Saves cost, increases flexibility, grows revenue.

And with that, Tom concluded his talk and encouraged the audience to enjoy the rest of the conference.