ZapThink recently conducted our Licensed ZapThink Architect Bootcamp course
for a branch of the United States Department of Defense (DoD). As it happens,
an increasing proportion of our US-based business is for the DoD, which is
perfectly logical, given the strategic nature Service-Oriented Architecture
(SOA) plays for the DoD. SOA is so strategic, in fact, that SOA underlies how
the DoD expects to achieve its mission in the 21st century -- namely,
defending US interests by presenting the most powerful military presence on
the globe. Furthermore, the story of how SOA became so strategic for the DoD
provides insight into the power of SOA for all organizations, both in the
public and private sector.
This story begins with the issue of complexity. The DoD, as you might
im... (more)
As we predicted earlier in the year, Cloud computing is starting to take
hold, especially if you believe the marketing literature of vendors and
consulting firms. Yet, we are seeing an increasing number of Cloud success
stories, ranging from simplistic consumption of utility Services and
offloading of compute resources to the sort of application and process clouds
we discussed in a previ... (more)
ZapThink revels in stirring up controversy almost as much as we enjoy
clarifying subtle concepts that give architects that rare "aha!" moment as
they finally discern the solution to a particularly knotty design problem.
Last month's Process Isomorphism ZapFlash, therefore, gave us a particular
thrill, because we received kudos from enterprise architects for streamlining
the connections b... (more)
ZapThink's integration cost curve, which we published back in 2002, continues
to stir discussion amongst our Licensed ZapThink Architects. In brief, our
argument is that while traditional middleware-based integration leads to
unpredictable spikes in cost when business requirements change, taking a
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach to solving integration
challenges leads to a f... (more)
Quick! What does a Service look like? Is it an icon on the screen or some
collection of XML? Or maybe the concept of Service is too abstract to have a
visual representation at all? This question may sound superficial, but in
fact, goes to the heart of how Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
interrelates with related concepts like Web-Oriented Architecture (WOA),
Business Process Manageme... (more)
Jason Bloomberg is Managing Partner and Senior Analyst at Enterprise Architecture advisory firm 
Keith Bergelt
Ricardo Aravena
Gaurav Mantri
Aditya Banerjee
John Karamitsos
Kaj van de Loo
Bob Little
Alois Reitbauer
Chris Schin
Richard Gordon
Anil Parambath
