Open Source Solutions

We'll be leading a session at the SOA Consortium Meeting being held at the Santa Clara Hyatt Regency on 2008 December 10 & 11. I'm saying "leading a session" because, as opposed to the normal slide deck in MS PowerPoint, OpenOffice.org/NeoOffice Impress or Apple Keynote, we'll be using a mindmap to, as the agenda says:

"An interactive session based upon a mindmap for developing a system architecture using Master Data Management (MDM), Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Software as a Service (SaaS) principles. The goal is not to talk about having an enterprise mashup with salesforce.com, but how to apply these principles to internal enterprise initiatives. We'll discuss the success, lessons learned and future of integrating MDM & SOA, and how this approach allows IT to provision business needs quickly through a SaaS approach to the users. Bring your own experiences and ideas, as we'll be expanding the mindmap in the direction you want. A PDF of the basic mindmap will be emailed to all members of the SOA-C and be included in the meeting handout. Changes to the mindmap made during the session will be posted after the meeting."

As consultants, we like to listen and as believers in the power of collaboration, we like to leverage the wisdom of the group rather than pontificate from a podium. Indeed, this opportunity to speak came through interactions on Twitter, the so-called micro-blogging 24x7 TeleInterActive conversation. Thanks to Brenda Michelson, or @bmichelson by Twitter handle, for arranging this opportunity. The result of all this, is that we prefer to have a fully interactive session with the participants. We want the conversation to go in new and interesting directions. The way we do this, is much like the job of a community manager, but at the micro level. We're hoping that all will join in, and it's our job to assure that we maximize the value of the conversation to the group without abusing anyone's comfort level.

The point of this discussion is to explore how the concepts and principles of Master Data Management (MDM), Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Software as a Service (SaaS) can help Information Technology (IT) departments better serve their customers. We'll be exploring how MDM and SOA work in a SaaS environment from our work with several SaaS firms, how SaaS companies leverage these principles to quickly provision and respond to their customers, and how this differs from a traditional IT department responding to business users and bringing them into production.

One of the most important aspects of this area, is the idea of data services, and how Master Data Management works within a Service-Oriented Architecture to give the users what they really need: access to legacy, historical and transient data.

We'll be starting with our MDM, SOA & SaaS mindmap, collapsed to the first level of branches, and following the branches that are of most interest to the participants. We'll be extending and modifying the mindmap as we go along, and posting the revised mindmap on this blog after the session.