The ITKO Blog: Service Virtualization and Application Lifecycle Optimization - CA Technologies

More on SOA & Cloud Governance from HP via Dana Gardner

Dana Gardner recently posted on Enterprises can leverage cloud models and manage transition risks using service governance, says HP.

Dana had a conversation on the role of cloud computing, services oriented architecture (SOA) and governance in exploring cloud opportunities with Rebecca Lawson, Director of Service Management and Cloud Solutions at HP; Scott McClellan, Vice President and Chief Technologist of Scalable Computing and Infrastructure in HP’s Technology Solutions Group, and Norman Lindsey, Chief Architect for Flexible Computing Services at EDS, an HP company. Dana provides highlights in his post and you can also read a complete transcript of the discussion.

The panel pointed out that virtualization and the associate cost savings are not dependent on cloud computing, but they are an enabler of it. The panel focused more on the cloud than SOA, but they had a number of useful thoughts. I liked the panel’s comment that -- “In the longer term, the more overarching impact of cloud comes when your IT department can deliver value back to the business, rather than just taking cost out."

That is more than a novel idea - for the past few years we've talked too much about driving cost out of IT, instead of driving value into the business.

Some examples? "Using aspects of social networking and other aspects of cloud computing, and the fact that cloud is delivered over ubiquitous media, the Internet, to increase 'wallet share,' increase market share, maybe bring higher margin to a business, and build ecosystems, and drive user communities for a business."

This allows cloud computing to be strategic and not simply tactical. As cloud computing becomes more strategic, it becomes even more important to have a solid governance model to make the decision on whether to move from the traditional deployment model to a cloud-delivery model. In the process of getting to a service-centric IT governance model, organizations are going to have to deal with the governance model for deploying new services (see also – Dana’s post on IDC research shows enterprise SOA adoption deepens based on certain critical practices).

These governance models can better sort through the risk/reward trade-offs on cloud computing. Of course a good testing and validation strategy takes out some of the risk side of the equation. The panel added that tougher economic conditions would heighten the acceleration of cloud computing, and not just because of the opportunity to save cost (see also Direct Insights Analysts identify IT winners and losers in global economic downturn). The panel said that opportunities for the cloud to bring value are high when it can drive user communities with users and consumers of whatever it is your business produces, using techniques of social networking and other web-based capabilities. In these strategic cases that directly touch your customers, having continuous validation of services is especially critical.

John Michelsen interviewed by ebizQ at Gartner AADI

We were recently at the Gartner Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit (AADI) at Vegas. Peter Schooff of ebizQ stopped by our booth and did a podcast interview of John Michelsen, our co-founder and chief geek. You can listen to the podcast at the ebizQ site, Beyond Testing to Validation: Live Podcast With iTKO.  

John mentioned that we are in the final stages of deploying LISA 4.6, which is the latest edition of our test, validation, and virtualization product. Peter asked what will this do for enterprises. John replied that currently enterprises have trouble increasing their pace of change through new application development and implementation. 

LISA is designed to address this need through enabling the faster, higher quality delivery of new applications. LISA also helps with continuous validation to ensure ongoing data integrity. In addition, LISA Virtualize can capture and simulate the behavior of interconnected systems and services, thereby breaking down development constraints by eliminating the barriers caused by physical dependencies.

John also discussed new analytics that will be available in 2009 through the Pathfinder feature. It traces SOA interactions across the enterprise, and exposes dependencies. John explains this in more detail and the benefits. In addition, John said that he will be looking closer at data management to address more challenges in this space.

Guide to Service Virtualization in Enterprise Application Development – Part Two: Hardware Virtualization

This is the second post in our six part series on, Service Virtualization in Enterprise Application Development. The series covers how service virtualization complements hardware virtualization with the ability to reduce cost and increase business agility across the entire software lifecycle. Each post will summarize the key points within a section of the paper. The complete white paper can be downloaded at "Service Virtualization in Enterprise Application Development."

In this post we look at hardware virtualization, how it works, and why it is not a complete strategy. Most current forms of virtualization in IT could be described as hardware virtualization and they provide the three benefits we covered in the last post. Hardware virtualization creates simulators of hardware behavior, but they are actually intelligent proxies to the physical world. These proxies have the ability to negotiate with the virtual environment in which they are deployed, so they do not require exclusive access to the hardware they represent offering more flexibility.

Hardware virtualization has generated a lot of buzz for immediately realized cost savings. In most cases tools image the existing physical asset by cloning the hard disk contents. From this image, the tool constructs a virtual machine that can be put to use.

However, stopping here is not a complete strategy. First, there are many systems that simply cannot be imaged as the hardware virtualization process above defines. Examples include: Systems not on Intel-class servers like mainframes, externally hosted partner services, SaaS, cloud-based systems, and systems that are under a high degree of change. These assets are often the most mission-critical and the most costly to provide access and increased capacity.

In addition, you cannot virtualize beyond the limits of your physical world; this means additional hardware purchases are still a frequent reality. So where hardware virtualization is possible, it clearly reduces the hardware acquisition component of TCO, but that is only a small component of TCO. In the next post, I will cover how the service virtualization concept can greatly expand the benefits of virtualization.

More on SOA Decline with Gartner's Frank Kenney

I recently discussed the Gartner report that claimed SOA was in decline – see Is SOA Really on the Down Swing? Say it ain’t so Joe. I came across this humorous take on the matter from a Gartner analyst we have had the pleasure of talking to many times, Frank Kenney. He writes, Ahh Shucks, SOA Is A Failure. In this post, Frank offers a memo to be sent to senior management by someone leading a SOA failure.

The memo begins with “under my direction... I have failed to associate our SOA initiatives with our business needs, therefore I cannot show any value for the hundreds of services we have created, I have failed to properly create and support an SOA Center of Excellence, Steering Committee or Competency Center, I have failed to enlist the executive staff as true supporters and evangelists for our SOA efforts...” It goes on and lists all the things you should do to make SOA successful that this person did not implement. It concludes, “Thanks for understanding and I’d like to declare in advance that Cloud Computing, Virtualization and SaaS will be failures under my direction as well.”

So who wants to sign off on killing SOA in their company?

SOA does require some new approaches, as well as some sound traditional business practices. It is not plug & play. If this approach is taken it will be more plug and pray. We are seeing SOA adoption holding strong but it needs to follow the success factors of governance: policy, management and validation-related -- that we have discussed at length here -- or stakeholders will be disappointed. Thanks to Frank for bringing some humor and good business sense to the debate.

Guide to Service Virtualization in Enterprise Application Development – Part One of Six

 This post begins a six-part commentary based on our white paper, Service Virtualization in Enterprise Application Development. It covers how service virtualization complements hardware virtualization with the ability to reduce cost and increase business agility across the entire software lifecycle. Each post will informally discuss some key points I'd like to make in conjunction with the paper.

Leading technology and business analysts cite the adoption of Virtualization as one of the most significant technology priorities of this decade. Virtualization at the hardware and data center level generates an almost immediate payback in with many millions saved IT operations costs. However, as we discuss in this paper, solely focusing on hardware Virtualization, we are leaving savings in both time and money on the table. In this post we will define virtualization in a general sense (traits both hardware virtualization and Service Virtualization share) and cover three main benefits.

Virtualization is the practice of simulating the behavior of a physical asset, such as a server or application, in a software emulator, and hosting that emulator in a virtual environment. The virtual environment behaves enough like the physical environment that communication with the emulated asset is just like the real thing. There are a number of value propositions associated with this practice.

• First, virtualization allows us to better manage physical assets. For example, many enterprises have troublesome configuration and change management issues. The additional abstraction of a virtual environment makes best practices around change and configuration management easier.
• Second, we can better leverage the capacity of physical assets with virtualization. Instead of every team acquiring its own hardware platforms for development, QA, and integration testing, the same servers can be leveraged between disciplines and even across teams. The goal here is to stem the tide of server proliferation.
• Third, virtualization helps organizations to be more agile. It is easier to reconfigure people than physical hardware resources. Virtualization increase the flexibility of the physical assets as we can better access the applications and services that we need immediately, and without time delays waiting on IT to switch servers or perform other reconfigurations.

In the next post we will look at how hardware virtualization sets the stage for added benefits from service virtualization. The complete white paper can be down loaded in our Resources section: Service Virtualization in Enterprise Application Development.

Follow ITKO on Twitter

I encourage you to follow our company's Twitter feed, http://twitter.com/itko, for recent updates, whitepaper offers, observations from conferences, ITKO news, upcoming speaking engagements, forum attendance, and other stuff that fits into 140 characters. 

A lot has been written about Twitter recently (e.g., Guy Kawaskai – How to Use Twitter as a Twool, Hutch Carpenter - Why Professionals Should Continue to Blog in the Era of Twitter, and ReadWriteWeb’s - Discovering the Power of Twitter’s Real Time Search. Dell even said it made a $1 million in the last year and half through its Twitter feed. We may not be that ambitious yet, but we find it is a useful way to stay in touch.

We see Twitter as a complement to this blog and certainly not a replacement. Twitter allows us to make a quick comment on anything and everything in Burma-Shave style little text blurbs. The blog is where we will develop ideas and go beyond soundbites.

There is even an excellent blog on Twitter tips, TwiTip, that makes this point with its tag line, Twitter Tips in 140 Characters or More.  So join us on our Twitter feed (see recent messages below) and let us know what you think through Twitter or comments on this blog post.

Is SOA Really on the Down Swing? Say it ain't so Joe.

When I read about the recent Gartner survey that claimed that SOA implementations and enthusiasm were declining, I was skeptical. I also thought that I could count on Joe McKendrick to write something thoughtful that challenged these assumptions, but also acknowledged things that SOA supporters might need to do in these hard economic times.

I was right on the second count as Joe wrote the post, SOA’s ‘decline’ may be overstated, but companies still want results. Looking past the headline at the actual research reported by Gartner, I choose to interpret the results a little differently, just as Joe did. First here is what Gartner reported in their report summary, Gartner Says the Number of Organizations Planning to Adopt SOA for the First Time Is Falling Dramatically.

According to their survey, “53 percent of the respondents were already using SOA in some part of their organizations. Another 25 percent were not using it but had plans to do so in the next 12 months; and 16 percent had no plans to use SOA at all... Since the beginning of 2008, there has been a dramatic fall in the number of organizations that are planning to adopt SOA for the first time. In 2008, this was cut by more than one-half, down to 25 percent from 53 percent in 2007, while the number of organizations with no plans to adopt SOA more than doubled from 6 percent in 2007 to 16 percent in 2008.”

This seems more like market saturation, with 78% of firms either using SOA or planning to. The drop in first time adopters might be, in part, because of the shrinking pool of those who have not adopted it. Joe makes a similar point in his post mentioned above. I will look more closely at his post, but first more from Gartner.

The report summary went on to quote Daniel Sholler, research vice president at Gartner - “Organizations without a clear business case for SOA and without a plan to develop or acquire the necessary skills are justified in taking a cautious approach, and delaying SOA adoption plans for the coming year.” This sounds like a good strategy for any technology initiative. I do not see this as a criticism of SOA but a caution to make sure that SOA implementations are launched with clear business objectives.

The Gartner work does not represent the only polls, Joe counters with some work of his own. He writes, “...based on a survey conducted in September and October (when the financial crisis was hot and heavy), we that found all systems were still ‘go’ for SOA efforts — but with plenty of continuing reservations about ROI. Fifty-two percent had SOA-based projects underway, and another 31% were planning to start SOA projects over the next 12 months.”

Joe then adds that IDC’s Sandy Rogers finds in her polling that SOA adoption has deepened across many enterprises. He quotes her. “The issue is not necessarily deciding if they should go toward SOA. What we’re finding is that for most organizations this is the way that they are going to move, and the question is just navigating how to best do that for the best value and for better success.” This sounds like good caution in down times and not a rejection of SOA.

A snapshot in time can be deceiving, as we have seen recently in other areas. SOA isn't so sexy anymore. There will be lots of pundits calling SOA dead, and maybe it will get a new name, or merge into BPM or WOA as we've discussed. Either way it is still quietly going on and providing value in most leading global firms.

We are actually finding continued interest in SOA. It is a way to cut costs among other things so this should be appealing to many firms in down times. At the same time, we would be the first to agree that there should be a sound business objective and a careful implementation that includes the comprehensive and continuous testing necessary to ensure success.

Podcast: Talking SOA & Virtualization futures with Peter Schooff at Gartner AADI

Last week I had the chance to catch up with eBizQ's Managing Editor Peter Schooff at the Gartner AADI conference in Las Vegas. Amidst the hubbub on the floor he taped this brief interview - take a listen:

http://www.ebizq.net/blogs/2008/12/beyond_testing_to_validation_l.php

The talk ranges from our SOA Test, Validate, Virtualize, to newer expansion of our capabilities into LISA Pathfinder and Data Management features over the coming releases.

Overall observations from the show? I'm glad I attended - the quality of the discussions was stronger than ever. And - even though the economy is tough and attendance at physical tradeshows is down, this particular conference was full of execs and technical leads who have critical business needs - as in, how do I eliminate costs and constraints from IT - that they need to solve NOW. Thanks to all the customers and analysts we had the chance to talk to there and all the best facing next year's challenges.

For SOA Quality - there's just no free beer (Live from Gartner AADI)

Just exited a breakout session from Gartner's Tom Murphy, who is one of the main analysts covering the Testing side of our marketspace, as it edges into Agile development and ALM. His talk, "Application Testing and Quality in the Age of SOA" revisited a theme we haven't touched on in a while here: that in order to motivate and ensure good Reuse, you need Compensation.

Look at it this way: If I am a producer of a service - unless I'm a ramen-eating college student who just likes producing services for the glory of making the next cool widget, I am going to need some motivation to make that service as readily consumable and usable by my end customers as possible. So it falls to the Producer of a service to build quality into their service from the beginning.

Tom mentioned that SOA "offers a platform with a shifting foundation" so a Center of Excellence around SOA testing and quality is needed. The reward for good quality (and useful design as well) is Reuse, and that is compensated with real or "company store" budgetary dollars.

In SOA, quality is not as granular as checking the code for structural bugs or clicking on a UI to test at the end. It requires discipline and specialized tools that directly invoke and verify the services so they meet defined policies - structural, behavioral, performance, and that this process is carried out continuously throughout development and into runtime. That's a lot of responsibility if you have a well-used or critical service.

The part we often forget is the responsibility of the Consumer in this equation - If I am consuming a service, and its underlying architecture, there is no "free beer" here. I should be expected to reward the Producer that makes a service that has the most utility to my business. And in addition, I need to declare exactly how I am intending to use the service so I am not going to impact the promised service levels of other Consumers.

Check out this post from a couple years ago - "Consumption is not Free" is still one of our favorite themes and it's good to hear it again here at Gartner AADI.

Gartner AADI Summit 2008

We're here at the Gartner Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit (AADI) will in Las Vegas on December 8 – 10. The subtitle is: SOA & Modernization: Beyond Business & IT Alignment.

The event site says, “Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a reality no organization can afford to ignore. It fundamentally reshapes how you think, build and deliver applications. But SOA is not pursued in a vacuum, it needs to be part of a continuous IT modernization strategy that seeks to optimize your resources, and dynamically align with the rest of your business.”

We're looking forward to some of the discussions we'll have on SOA as it relates to bringing applications into the modern world, and will post some of our thoughts from the show here. iTKO will have a booth. iTKO's Chief Architect/founder John Michelsen will also be here, so come visit us at Booth M and schedule a talk if you are attending.

There are five new tracks focused on the 3 SOA maturity levels, Modernization, and Next Generation AD, and we are certain to hear more about Cloud Computing as well - we certainly wouldn't mind someone putting a stake in the ground on that definition.

There will be a special keynote by author and trendspotter Malcolm Gladwell, and a complimentary copy of his book Outliers will be provided to all keynote attendees.

But first, where's the coffee...

Agile SOA Across the Lifecycle - Part Six: Conclusion and Index of Links

This is the last of a six part series of posts on the Agile SOA life cycle. Here we will provide our conclusions. As the development lifecycle has changed from traditional waterfall development and testing, to agile, spiral and scrum models supported by ALM, the need for continuous testing throughout the lifecycle has become self-evident. In order to evolve these processes, and achieve the business responsiveness and cost benefits of SOA, there is a need for vastly improved processes in how we build, implement, and test systems.

This series only covers some broad brushes of how Lifecycle Quality can be embedded into your testing, ALM and Governance processes. We see customers using these same capabilities in new ways every day – for instance, using LISA Virtualize to create virtual service environments, Virtualization of the behavior of services, mainframes and data enables teams to get up to speed in managing and testing against a realistic environment that would be too costly to reproduce otherwise. This increases agility by moving teams into more parallel development cycles, through eliminating the constraints of services and components that are not available for testing.

Real cost savings are available here and this should resonate well with companies in today’s tight economy as we have discussed in recent posts, We also agree with Jeff Schneider’s post, Talking to the Business about SOA, that it is okay to talk to the business about these benefits. Most of those who commented on his post agreed, as well.  We are seeing strong business interest continue in these tough times.

Companies have invested significant cost and effort in establishing solid processes with market leading tools – and we need to bake quality and enforcement capabilities into these tools, without dictating the process. iTKO LISA’s automated testing, validation and service virtualization works alongside test management, ALM, IT Operations and SOA governance platforms to provide an exponential gain in application quality, development agility, and most importantly, trust across producers and consumers of today’s heterogeneous, interconnected applications.

This concludes our six part series on Agile SOA Across the Lifecycle with LISA. You can download this complete series at our ITKO LISA resources page. Below are links to the individual posts as they appeared on this blog. 

Agile SOA Across the Lifecycle with LISA - Part One: Introduction

Agile SOA Across the Lifecycle with LISA - Part Two: Test & Quality Management

Agile SOA Across the Lifecycle with LISA - Part Three: Application Lifecycle Management

Agile SOA Across the Lifecycle - Part Four: IT Operations, Monitoring & Performance

Agile SOA Across the Lifecycle - Part Five: IT and SOA Governance