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Downturn SOA

One of the repeated topics of the Innovation World conference was the world economic downturn. As a vendor, Software AG is looking at customers and prospects across the conference table that have scaled back IT projects, cut IT staff, and are hunkering down in survival mode. During the conference, Software AG worked hard at building a marketing case that SOA is the way to go during an IT downturn... BPM lets IT and the business whip up new business functionality with a few clicks. BAM (Business Activity Monitoring) lets IT create a window for the business to see key operating metrics in a dashboard like setting (with the potential for detailed drill down). Sounds good in theory, though they struggled a bit as they haven't yet clearly formulated their message. What's the reality? BPM relies on a platform of services and functions which can be readily tapped to drive the process. Further, and this is the failing in many a BPM installation, it relies on the processes being w...

Innovation World 2008 Israel

I attended Software AG's Innovation World 2008 held in Israel this week. I haven't had a chance to take a look at Software AG's strategy since about 2 years ago, when I was working intensely with Webmethods which Software AG purchased. Attendee's are pretty firmly divided between Software AG's mainframe product lineup, namely Adabase and Natural, and Webmethods customers (or those looking forward towards SOA technologies). While Software AG has been extending their legacy product line to offer mainframe transactions as web services, they're clearing focused on Webmethods as an ESB and BPM provider as their future. While the conference lineup had a number of senior Software AG people, including some technical Ph.d's, the tone of the conference was decidedly marketing. Customer success "movies" were presented throughout. Presentatons were very high level overviews with much marketing fluff. The only presentation with any technical information was...