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It's time to add another IT category to the official IT lexicon: software development and deployment as a service, or SDDS. This one's a keeper. That's my conclusion after seeing a demonstration of Bungee Labs' new Bungee Connect offering, which combines the virtues of online Web application develop...

There seem to be as many variations on the SOA consolidation theme nowadays as there are vendors lining up to provide some kind of SOA value. Part of the consolidation attraction comes from newer SOA players hooking up with older enterprise software players, with their still-rich veins of revenue to...

The role and importance of governance is growing. As enterprises embrace governance, risk and compliance platforms, as well SOA governance approaches, are these capabilities headed for a mashup, if not technically than at least operationally? Do they lead to an uber-governance that eventually includ...

Follow service-oriented architecture to its logical conclusions and you recognize that modern corporations will soon be operated on the equivalent of aviation's "fly by wire." The traditional governance and management means of running a business -- the levers, pulleys, cables and brute muscle -- wil...

Sun's inability to allow for sufficiently open and inclusive governance over Java caused the eclipse of the Java tools and IDE action, which is now leading to an even larger purview for Eclipse at the ultimate expense of Java's future role. Buying NetBeans did not counter or blunt the Eclipse IDE fr...

The navel gazing and gnashing of teeth over the Web 2.0 category reminds me of a chat I had with Joe Firmage back in 1996. He was on the road in Silicon Valley chatting up all the media types and analysts on the extraordinary potential for USWeb, the Web site building and intranet services company h...

I'm not sure I get the follow-through of Sun wooing mashup artist start-ups. If anything, by Sun trying to appeal to these types of low-capital spending firms shows Sun's latest quandary -- it waited too long to compete with its customers. Microsoft has rarely passed up the opportunity to compete w...

Search-driven online marketing is increasingly leveling the playing field for smaller companies to compete against the big boys when it comes to reaching new customers and markets online. B2B search provides a way for small, local advertisers to find the customers and other businesses that are actua...

How mature is service-oriented architecture? In asking that question, it's important to make the distinction between the best-of-breed approach, where one picks and chooses various components within one's own SOA arsenal, or a more complete suite, a holistic full-feature set with the benefits, trade...

Information technology service management -- how IT is delivered inside an enterprise as a service -- and a related area, the quickly evolving Information Technology Infrastructure Library, form complementary trends that are helping to mature IT as a customer-focused, quality-of-service activity. IT...

Musical tastes are not easy to classify with just a few tags. What gets one person's foot tapping and their heart thumping is not going to win over their cousin necessarily. Moods also swing or swoon to a fickle beat, and the music you may want to match or detach your mood can't be easily conjured f...

SOA is like an orchestra, a root system, a 30-mile wide fungus, an amoeba, a 1930s Hollywood movie studio and perhaps an independent film built from a loosely coupled team. It's an intellectually wild, yet illuminating, ride. Recently, I sat down with a panel of analysts -- independent industry anal...

Now that media companies are exploring Web distribution models and using new technologies, a great deal is being discussed about who controls what when it comes to content. Digital rights management has its advocates and detractors, but some type of gateway for the management and monetization of con...

We are at a very important juncture in the evolution of service-oriented architecture. An incredibly important issue right now is whether we are going to win broad acceptance and deep penetration, or whether SOA remains somewhat marginal. There are a number of things going on in the market that dese...

Remember when AOL thought it was doing the world's researchers a big favor and made a boatload of online user behavior data openly available? Remember the unintended consequences? It became fairly easy to link up user preference data with some actual identifiable users. Users were upset, AOL looked ...

It took about an hour before I finally switched from thinking that my initial experiences with Second Life were a waste of time, to actually finding them being productive in new ways. I was one of a 3D flurry of invited "VIPs" to enter an IBM pavilion inside Second Life. With my unique personage ava...

Have you heard what a certain software company has been saying about next-generation IT development and deployment strategies? There's this gem about service-oriented architecture: SOA "is not about a product or skill, but rather it's about style of how one comes up with a system." Or: SOA should al...

The demands on the Internet have never been higher, with massive files of high-definition video, enterprise applications, online distribution of most software products, and the increasing uploading of "user-generated content" filling up the pipes. Yet the challenge to Internet delivery is not just i...

Open source and service-oriented architecture are increasingly joined at the hip. These twins are developing in tandem, not sequentially, which is giving CIOs and architects a variety of choices for picking and choosing the projects and products that make up their SOAs. Iona Technologies on Monday i...

Perhaps a savvy political operative tasked with designing the best go-to-market campaign for service-oriented architecture would proclaim: "It's the applications, stupid!" Focusing on the applications -- and not the means to achieving them -- has served computing well over the decades. I recall tryi...