Open Source and SOA information systems planning of the impact? By and large, there are three aspects:
First, the structure induced from the technical mechanisms, efficiency, expansion, change, upgrade, interface, compatibility and so on;
Second, from the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) aspects;
Third, the application mode.
IT planning methodology has long been the world's largest IT consulting firm final nail, no doubt of its truth and practicality. However, IT and application environment variables emerged after the two new: Open Source (open source, hereinafter referred to as open source) and SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture, service oriented architecture), past experience had revealed with the law hint of dawn was subversive, that business and government cio and the CEO who must advance with the times, uncertain in their programs and plans to join the revolutionary elements, in order to change the equation of information input and output values.
In theory yet to be perfected, the practice is always one step ahead.
Many companies and organizations are still bleary-eyed the occasion, the industry leader and the adventure had already opened his passion to embrace the opportunities of the arm. Temptation is leading to business opportunities. IT industry analyst firm Gartner that the SOA will be the creation and delivery of software, the leading framework and forecasts to 2010, the application software revenue growth of 80% will come from SOA-based programs, and the other according to the U.S. to focus on software applications consulting firm Zapthink report, the global SOA market size will be 4.4 billion in 2005 soared to 43 billion U.S. dollars in 2010, five years time there will be nearly 10 times growth.
On the other hand, more and more active open source community, IBM, Oracle, AMD, BEA and so on to support and implement open source projects. Obviously, open source not only for business, SOA is not just for system integration, IT is brewing two factors both a technology and business model change mechanism. This will also constitute a new industry "Shuffle" cause.
Open Source and SOA information systems planning of the impact? By and large, there are three aspects: First, the structure induced from the technical mechanisms, efficiency, expansion, change, upgrade, interface, compatibility and so on; second is to Since the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) area; third application mode.
1, mixing open source and commercial applications and SOA become mainstream
At present, the enterprises to purchase and deploy software systems will encounter this problem: the market of similar products are open source and commercial distinction, because these two types of products in the deployment and operation and maintenance aspects are important differences between the enterprise business continuity and regularity of information required to develop IT plans must have a holistic approach. Similar technology or project that many, which is the most suitable? Different for open source software with Shi Yong, how best to Ji Cheng? Right in terms of individual projects, Gongneng Du very powerful, but the two Jie He does not Yidingxianshi the joint power. These software providers, the problems faced by developers, in today's enterprise application development is already commonplace.
Moreover, in the enterprise application development, it is also often face a hard choice: open source software or commercial software? In reality, companies need both open-source software also requires commercial software, this is called "mixed" ( Blended) applications, the situation will become increasingly common.
Information technology planning, whether from scratch or a conversion extension link between the past, should seriously consider the deployment of hybrid applications. As these two systems have their own advantages, enterprises need to select the right by a mixed mode, and plan implementation, in order to achieve a longer cycle of companies to achieve seamless integration and security, seamlessly upgraded, Zhi Xing Enterprise sustainable development strategy for high-ROI technology.
The SOA in another direction for enterprise IT planning add a new variable. Although SOA produced in the technical aspects, related to the problem on more than just technology, service architecture in the "elements" state of Shiti or services, both business users and developers are faced with service personnel when Ji Tong is Touming to be able to mix , and on demand, business customers and market development or changes in the performance of the new combination. The market is not demagogic language, but the common business practice and IT vendors.
Second, information systems, planning must take into account also open source and commercial technologies play two advantages
"Open source" does not mean free, business does not mean "wire source is not open." This is game two, business users in this long-running competition more and more benefits. On the IT users, the current, and can not take a single direction values, to lose their focus backward "open source" or commercial side. Because there are still between the two complementary components. Therefore, the Government, enterprises and institutions CIO, CEO who should be from a strategic deal with these problems, we must find out the same time, both the advantages of playing a "compromise."
For those companies using open source, they may be the best solution, however, can not be guaranteed if the services (these services using the commercial software can be), these companies can not protect its building in open source based on IT investment.
IT companies from the point of view, the first face or support this "hybrid" model of the BEA companies actively promote the hybrid model, which reflects the IT planning to means for developers to mix and match the best of open source and business solutions, maintaining a seamless platform to help teams to develop, deploy and manage Java applications and services.
Today, most enterprise applications are based on Java, but to effectively manage these Java-based enterprise applications is very difficult and complex because there are too many standards, programming model and deployed. In other words, Java development for enterprise application development provides a standard, rich base platform, but its complexity and development to bring inefficiency, which in turn is a hybrid open source software and commercial software development as one of the reasons the mainstream trend .
Open source community has developed a variety of solutions to reduce this complexity, but the solution itself is also facing challenges: a new release must be effective management, integrated open source components to a variety of rigorous testing, a variety of increased complexity of the deployment platform, technical support may not meet the standards set by development tools may not support new technologies and lack of development and management. In addition, the open-source software development is related to specific issues and did not consider the integration of enterprise application problems inevitable, so a single open source solutions often lack the connections between the parts of products, unable to provide project extend the necessary integration and migration path.
In fact, commercial software is continually learn from the camp the results of the open source community. According to BEA vice president of global customer relationship introduced Franz Aman, BEA and the close cooperation of the open source community, open source is lightweight, so BEA things brought from the open source community will be further developed. Open Source in a lot of great technologies, such as Spring, its reliability is especially strong, and many customers will be their application in the WebLogic servers and platforms, the.
Enterprise Information System as a platform to support the business, from the outset, it should consider the long-term performance. Hybrid model can significantly speed up the application development efficiency, because in this model, organizations can use the latest open source community innovations, and they can sit back and relax - because their own innovative applications and services can be the basis of the best in the industry architecture software platform to deploy and manage.
Third, information systems planning must take into account changes in technology brought about by the mechanism of strategic change
Current information technology system which occurred in the field of change out? Is open source and SOA.
Revenue impact on the market are not limited to software licensing and fees, but also in systems planning and development of deployment. According to the CEO Technology Co., Ltd. Huangshan fun introduction, SOA and open source, two factors broad enterprise information system planning and product selection of great influence. Their portal system, front-to-server, open source overall is the product of the company alone would save at least 25 million expenditure, while the components built using open-source SOA applications become more than commercial software easier.
He said the company's CIO should also open source and SOA into the IT planning within the context of consideration, according to industry and size of enterprise attributes and sub-system to choose their coping strategies, will enable enterprises in the medium to long term benefit. For small and medium enterprises, through open-source strategy to deploy SOA will be better, more flexible, cost-effective, such as enterprise Web2.0 based site building, search engine, business process engine are all suitable for open-source approach .
Huangshan concluded: In general enterprise applications, open source software does not face technical challenges, on the contrary, in building a SOA, its open-source components of the particle size and viscosity precisely, in particular the development of application services , the open source approach than the commercial advantages, features: low-cost open source camps obviousness of human complement, in the open source community is very easy to find people who are familiar with J2EE, but outside the company in the IBM DB2 and Websphere to find people who are familiar with would be difficult. Speaking of the advantages of open source strategy, Huang, be classified into three points:
1. Open source to enterprise systems with the independence of the company's IT system will not be bound to a particular one of the business environment in order to facilitate the technological development of enterprises to separate routes;
2. Initial investment is small, although the source does not mean completely free, but open source is less than the total cost of the business;
3. Open-source threshold is low, human resources and easy access to, the performance of the operation and maintenance, research and development time and lower overhead.
Another aspect of SOA from the impact of enterprise information planning. In terms of system development, or from the deployment of the implementation, integration integration perspective, SOA is seen as a revolutionary factor. Because SOA makes software systems was an unprecedented change in mechanism, so that the system joined the SOA once planning factors, CEO and CIO on IT planning necessary to reconsider the technical approach.
The first case, enterprise IT applications from scratch, CIO may be considered not from business needs to ERP system selection, and the first is the enterprise should be considered if their business is defined as the conversion or Service (Service) and split services for different components, the easy-to-change processes and links with more loosely coupled integration of up to prepare for the future transformation into a "demand" of the structure to SOA-specific business process languages set up between the CIO and the business sector adequate channels of communication so that the definition of services to better meet the needs of business, because SOA mechanism for the head of corporate business executives and IT closer together, they work more actively into the management business up, CIO will own The attention to the business and long-term strategic development and change, to create their own service-based software system breakdown, analysis, evaluation, optimization of business processes and enhance the IT department to develop independent research and development or capacity will be necessary level CIO skills, rather than servers and systems for the cold side, just a simple system initialization and operation and maintenance aspects of the work.
The second case, enterprise systems need to rebuild, expand, upgrade and interconnect, past CIO of concern is how to build information interchange and development of interfaces to enable new and old or different subsystems interconnection, the process, they should be carried out before The work re-done again, such as business matching, product system, inheritance relations, product selection, interface evaluation and technology development support.
Under the idea of SOA, CIO's work in the integration may not be "roads and bridges", but rather isolated existence in the old system of "service elements", so that these services and new services are re-combination of elements up, as their communication approach has now been completely independent of, and no longer dependent on the product vendor technical Biaozhun, Ershitongyong of, opening of, and to require to You a variety of Xuanze approaches, such as Web Services, SOAP, WSDL, ESB, etc. so, enterprises can have their own ways to support realization of SOA to meet the long-term business development.
SOA system integration lead to changes in the way the structure will not only impact the software programming, but also to change the CIO's working methods. In the CIO's eyes, enterprise information architecture is no longer a kind of past experience, "welding" together with the curing functional body, in case of changes to the system after the change to the code back to SDK, the new SOA architecture for CIO who Province to the secondary development of the trouble, they should be familiar with the process description language, understanding the business and the decomposition of the service, through a simple process design, basic configuration and parameter adjustment to achieve the objective.
Way to build SOA systems, especially adapted to the external business alliance system planning. COSCO Container Lines Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as COSCON) of the SOA implementation planning on the industry's great inspiration, COSCO China Ocean Shipping Group (COSCO), specializing in their core maritime container transport business. COSCON operates 60 international routes and dozens of domestic routes. Ship in the world more than 30 countries and regions, more than 100 ports. All vessels currently has more than 120 container ships with a total box bit more than 30 million TEUs.
As the industry characteristics and company IT investments accumulated in different periods, before the implementation of SOA projects, COSCON has a total import and export according to different countries and different business requirements division of the 21 categories EDI EDI applications. These have different versions of EDI applications, running on different operating systems and hardware platform, formed as isolated, fragmented group of small systems, making COSCON EDI system, the daily operation and maintenance costs are high, development of low efficiency and slow response speed. Especially the "911" and China's accession to the WTO, the new customs laws and regulations continue to put the environment, COSCON EDI system is facing greater challenges.
According to reports, the platform project in two phases, has already successfully completed the first phase of project implementation, including COSCON comb core business, EDI business requirements research and analysis, the overall SOA architecture design and detailed design of the domestic business, project, development and implementation. The second phase of the project, namely the detailed design of projects of international business, development and implementation has to start soon.
The successful implementation of a project, COSCON successfully completed nine ports in China nearly 60 EDI message function, COSON not only achieve the integration of its IT infrastructure, but also achieve the same suppliers, large customers, and between Customs key business processes in the country integrate. Today, COSCON requires only one system, three servers to meet the needs of the domestic business EDI. Developers need only a simple configuration and can be modified to adapt to changing business needs, to meet customer requirements.
From development to maintenance of late saves manpower, material resources and cost, improve efficiency and responsiveness. At the same time, the entire system with the establishment of open standards-based platform, system upgrades and scalability advantages more prominent. Enterprise information systems from the macro-surface view, SOA itself is a strategic, international IT companies such as Unisys SOA is more inclined to planning point of view.
The author of the communication with the CIO cto and strongly felt: SOA on the impact of commercial software packages can not be ignored. In the past IT planning, and planning needs to describe what business the next major function modules and to select vendors and products in this series, so, some large and comprehensive, and powerful, but as solid as steel system Beishou The pursuit of large enterprises, now, CIO began to abandon this kind of "maintaining the status quo" approach and the concept of replacing the "transformation strain, on-demand" concept and methodology to guide the work.
In their view, if the CEO is not so short-sighted, to the CIO for more than three years, CIO is willing to construct a variable passed, flexible service-based architecture to address the developmental needs of enterprise IT support issues, rather than the stick in the end is to select SAP, ORACLE, IFS or UF or Kingdee system. Because of this, it raises awareness and panic software developers, have announced their own product itself meet the requirements of SOA, more rapid response of manufacturers introduced their own SOA suite.
Fourth, information systems planning must take into account the cost of the new business model
The ROI in the global IT concern today, CEO, CIO can not but consider the cost of investment in IT planning. However, different techniques, different services, different operators have different costs way the law to understand and meet these costs, so long in the planning of rational allocation of resources and conservation management of investment is of great significance.
After comparing the TCO can be seen, the average size of enterprises, except such as telecommunications, finance and large-scale e-commerce sites such as concurrency great applications, the open-source software should be preferred when the business started. On the other hand, if the company's external alliances, such as supply chain changes in the structure of the system needs more frequent situation, whether it is new also integrated enterprise, SOA should not care about the initial investment, the initial investment of adequate human and financial resources to solve all based on good preparation for SOA. From the author's point of view, SMEs should be open-source start planning information, SOA planning, enterprise development in different periods of work and the major IT investments detail reflected in the company's "five-year plan" in the.