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, 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? General view, there are three aspects: First, the structure induced from the technical mechanisms, efficiency, expansion, change, upgrade, interface, compatibility and other aspects; 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, enterprises buy and deploy software systems will encounter this problem: You type on the market open source and commercial distinction, since these two categories Chanpin in the deployment and Yun Wei has undergone great Qubie, corporate business continuity and regularity of information required to develop IT plans must have a holistic approach. Similar to many of the technical or project, which is the most suitable? Together different open source software use, how to better integrate? Of individual projects, the features are very powerful, but the combination does not necessarily Xianshi 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, companies can select the appropriate as needed for mixed-mode, and You Ji Hua to implement, in order to achieve in the longer Zhou Qi Qi Ye integrated seamlessly He Nei safe, smooth to Shengji, Zhi Xing Enterprise sustainable development strategy for high-ROI technology.
The SOA from another direction for the enterprise IT plan added a new variable. Although SOA produced in the technical aspects, involved more than just technical issues, and service architecture of the "molecular" state of the entity or service, whether business users or developers of service to the system is transparent, is can be combined, and on demand, business customers and market developments 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 consider the same play both open source and commercial technology advantage
"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 reflected in IT planning, Lai, means for developers to mix and match the best Kai Fang source code 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's developed to enterprise Ying Yong development 提供 a standard, rich base platform that Dan it brings the 复杂 low and cost-effectively, which in turn is mixed Kaiyuan software and commercial software development mainstream Qushi of a Yuan Yin Cheng Wei .
Le open source community has developed many solutions to programs to reduce this complexity, Dan The program itself has faced 挑战 address: Xin's release must Dedaoyouxiao of management, Ji Cheng Kai Yuan components must be tightly variety of Ce Shi, 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 be considered long-term performance. Hybrid model can significantly speed up application development with efficiency, because in this mode Xia, organizations using open source community's latest innovations can sit back and relax while they Huan - because of the innovative applications and services themselves can be the best in the industry Jichujiagou deployment and management software platform.
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. Small and medium size enterprises, through open-source strategy to deploy SOA will be better, and more flexible, more cost-effective, Ru-based Web2.0 company Gou Jian of Wang Zhan, search engine, business process Yinqing and so Shige with Kaiyuanfangshi .
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. Talking about 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 CIO and business unit adequate channels of communication between, the definition of the service to better meet the needs of business, because SOA mechanism for the head of corporate business executives and IT closer together, their work more actively to the enterprise management Tongyi up, CIO Council to their 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 improve IT sector or to develop independent research and development capability will be essential CIO occupational 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 Thinking in SOA's, CIO's work in the integration may not be "roads and bridges," the, but separated from the old system exists in the "service elements" to make these services and new service elements They combined again, as their way of communication has been completely independent of, and no longer dependent on the product manufacturer's technical standards, but common, open and to order a wide selection of methods, such as Web Services, SOAP, WSDL, ESB, etc., companies 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 have trouble eliminating the need for secondary development, they are 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 affiliated. 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 according to different countries and different EDI requirements import and export business division of the 21 categories 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 系统 the daily operational costs and high development and 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.
A successful project implementation, COSCON successfully completed nine ports in China Jin 60 kinds of EDI message function, COSON not only to achieve a 自身 基础 facilities, IT integration, realizing the same supplier with a customer between Hu Hai Guan 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 and the CTO and CIO's exchange feel strongly that: SOA on the impact of commercial software packages can not be ignored. In the past 的 IT planning, the need to describe and plan all about enterprise future major systems of functional modules and thereby to Xuanze vendors and products Jilie, so Yi Xie large and comprehensive and powerful of Dan as the solid plate system Bei Shou Yi Yang 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 methods have different operating costs of the law, early recognition and meet these costs, so long in the planning of rational allocation of resources and conservation investment has significant managerial implications.
After comparing 了 TCO can Kandao, the average size of enterprises, except for some telecommunications, financial and e-commerce websites, Da Xing Bing Fa Liang Juda's application beyond, Kaiyuanruanjian technologies should start O'clock in the Shouxuan business. 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.