Service Orient

It's really a book that helps businesspeople understand the importance of SOAs. Thankfully--and intentionally, according to the preface--it's the kind of book CIOs can safely hand over to business counterparts to help them understand why SOAs are important. In fact, surprisingly for a couple of self-described nerds, the authors speak more about how emotions and human nature trip companies up than technology does but argue for the merging of IT and business and using SOAs as the territory in which to plant the flag of neutrality first. Certainly this book goes a long way toward being the manual that business and IT can use. Granted, there may be times when Bloomberg and Schmelzer step too far back into recent history to explain whatever happened to enterprise application integration (EAI) tools and submit too frequently to wordiness in their attempts to be congenial. But the overall end result is a highly accessible book that even explains the difference--clearly, mind you--between SOAs and Web services, along with clear definitions of loose coupling, metadata, and services, but always with a slant toward how they relate to business, not technology. We need more books like this one, volumes that can help bridge the gap of communication--so much so that your business counterparts may even say these magic words: "Now I understand what you're talking about."

This is amazing book. It's a practical approach to both understanding the strategic nature of SOA, but how things actually get done. The authors both have a good grasp on the issues here, including technology, and people. If you're interested in implementing SOA in your enterprise, this book is a must read!

First the disclaimer. I know Ron and Jason professionally and have been reading and admiring their visionary research for a long time. While I might disagree with them on rare occasion (see my upcoming blog on webservices.org), I only bring this up now so that hopefully the wise reader can take me at my word when I say that that this book is simply a necessity for any person who wants to understand, prepare, and successfully leverage SOA, which will initiate profound challenges and changes that will affect both the IT organization and the business itself. Senior IT and LOB management will especially benefit from the practical suggestions and really easy-to-understand business-centric perspective that Ron and Jason apply to even the most difficult issues. This book goes beyond the mere mechanics of construction and examines the more difficult and subtle issues of how to make a SOA initiative successful in the enterprise. There really is not another source for this vital information or perspective that even comes close. These guys have a tremendous amount of real-world wisdom and experience to share. Ignore at your own peril.

Well, I waited anxiously for this book to come out, since I'm a frequent, fervent, and favorite reader of ZapThink's ZapFlash newsletter, their biweekly free email guide on all things SOA and Web Services. Well, when I heard they had a book coming out, I'm sure that I was the first one to order! Well, the book is now hot off the press and in my hands, and let me tell you, I devoured it in about 3 days. First, let me say that it is a remarkably easy read. The topics are presented in a logical order with the assumption that the audience knows little about SOA. But let me say that even if you consider yourself to be an SOA guru, as I do, you will find this book to be an absolute necessity. Why? For a few reasons. First, this book positions Service Orientation as a BUSINESS movement that focuses on shifting IT investment from what is today's patchwork of middleware-infested, tightly-coupled, brittle systems to the approach of flexible, loosely-coupled, composable Services. This topic is addressed not from a purely techno-babble perspective, but rather from the perspective of a business person who has to deal with the IT mess they have. My favorite sections are the discussion of the IT Rats' nest, the explanation of the economics of integration, a detailed insight into all the fundamentals of Service-Orientation, including loose coupling, composition, service contracts and abstraction, policy and process-driven Services, and other details on making SOA work. But even more relevant are the discussions on how the ORGANIZATION must change in order to properly adopt SOA. While this book won't replace the technical manuals on how to build SOA, this book is an absolute necessity to anyone who wants to actually IMPLEMENT SOA in a way that will actually stick. Use this book as a guide to help make sure your SOA implementation will be a success, or just throw it at your boss to show him that what you're doing is indeed important. Either way, it's worth a read, and one of the best $30 investments I've made this year!