“A Key Phase in SOA Programs Business Service Realization - Soa Wolrd” plus 4 more

A Key Phase in SOA Programs Business Service Realization - Soa Wolrd
Gulf Craft business model heralded as example to top business students - TMCnet
More Business - San Francisco Chronicle
Renault F1 Team Leverages Symantec Business Critical Services to ... - TMCnet
Business Browser - Free Lance-Star

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A Key Phase in SOA Programs Business Service Realization - Soa Wolrd

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 07:11 AM PST

SOA in the Cloud

Cloud Computing Expo - Today, every IT enablement and business transformation task has an element of SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) embedded in it.

However, even with matured SDLC (Software Development Lifecycle) processes for IT execution, the gap in identifying business services for an SOA implementation still remain. Architects and business stakeholders are generally found struggling with questions such as "When should we identify a service?"; "Who should be identifying them?"; "What should be a service and why?"

Service identification in enterprise architecture involves realizing the enterprise's business vision. However, the business vision statement often gets lost as stakeholders confront and struggle with day-to-day activities. Therefore, it is essential for IT to be clear about business objectives when answering service identification questions.

This article provides an approach that can be used in all SOA execution programs where service identification poses a challenge. It analyzes the transformation program of an organization laying down next-generation multi-channel eCommerce business with capability to extend and onboard new business models and channels involving business service delivery for B2B (Business to Business) trading partners and affiliates.

When to Begin?
For any business transformation and its supporting IT enablement, the journey of service identification implicitly starts with defining the vision statement. It must be understood that the business vision is the only reason for initiating and driving the complete SOA engagement. The business vision(s) must be objectively broken down into business drivers primarily in the following areas shown in Figure 1.

These business drivers set down many architectural principles for further phases of work. Figure 2 provides the key aspects for service identification.

Business Service Realizations
Business Service Realization is one of the key activities in a transformation program. It helps organizations build an IT system according to business objectives and enables them to evolve continuously with the changing market conditions. In the current scenario, it is important that IT systems support the dynamism in the business and market conditions. The trick is to build an IT system over a set of business services. However, it is imperative to understand the driving forces and influencers before constructing business services, since missing any detail can lead to a brittle IT system. This section provides an analysis of the various driving forces and influencers that must be considered to realize business services. Business Services, by definition, need to encapsulate the business functions being offered.

There can be multiple perspectives when we talk about a business service, such as a business service offered by:

An organization to its customers
An organization to its suppliers and partners
Partners and suppliers to the organization
The internal organization to fulfill certain business functions, etc.

Figure 3 provides key considerations for Business Service Realization within a transformation program.

All the perspectives mentioned earlier will have different sets of driving forces and influencers that need to be considered before completing the realization of a service.

Driving Forces for Business Service Realization
Any business service realization task needs to consider the following aspects at a high-level before moving forward:

What: What are the key business entities that one should consider to meet the stated objectives?
How: How can these key business entities be aligned to meet the end objectives?
Where: In which geographies will these entities be located as per the stated objectives?
Who: Who in the organization needs to be involved to meet the end objectives in the best possible way?
When: When do all these aspects need to come together to meet the end objectives?

What - Key Business Entities
It is important to identify the key business entities that will be involved as per the stated objectives and their inter-dependencies.

For example, any eCommerce website rollout strategy involves the organization itself; the product to be offered; and the customers, suppliers, shippers, and warehouses to meet the end objective of doing business on the Internet. In addition, it is important to understand the interlinking of these entities. This provides:

The correct representation of these entities within a business service
Entity linkage rules to be encapsulated within business services

How - Business Process Models
Business Process Models or business processes are the biggest chunk of work within any business service realization task. These processes establish how an organization does business with the various entities identified.

For example, the eCommerce rollout strategy deals with customer experience as one of the business processes. It includes customer experiences with regard to viewing the catalog, comparing various offerings, selecting and checking out products, ordering and order modification, and after-sales customer service. This analysis provides:

Process hierarchy for service encapsulation
Process and entity dependency
Business process model in conjunction with the where, who and when aspects. It enables bringing out the following aspects of the process models:
- Variation of process based on geography (where)
- Regulatory compliance with respect to geography (where)
- Organization structure (who) and process ownership for rolling out the process model
- Key events and cycle time (when) for the process models

Where - Business Logistics
Business Logistics bring in the variation of process models and entity relationships in the business offering. This aspect lays down the process variation required based on the geography and regulatory compliance specific to that geography. It thus provides the required inputs to make business services flexible enough to handle various situations. For example, order fulfillment which includes the item "television" within the UK would require that a government agency be notified of the sale, whereas it is not required in other geographies.

Who - Business Organization Structure
Business Organization Structure is an important factor to consider while defining process models since it is critical to have the right people architecture (Roles and Responsibilities) to support the process models. The interplay between process models and the people (actors) results in a clear demarcation of boundaries within and without the enterprise for the ownership of process areas. This helps identify the business service hierarchy to support changes with minimal impact.

An example is an eCommerce site that starts with multi-channel initiative needs to support the standard way of product purchase, order visibility, claims, returns/refunds and, across channels, this results in the business organization structure aligning with the commerce, order management and operations where each results in a standard service to deliver consistent behavior across the customers and internal users.

When - Business Events and Time Cycle
Business goals need to be measured and appropriate action planned to meet the program's overall objectives. This aspect needs to be considered while identifying critical events and cycle times to bring in the desired changes. There are different connotations to this aspect for the planning and execution stages.

While planning, it is important to lay down the time cycle to achieve the end objectives and how the business service needs to be rolled out to address different events identified during planning. For example, if the rollout of a marketplace offering follows a B2C offering, the services to be rolled out should consider the appropriate variation in timescale in rolling out the services. It enables planning of the key events to be monitored during execution to ensure that the rollout plan is successful.

One should not lose sight of any existing IT assets such as legacy modules or traditional enterprises with which the business needs to interact to fulfill its vision. In order to ensure incremental investment in infrastructure, the business solutions should be implemented in such a way that they are scalable without having to make any changes to existing implementations. The following are the key influencers in business services realization:

Key Influencers
COTS Strategy
Most enterprises end up buying a number Commercial, Off-The-Shelf (COTS) applications to ensure lower total cost of ownership and rapid IT enablement. It is important to closely review the process models and entities to identify encapsulation of these processes embedded inside these ready applications. When these applications need to communicate with each other to fulfill any business process, it becomes necessary to expose the appropriate business capabilities as a service.

Legacy Interactions
The business scalabilities of existing IT assets can be deeply entrenched within legacy applications. To avoid the re-development of such business capabilities and to ensure that the modernization of applications is done incrementally/iteratively, the business capabilities within legacy interactions need to be identified and provisioned as services.

Architecture Layering
The classification of application layers while defining the architecture enforces certain rules in which the architecture layers communicate with each other. The presentation layer in a distributed architecture must be decoupled from the business capabilities in the business logic layer. This must be done in such a way that the business logic layer can communicate not just with one form of User Interface (UI) but also with devices like the mobile and channels like the IVR or SMS. In this case, such business capabilities need to be identified as services.

Third-Party Interactions
In order to ensure that the total cost of ownership is kept low, enterprises are using third-party services to fulfill their business vision. Post code verification by Royal Mail, product reviews by Bazaarvoice, and product recommendations by Choicestream are just a few examples of this. Such business capability dependency on third-party interactions that cross the network domain boundaries needs to be wrapped by abstract service interfaces.

QoS Capabilities
Generally, the quality of service (QoS) is not categorized as a business service but is termed as infrastructure or non-functional service. However, with a lot of emphasis on leveraging B2B network gateways, such capabilities are now closely related, expanding businesses with B2B trading partners. To provide an example: the authentication and authorization capability in Amazon Web Services can be core to delivery of the public services that satisfies the objective of having a secured integration gateway. Other examples of QoS capabilities are auditing and service-level agreement (SLA) monitoring.

SOA Principles
The SOA principles for service realization are listed in Table 1. The business service needs to completely satisfy the SOA principles with a valid rationale.

The Last Word
While there does not exist any silver bullet approach for service identification, the key message is to ensure that the enterprise business drivers and objectives are clear and unambiguous before initiating the service identification process. The key influencers must be identified and validated against the enterprise principles before realizing them into services. The service design principles need to be communicated and enforced through a strong governance process. The service ideation and delivery must pass through life-cycle governance with the participation of business stakeholders, enterprise architects and IT supplier/vendor management. The aspects discussed above can be the checkpoints or stages to ensure that the business services are relevant toward business strategy and hence deliver optimum return on investment.

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Gulf Craft business model heralded as example to top business students - TMCnet

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 08:29 AM PST

Dec 16, 2009 (Al-Bawaba via COMTEX) -- Gulf Craft unveiled the secret behind the company's international success and regional dominance at the eagerly awaited 'Pocket MBA' programme hosted by the Hult International Business School, which took place between 8-9 December 2009 in Dubai. Erwin Bamps, COO of Gulf Craft addressed a group of distinguished professionals from a cross-section of disciplines at the innovative business seminar on the over-arching topic of, 'Challenges in the manufacturing sector'. The lecture also highlighted the necessity for the recruitment and retention of qualified personnel in today's increasingly challenging commercial environment. Seminar attendees were able to learn about the key challenges and issues that have affected the luxury yacht manufacturing industry during the global downturn. "As an industry thought leader, Gulf Craft has long been regarded as a model for business success in the manufacturing and luxury segments. It is no secret that the global yacht industry has been hard hit over the last twelve months, with many European manufacturers bearing the brunt of the tough economic conditions. The impact of the downturn will separate those manufacturers who have resilient business models and strong fundamentals from those who over extended during the boom years." "Our regular involvement with highly respected business schools is no co-incidence. As one of the UAE's most successful exports, it is only natural that we provide business insights and expertise to the region's top business schools. The Hult Business School provides professionals with an excellent opportunity to broaden their knowledge of all industries and gain insight from industry leaders about topics as varied as innovation and strategy, decision-making and career planning and how they can be successfully applied to all businesses," said Mr. Bamps. "Participants were able to gain valuable insights from Mr. Bamps' presentation entitled 'Business at War'. The example of a successful Middle Eastern brand competing on a global scale will no doubt encourage the students to think out of the box in today's competitive world of opportunities and challenges," said Sunil Baby, Associate Director - Career Services, HULT International Business School.(C) 2009 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)

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More Business - San Francisco Chronicle

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 06:56 AM PST

The FTC said Intel, which makes the microprocessors that run personal computers, has shut rivals out of the marketplace. In the process, the FTC said, Intel has deprived consumers of choice and stifled innovation in the chip industry.

In a statement, the agency said it is asking for an order that would bar Intel from using "threats, bundled prices, or other offers to encourage exclusive deals, hamper competition, or unfairly manipulate the prices of its" chips.

Intel called the complaint "misguided." The company accused the agency of rushing the lawsuit without fully investigating the charges and of basing its case on new rules rather than existing statutes. "Intel has competed fairly and lawfully," Intel said in a statement.

Intel has faced similar charges for years and has denied any wrongdoing. The lawsuit comes after a recent $1.25 billion settlement with rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. over similar claims.

In AMD's lawsuit, a Toshiba Corp. manager compared Intel's financial incentives for not working with the competition to cocaine, and Gateway executives said Intel beat them "into guacamole" with threats against working with AMD.

Intel, which is based in Santa Clara, Calif., is also appealing a record $1.45 billion antitrust fine leveled by European regulators.

Intel shares fell 37 cents, or 1.9 percent, to $19.43 in morning trading, while AMD jumped 43 cents, or 4.9 percent, to $9.25.

In its complaint Wednesday, which was scheduled to be heard in September by an administrative law judge, the FTC said Intel has used both threats and rewards to keep some of the biggest computer makers from buying other companies' chips or marketing computers that carried them. The complaint names Dell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., and IBM Corp. as Intel's targets.

The FTC also said Intel has secretly redesigned critical computer software to hinder the performance of other companies' microprocessors, or CPUs.

Although the FTC does not ask for any specific damages in its lawsuit, it wants to force Intel to provide its customers with a substitute software at no additional charge and to compensate them for the cost of distributing the replacement.

In addition, the agency said Intel is looking to extend its dominance into chips that are used to processes graphics, commonly known as GPUs, an area where Intel faces competition from smaller rivals such Nvidia Corp..

"Intel has engaged in a deliberate campaign to hamstring competitive threats to its monopoly," said Richard A. Feinstein, director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition. "It's been running roughshod over the principles of fair play and the laws protecting competition on the merits."

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Renault F1 Team Leverages Symantec Business Critical Services to ... - TMCnet

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 07:32 AM PST

Renault F1 Team Leverages Symantec Business Critical Services to Increase Availability, Minimize Costs

(Market Wire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 12/16/09 -- Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC) today announced that the Renault F1 Team is using Symantec Business Critical Services (BCS) to help reduce costs associated with its IT environment and maximize system uptime and availability. Through BCS -- Symantec's premium support offering -- Symantec has helped Renault F1 minimize the risk of unplanned system downtime and empower their IT staff to focus on strategic business initiatives that are essential for running their business.

The Renault F1 Team was formed in 2002 with the sole purpose of winning the FIA Formula One World Championship with a 100 percent Renault car. With more than 600 employees and 30 IT staff, Renault F1 has deployed a number of archiving, business continuity, data protection, security and systems management software products from Symantec, helping the company save $2.5 million USD in tangible, measured cost-savings. Renault F1utilizes BCS for rapid, personalized access to deep technical expertise on these Symantec solutions. Additionally, BCS provides Renault F1 with a portfolio of proactive services and notifications that minimize the possibility of system outages, coupled with regular account reviews and an onsite presence that enable them to maximize the benefits obtained from their Symantec solutions.

"When Symantec technologies became critical to our business, that's when we needed Business Critical Services," said Graeme Hackland, CIO, Renault F1 Team. "They are an integral part of my IT group and the benefits of our relationship with them have been proven time and time again over the years.

Whenever we consider new IT initiatives, we bring those to Symantec Business Critical Services for their guidance to ensure there are no unexpected issues." Symantec's expanded Remote Product Specialist offering within BCS now includes support for its storage and availability products, which is beneficial for Renault F1 since it has more than 15 different Symantec technologies and services in use.

Previously only offered for Symantec's security portfolio, dedicated Remote Product Specialists are now available for all currently supported versions of Veritas NetBackup, Veritas Storage Foundation and Veritas Cluster Server and Enterprise Vault.

"We rely on Business Critical Services to ensure that our upgrades and refreshes of current Symantec technology deployments are successful," said Hackland. "The Remote Product Specialist gives us a huge advantage in that we have one technical liaison to handle any issues quickly and efficiently.

It is really the 'fast track' for a quick response." "As the market leader in security and storage management, Symantec understands the importance of data availability and security in our customers' IT environment," said David Hare, vice president of Symantec Enterprise Support Services. "The expanded Business Critical Services offering allows customers to leverage the deep technical expertise, including personalized and proactive support services of our advanced support engineers, to effectively manage and secure their information-driven enterprise." Symantec's new pricing model for its BCS Advanced Access allows Renault F1 unlimited callers to its support teams for an annual flat fee. Since the Renault F1 Team travels throughout the world all year, they require a high level of support wherever they go. With this pricing model, Renault F1 receives priority call queuing directly to advanced line support engineers and Symantec's most accelerated service level targets all for one low fee, providing the team with support both on the ground and at the track. Additional assigned or dedicated Business Critical Engineers and Business Critical Account Managers may also be added as needed.

With today's challenging economic climate, organizations are focused on staying competitive and maintaining a high level of service, while at the same time dealing with reduced budgets and staff. In addition, the growing threat environment, sophisticated malicious attacks, and frequent outages have forced organizations in all industries to pay close attention to how they manage their overall IT risk. Through BCS, Symantec can better meet customer needs and deliver increased value by providing customers, such as Renault F1, with a simplified and flexible services portfolio.

Availability Symantec Business Critical Services are currently available. Additional information can be found at: http://www.symantec.com/business/services/overview.jsp?pcid=support_services&pvid=business_critical_services.

About Business Solutions from Symantec Symantec helps organizations secure and manage their information-driven world with storage management, email archiving, backup and recovery solutions.

About Symantec Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organizations secure and manage their information-driven world. Our software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored. More information is available at www.symantec.com.

NOTE TO EDITORS: If you would like additional information on Symantec Corporation and its products, please visit the Symantec News Room at http://www.symantec.com/news. All prices noted are in U.S. dollars and are valid only in the United States.

Symantec and the Symantec Logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Spencer Parkinson Symantec Corp.

+1 (801) 995 7743 spencer_parkinson@symantec.com Shawn Moon Connect Public Relations +1 (801) 373 7888 shawnm@connectpr.com

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Business Browser - Free Lance-Star

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 08:15 AM PST

Each charge Ambrose Bailey was convicted of today carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

Date published: 12/16/2009

BY KEITH EPPS

A disgraced former public official pleaded guilty to 15 felony counts today in Fredericksburg Circuit Court.

Ambrose Bailey, 52, was convicted of multiple counts of forging public records. Seven other counts were dropped.

Bailey is a former member of the Fredericksburg City Council and the state's Commonwealth Transportation Board. Each charge he was convicted of today carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

The charges stem from 2005 and 2006, when Bailey was a funeral director for his familys business, Bailey Funeral Service. The business has since been shut down.

Special prosecutor Matt Britton said Bailey was convicted of one count for every doctor whose name he forged on either death or cremation certificates.

Bailey is still facing 81 charges, including 27 counts each of grand larceny, embezzlement and violating the Pre-need Burial/Funeral Services Act.

He is accused of taking money paid in advance for funerals and using it for personal purchases. The money was supposed to be put into escrow accounts.

Those 81 cases are scheduled to be resolved on March 12, the same day Bailey will be sentenced on todays convictions.

As part of an agreement worked out by Britton and defense attorney Mark Gardner, Bailey was allowed to remain free on bond at least until his March hearing.

Britton said he agreed to allow Bailey time to repay people who gave him money in advance for funerals.

Britton said Bailey has already repaid two of the 27 victims. He said it is his understanding that Baileys father has gotten a reverse mortgage to help cover the rest of the debt.

While accepting the guilty pleas, Judge John Alderman asked the attorneys why Bailey forged the signatures. Doctors are generally paid $50 for the signatures.

Britton said Bailey told authorities he had gotten behind in his paperwork and wanted to expedite the process.

Gardner added that Bailey, who had been ill, was feeling pressure from families and was having trouble getting prompt signatures from the doctors.

Britton said that after Baileys arrest on the forgery charges became public, Mary Lomax came to his office and expressed concern about a $5,705 check shed given Bailey for future funeral services.

An investigation revealed that Lomaxs money was not where it was supposed to be and that some had already been spent.

Detective Wayne Hunnicutt later found 26 other victims with similar situations.

Keith Epps: 540/374-5404
kepps@freelancestar.com

Read more stories about Fredericksburg
Date published: 12/16/2009

Business

Wednesday, December 16, 2009