Chet Hayes

Organizations continue to wrestle with the COTS vs. Open Source question and continually look for guidance on how to select one vs. the other.  Many organizations make the frequent mistake of basing the decision on the capital investment cost or up front investment with no thought to any other criteria.  While cost is an important factor, there are other areas that organizations should consider as part of their selection process. These include: 1.    Technical 2.    Cultural 3.    Financial Technical The technical component to the decision is pretty straight forward with only a few minor issues to worry about.  This usually involves an evaluation or trade-study to ensure that the proper feature/functionality exists to support the current requirements, as well as the ability to support the stated enterprise roadmap.  Usually the biggest challenge in this arena is maki... (more)

What is SOA Governance?

Lots of buzz around SOA Governance and what it means.  David Linthicum talked about this in a recent posting and broke it down into Design Time Governance and Runtime Governance. While I think this is the most popular break down of SOA Governance, I believe there is more to the whole Governance concept as demonstrated by the quote below. SOA governance is the definition, implementation and ongoing execution of a SOA stakeholder decision model and accountability framework that ensures an organization is pursuing an appropriate SOA strategy, aligned with IT and business goals, and... (more)

Government and Open Source Software

Published a new article on Government and Open Source Software. Government and Open Source Software — For the past several years, US Government agencies have shown an increased interest in open source software. Most people will be surprised to learn that the reason for so much interest by the government in open source software is really based on the government acquisition process and how the open source business model relates to this process. ... (more)

Government and Open Source Software

For the past several years, US Government agencies have shown an increased interest in open source software, and with the advent of the Obama administration's call for transparency and openness several organizations believe open source software is part of the answer.  So what is the allure of open source to the government? Is it the promise of reduced cost? Is it access to the source code and the knowledge that it can be modify at any time if desired? Is it hope that the government will no longer by locked into a specific vendor?  Most people will be surprised that the reason for... (more)

The Beginning of the End for SOA?

The post from Anne Thomas Manes on the end of SOA has caused a bit of ruckus in the IT world over the past week or so.  Folks from eWeek and ebizq have all blogged in response to this, as well as the numerous comments from everybody in response to these postings and I figured I would join the fray. For several reasons, businesses and organizations are being forced to do more with less. With stagnate or decreasing IT budgets for 2009, IT departments are going to have to invest in solutions and technologies that make them more ‘agile’, and retire legacy technology that hinders their... (more)