Chronicles of Technology

I was just starting to read a book gifted by my Grandfather (S.S. Sanwal), titled "The Dynamo of Prayer" by A. Graham Ikin.

Side Note:
It took me more than a couple of searches through Google to even find a referential link to this book's author and not even the book itself. Wow, was it that rare? The closest thing I could come up with were these links 1, 2 (if link 2 breaks use Ikin to search by author) relating to out of publish books.

I was unable to find an ISBN number on the book or anywhere else online. So this is what it says about how and where it was published.

FIRST PUBLISHED BY ARCO PUBLICATIONS 1960
(C) A. GRAHAM IKIN 1960
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
CLARKE, DOBLE AND BRENDON LTD
CATTEDOWN, PLYMOUTH

My several attempts to read it late evenings after a long day would be slightly hampered by the following :

• My inherently tired eyes and brains; from chewing through all the 20-30 or so windows of continual information stimuli that screamed out from my laptop at any given time
• Very strong language that would twist and turn into long sentences where one would lose track of the start of the sentence by the time you are trying to absorb the end, or ofcourse I had low attention span and focus that late at night.

Ofcourse, last night I was able to go through around 25 pages before my eyes began to shut. One bit caught my attention since I had to look up a few words to ensure that I was absorbing the matter in the same vein as the author wanted it to be absorbed.

"Nature and Grace are very closely intertwined. God is Immanent as well as Transcendent"

Side Note:
I had to look up the words online since I was missing my Webster Unabridged CD.

Immanent 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Transcendent 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

I started to piece that together after looking up the 'reference sources' to see whether I had the same interpretation...

Around 10 minutes later, it hit me (the ways of the subconcious mind). How the same concept relates to 'Service Orientation' in terms of an Enterprise or in terms of a style of Architecture.

To be continued...

"The important thing is not to stop questioning" - Albert Einstein. So... why do you want an SOA & what is its purpose?

To answer that, let's go back to the basics. Let's outline the biggest 'charms' of the SOA:

1. Adaptive / Agile Enterprise - The ability to change

It is the ability of an enterprise to "change". Why is the ability to change that important? Because, it is not an option. Change is good, change is inevitable, change is now and forever, change is every instant that passes by.

Side Note:
Business gurus have talked about "change" for a long time, especially on Harvard Business Review (HBR). My introduction to "change" on the HBR via the following articles had taken the formal shape of an ingrained mental anchor (Why Good Companies Go Bad, Why Do Employees Resist Change?). I am glad I took that 'Engineering Management' class.

What does it mean when we talk about the 'adaptive' enterprise? Let's look at an enterprise as a 'system' in its entirety. Also, this system is composed of several interacting sub-systems that 'influence' each other. These sub-systems can primarily be 'classified' into these broad categories :

- People Systems
- Information Systems
- Business Systems
- Physical Systems
- Process Systems
- Cross System Interfaces (or Cross System Association Points)

(For the business people.. I would term this is 'Cross System Association Points', since 'interface' has become so much of an IT term that it might be misleading in this context.)

• A real SOA would allow all of the above systems to "change" and "adapt" quickly, in an organized, controlled and measured fashion with respect to all 'association points', whether or not the change was internal to that category of the sub-system or another category via a cross system interface.
• At the same time the processes that make these changes these changes happen need to be managed as well.

What I have observed is that, so far the focus has been on attempts to 'push' the envelope around making Business Systems and Information Sytems adapt and comply with under the control of 'a small set of people' who "define" and "beltout" 'processes'. (i.e. BPM, Process Orchestration / Process Choreography, Compositing Services etc.)

Quite brilliant, but I think that, this is a very unidirectional approach to the "whole" system. If people have the ability to influence Business and IT Systems (taken as a set of paths of influence), there need to be other paths of stimuli that influence 'other categories' of systems to bring about a cohesive and holistic view.

These paths "need" to be incorporated into the "whole" system. The question is.. How? and Why? What are these paths of influence going to be?

Lets approach the "why" first. The following side note outlines the reason behind the importance of the precedence on "why" versus the "how".

Side Note:
My grandfather's (Mr. S.S. Sanwal) brother (Mr. H.S. Sanwal, also grandpa) says

"There was a time when parents would direct and children would obey. That was the culture. Times have changed. Now, with your current generation (he talks about us..) its not a matter of 'how?', but a matter of 'why?'. If you can convince them 'why?', the 'how?', is pretty much take care of by them."

When this comes from someone who has

• held positions of a President, VP, Chairman and Director (prior to retiring), at enterprises in the manufacturing space (Paper, Rubber, Plastics, Cement, Chemicals, Optic Fibre industries)
  
• understood people at their core (from Management to Labor in an enterprise or from little children to elders in a large joint family)

...it makes complete sense that people are the binding element no matter where you go. Hence, the "why" factor is important for today's generation in every aspect of life.

This is why I believe in the "why" factor.

Why?
Why do we need these paths of inter-subsystem influence?

Any and every system works on a simple and basic princple of 'Cause' and 'Effect'. In systems engineering and electrical systems when you model 'influences' on a system (internal and/or external) it is very important to determine, understand and balance these influences so that the system can be designed to achieve a steady state or reach a certain composite steady state (that consists of a set of controlled and easily manageable steady states) under the course of these influences. To achieve such state(s) the paths of influence that exist can not be ignored.

This is what actually happens in an Enterprise. But, it is not feasible to determine or utilize all these paths of influence. The goal should be to minimize this effect by incorporating as many 'significant' paths as possible.

When a system incorporates positive or negative feedback, it is an example of a path of influence.

How?
How do we devise, design, implement, achieve and further prune these paths of inter-subsystem influence?

That would be an interesting exercise... an exercise that I am currently going through... Once again, I shall leave this for another post when I have more time to dwell on it, since this post has been in 'draft' mode for almost 2 months for the lack of this little section.

2. Transparent Enterprise / Total Business Visibility - The ability to not just see clearly, but "know"

An Enterprise contains a mesh of many tapped and untapped, cleansed and raw pieces of information. Having visibility into the right kind of information, presented in the right way, at the right time can be critical to decisions. But, this information is usually distributed, inaccessible or not conveniently available to the right people, at the right time.

How can we define 'Total Business Visibility' (TBV)?

TBV means, 'perspectives' that are not normally visible are enabled. It allows a given individual or set of individuals to have better information to make better decisions. It allows an enterprise and all its pieces to work with better alignment due to the increased visibility into the operations, processes and activities of the enterprise.

Total Business Visibility means real-time visibility into what is happening at any given time. It allows sales teams, finance folks, HR, Technologists and Managers to see information clearly.

To understand what information needs to be made visible to individuals in an Enterprise we will have to look into 'Perspective Management'.

During some discussions a few months back (exact date is logged... will need to look it up), I coined the phrase 'perspective matching'. I have searched quite a bit on the internet and have yet to find anyone claiming the phrase. So, from this point on I shall claim rights, copyrights and trademark rights to the following phrases.

"Perspective Matching"
"Matching Perspectives"

(unless ofcourse someone else had already done so and can prove that to me in writing).

Copyright 2005 - Abhishek Sanwal, Trademark (in the registration process).

PS: My next post which has also been in draft for quite a while shall be on 'Perspective Matching' and 'Enterprise Perspectives'.

Some of the questions that I left unanswered and subject to more thinking...

This makes me think the following questions...

- Will enterprises be able to sustain themselves and their projects, until they are able to reach critical mass and realize some benefits?
- Will they drop the ball on these initiatives the same ways they have done so before due to lack of funds and the promised ROI that needs to come sooner than later?
- How can we make people, (not just the key members) aware of SOA and how does it relate to their perspectives, pain factors and resuting benefits. Training not just at the key levels but to really have an impact the ownership of the initiative must rest with every person in the organization that will touch it.

I shall leave some of my answers and thoughts pending for my next post so that I can digest them some more before I belt them out.

These questions lead me to a formalize things in the form of a cyclic system. But to explain that lets see if we can put forth single statement answers to each of the questions and then use those statements for further discussion.

- Will enterprises be able to sustain themselves and their projects, until they are able to reach critical mass and realize some benefits?

Only if they set short term, achievable goals, set "expectations" with all affected parties (the 'stake' holders) and more importantly give the stakeholders "visibility" into how they are an "essential" part of the "initiative", and not just the benefactors.

- Will they drop the ball on these initiatives the same ways they have done so before due to lack of funds and the promised ROI that needs to come sooner than later?

If they dont expect Mary Poppins and Peter Pan!

Any 'system' undergoes 'transient' and 'steady' states. A 'transient' state is induced into the system by providing a stimulus. The time that a system takes to go from 'transient' state to a 'steady' state can be highly variable and is a function of the system properties in itself.

What does that mean?

The introduction of these new ideas, methodologies and technologies into an enterprise introduces a lot of 'direct' and 'resultant' transients. To achieve the desired steady state these transients have to be 'calibrated' and chosen properly before introduction.

This thought process needs be applied to all facets (people, process, business vision, technology) and at all levels for each of these facets, whether its an IT system, a people system (a team working on a certain initiative) or a business system.

- How can we make people, (not just the key members) aware of SOA and how does it relate to their perspectives, pain factors and resuting benefits that they should expect.

Training not just at the key levels but to really have an impact the ownership of the initiative must rest with every person in the organization that will touch it.

I believe I answered this question briefly. To add more detail, I would say that the awareness and the ownership "for" the big picture needs to rest with every entity in the system.

You can let people be 'black boxed' in terms of deliverables and contributions to the initiative but they should 'never' be 'black boxed' in terms of vision and design of the holistic view.

Abstraction is good, very necessary, but not in the complete lack of the 'overall vision'.

They cyclic system would be as follows....... (pending again.. I think this will need some time, thought and a visio diagram... not as easy as random ramblings that come out extempore)

I am not sure if I had the 'confidence' or the 'plain guts' to say that 'key people' would experience career impacts due to their hindsight on SOA. That was a generic statement, based on the organizational implications that I see coming to light due to lack of vision in several areas in the 'Enterprise'.

But, I can now "agree" on a very specific statement by Jeff Schnieder.


CIO's Aren't Taking SOA Serious

The fact of the matter is... it is BIG. It has never been this big. This is one big opportunity after the "dot-com bubble burst" to make holistic enterprise dreams a reality.

As Jeff mentions, Most people are looking at a bunch of 50-100 trees as a forest. The forest is much larger, and at the same time it is part of an even bigger picture, that of a "Jungle".

One can apply the Hitch Hikers Guide analogy to this situation as well.

Bottom line. Don't look at SOA, as an easy answer to all existing problems. In actuality, it in involves additional pain in delivering something that must comply to a new set of rules and benchmarks to allow for extensibility in the SOA. This shall be a much more tasking effort than an ERP, Y2K and Web implementation.

This makes me think the following questions...
- Will enterprises be able to sustain themselves and their projects, until they are able to reach critical mass and realize some benefits?
- Will they drop the ball on these initiatives the same ways they have done so before due to lack of funds and the promised ROI that needs to come sooner than later?
- How can we make people, (not just the key members) aware of SOA and how does it relate to their perspectives, pain factors and resuting benefits. Training not just at the key levels but to really have an impact the ownership of the initiative must rest with every person in the organization that will touch it.

I shall leave some of my answers and thoughts pending for my next post so that I can digest them some more before I belt them out.

Microsoft to Release Visual Studio 2005 for Unix/Linux
http://www.theserverside.net/news/thread.tss?thread_id=33023

If you are thinking that this was an April Fools joke that came too late. Think again. I have to say, the guys know how to productize and sell.

When it was time to capture the desktop market share, they did and made the billions.

I think someone realized certain strong points about Linux... and some flavours of "optimized linux". Now, XP Professional 64-bit "supposedly" optimizes itself for a given system in much the same way people fine tune their linux systems for their machine. I remember speaking to a friend of mine who is a "Gentoo" and "ex Slackware" fanatic who was giving me a run down on how that optimization process works.

Plus, the next generation of kids will not be technically challenged. Most will begin to use and experiement with linux, which has jumped leaps and bounds from where it used to be a few years back. Looking at this as a "market shift" it is "strong farsight" into looking at the strongly regarded Linux/Apache platforms as a base for the next generation products.

So Mono (.NET for Linux and Mac OS-X) is not going to go neglected.

I can see the papers... "Extra Extra.. Get your favourite development environment on your favourite open source platform". :)

PS: This was a joke .. hehe.. but the funny thing is there is a definite and possible business case here as the population slowly starts becoming more and more linux / open source savvy. Maybe not in 5 years.. but that would depend on how savvy the next generation becomes with computers and how fast.

...

X M L ... an offshoot but more widely accepted offspring of SGML

Its funny how it has changed lives...

The introduction of XML has sparked changes in any and every sector and organization. It has changed the way they do things, or is in the process of making them adapt to its will.

All that it is.. is a representation of a logical mental structure into a few simply structured pieces of text, which can ofcourse be nested and so on, taking it to the n'th dimension of complicated hierarchies.

Ofcourse, it has gone through the stages of applicability or use. I am sure when XML first came out it began to think like "Marvin" the super intelligent robot with genuine people personalities in the new movie The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - 2005. When people downgraded it to the level of a textual exchange format of convenience, it probably grumbled just like Marvin, "A brain the size of a planet and they make me do this.."

Some thoughts about the stages of its usage evolution that come to my mind.. (Please feel free to send me some more, or post them as comments below. If you think one of them can be better stated feel free to comment. I shall update them here with due credit.)

• The advent of XML
• Hmm.. ho hum.. a text based file that looks like HTML
• Hmm.. interesting text based format that looks like HTML
• Hmm..!!!.. wow, its such a convenient text based format for data exchange
• The "XML 'so.. what' curve"
• How about we use it to talk to each other? Since we could not agree on our conversations over the last 10 years.
• Would it be possible to use it to do more ? (Exciting Possibilities - Episode 1)
• Since we have so many firewalls and protocols that wont go through, how about we make them go through HTTP...
• Hey! We do not have function calls or remote procedures here. Lets do that with XML. Then we can do things like we have always done. Functions and Procedures.
• I dont like the way function calls work. Can't we send messages in a different way ? I am not able to get responses at times and I wouldnt mind a reponse when its due time.
• How about we send messages with more 'context-aware' information and we do not have to have a response rightaway ?
• ........ (to be continued.. maybe over the long weekend.. This shall take a twist towards the following in no particular order: SOA (another 3 letter buzzword), BPM :), Meta-Data, Models, Views, Relationships, Contextual Information, Perspective..... and more )

Food for thought:

If XML was animated and could say something today what would be XML's quote for the day?
"Where do you want to take me today?"

Inspired by the blogging activities of several thinkers in this area, I have come to realize that maybe some of my ramblings might bring about interesting ideas...

Some of my thoughts posted on the blog of Radovan Janecek here where I talk about.. (TBQuoted)

I believe and strongly agree that there is no 'one' way of executing a business strategy using an underlying SOA blending the Systems (IT & non IT), business ideas, and "people" together. Ofcourse, I notice that a lot of people overlook the 'people' factor and 'people' impact.

More importantly, I do not see anyone talking about an 'active feedback' mechanism that provides interesting stimulus for an SOA to evolve.

For people not familiar with the term. SOA - Service Oriented Architecture(s). Possibly, the biggest 'jargon' term being thrown around by IT professionals in recent times.

Interesting posts on the phased progession and evolution of technologies in executing an SOA on Jeff Schneiders blog and Radovan Janacek's blog.