Close
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Menu
Search
  • Latest News
  • Cybersecurity
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Mobile
  • Networking
  • Storage
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Applications
    • Applications
    • Development
    • IT Management
    • Networking
    • Servers
    • Small Business

    SOA Success Demands Dexterity

    By
    Peter Coffee
    -
    November 20, 2006
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin

      Its no longer possible to point at a rack of hardware—or even point at the door of a server room—and say, “My application runs in there.” Distributed systems may rely on multiple data centers, supply chain partners and third-party service providers to create and maintain key elements of an application or its performance-improving infrastructure.

      It follows that its not enough to know that a box is running, or that a room has power and cooling, as basis for saying that a business need is being successfully met. The room, the box and even the operating system and the middleware code are utterly ignorant of the difference between ordinary housekeeping tasks, low-value customers inquiries and critical tasks being done for your most valuable clients.

      If youre trying to meet strategic business goals with tools and techniques that merely measure hardware and software health, youre trying to juggle while wearing mittens. Performance measurement and facility management require far greater dexterity, a challenge I explored in a conversation at this months VMworld conference in Los Angeles with Damian Reeves, chief technology officer of Zeus Technology, in Cambridge, England.

      “We sit at the intersection of network and application—its a very interesting place,” Reeves said. The Zeus Extensible Traffic Manager product, or ZXTM, “has Layer 7 visibility,” as Reeves put it—meaning that it has access to the highest level, the application layer, of the seven-level model developed by the OSI effort of the International Organization for Standardization.

      “Weve ripped apart the packets,” Reeves said. “If theres encryption being used, we have the decrypted plain text. We see all the transactions, so we can make intelligent decisions about where to send things. You can define service classes, describe service-level agreements for different types of customers at different times and check that users are getting the level of service they should.”

      Reeves was at VMworld to announce the release of a new packaging option of ZXTM. In addition to pure software and conventional hardware appliance configurations, its now available as a “virtual appliance”—a phrase defined by VMware as meaning “a prebuilt, preconfigured and ready-to-run software application packaged with the operating system inside a virtual machine.” One enterprise IT user of virtual appliance technology appeared in a video interview shown at the VMworld opening session and described the resulting freedom to scale capacity in response to fluctuating needs, saying, “We download an appliance as easily as we download a song from iTunes.”

      Virtual appliances are gaining momentum quickly, said VMware Technology Development Vice President and VMworld emcee Steve Herrod in his opening remarks at the conference. On average, he said, the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace sees about one new download per minute from its inventory of about 300 available choices.

      Microsoft is reading the same handwriting on the same wall: The company announced this summer its strategic partnership with XenSource to develop what the XenSource home page describes as “interoperability of Xen-enabled Linux guest operating systems and the new Microsoft hypervisor-based Windows Server virtualization.” In mid-October, Microsoft opened its own Virtual Hard Disk format under its Open Specification Promise program (unveiled in September), which “irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims … for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation to the extent it conforms to a Covered Specification.”

      Microsoft followed up with announcements, timed (presumably not by accident) to coincide with VMworlds opening day, that Microsoft and partner companies would offer “VHD Test Drive” versions of enterprise products.

      My resulting forecast is one of data centers with greater flexibility and fingertip control.

      Technology Editor Peter Coffee can be reached at [email protected].

      Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest news, reviews and analysis in Web services.

      Avatar
      Peter Coffee
      Peter Coffee is Director of Platform Research at salesforce.com, where he serves as a liaison with the developer community to define the opportunity and clarify developers' technical requirements on the company's evolving Apex Platform. Peter previously spent 18 years with eWEEK (formerly PC Week), the national news magazine of enterprise technology practice, where he reviewed software development tools and methods and wrote regular columns on emerging technologies and professional community issues.Before he began writing full-time in 1989, Peter spent eleven years in technical and management positions at Exxon and The Aerospace Corporation, including management of the latter company's first desktop computing planning team and applied research in applications of artificial intelligence techniques. He holds an engineering degree from MIT and an MBA from Pepperdine University, he has held teaching appointments in computer science, business analytics and information systems management at Pepperdine, UCLA, and Chapman College.

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Android

      Samsung Galaxy XCover Pro: Durability for Tough...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 5, 2020 0
      Have you ever dropped your phone, winced and felt the pain as it hit the sidewalk? Either the screen splintered like a windshield being...
      Read more
      Cloud

      Why Data Security Will Face Even Harsher...

      Chris Preimesberger - December 1, 2020 0
      Who would know more about details of the hacking process than an actual former career hacker? And who wants to understand all they can...
      Read more
      Cybersecurity

      How Veritas Is Shining a Light Into...

      eWEEK EDITORS - September 25, 2020 0
      Protecting data has always been one of the most important tasks in all of IT, yet as more companies become data companies at the...
      Read more
      Big Data and Analytics

      How NVIDIA A100 Station Brings Data Center...

      Zeus Kerravala - November 18, 2020 0
      There’s little debate that graphics processor unit manufacturer NVIDIA is the de facto standard when it comes to providing silicon to power machine learning...
      Read more
      Apple

      Why iPhone 12 Pro Makes Sense for...

      Wayne Rash - November 26, 2020 0
      If you’ve been watching the Apple commercials for the past three weeks, you already know what the company thinks will happen if you buy...
      Read more
      eWeek


      Contact Us | About | Sitemap

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      Terms of Service | Privacy Notice | Advertise | California - Do Not Sell My Information

      © 2021 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×