Head, heart and hands

Although I realized that it could be a little bit too technical for me, some titles of presentations intrigued me so much that I decided to attend the SOA practitioners Forum by Software AG in April. The fact that my colleague was planning to attend this meeting as well, gave me even more reasons to go. It is always very enjoyable to go to an event with a coworker.

SOA is dead
The sessions ‘SOA has come of age’, ‘enterprise architecture’ and ‘the lifecycle governance’ interested me a lot. The presentation ‘SOA has come of age’ treated the notion that ‘SOA is dead’. Anne Thomas Manes and others wrote many blogs stating this. Nothing new to the people that keep in touch with market development. The speaker pointed that part out very well, quoting Gartner and others. He tried to prove the maturity of SOA with some customer based figures from his own company. Hardly sufficient evidence, but it explained the focus of his company.

enterprise architecture
The enterprise architecture part was presented by an English speaking French woman who talk without a microphone while looking at her own slides behind her. So, this was very hard to follow and again treated from a tool perspective.

bridging the gap
It struck me that every presenter seemed to try to bridge the gap between IT and Business. Considering from whose viewpoint you’re looking at this gap, there seems to be push or pull mechanism. In Anglo American countries it is the opinion of the IT world that Business has the responsibility to align IT to Business (IT pulls). In Germany and the Netherlands IT feels the responsibility to align Business people to their IT (IT pushes).

I filled in the questionnaire and gave some advice: use microphones, make challenging statements, allow attendees to ask questions during the sessions to make the whole more interactive. And please don’t change anything to the friendliness of the hosts, to the catering and the accessibility of the location because these were great. Thanks for Software AG’s hospitality!