Jake Sorofman

Recessions are about as appealing as a root canal; but they do force us to think differently. Now that the recession is official, it's an ideal time to explore how virtualization and cloud computing can help "recession-proof" IT by transforming yesterday’s costly and rigid computing model to one that puts costs under control and sets applications free. The National Bureau of Economic Research recently declared that the U.S. has been in a recession since December 2007. The news would be darkly amusing if it weren’t so utterly painful. But now that the recession is official, this seemed to be the ideal time to explore how virtualization and cloud computing can help recession-proof IT. Consider the following four tips: 1. Virtualize infrastructure to increase capacity utilization. Traditional server infrastructure tightly couples applications to hardware, wasting compu... (more)

SOA's Second Act: Dynamic Documents Top the Agenda

While SOA has traditionally had something of a data obsession. While the focus has been on service-enablement of structured and transactional data and processes, documents and document-centric processes have been conspicuously absent from the SOA agenda. With structured data in order, organizations are now beginning to take a closer look at the role of unstructured assets as part of SOA.  The domains of documents and data have long been two worlds divided. Data is stored in relational databases, mainframe systems, and data warehouses. Documents are kept in content management syst... (more)

Recessionary Recitations: Reducing the Cost and Complexity of Application Delivery

Let's face it - 2008 was a real slog. Even the most wide-eyed optimist would agree that this was one year whose end was long overdue. Of course, ringing in the New Year doesn't somehow wash away what has become a fairly deep recession, but it does symbolize the fresh start that I think we're all looking for right about now. Doom and gloom may be the currency of trade these days, but I would argue that there are important lessons to be learned from this and any recession. Nobody enjoys a down economy, but it may be comforting to remember that recession is a natural part of the bu... (more)

SOA Governance and Management Issues

In today's business environment, change is the only constant, which makes speed and agility a key basis for competitive advantage. This is why so many organizations are moving toward services oriented architectures as the new basis for IT. But despite the considerable promise of SOA, it adds new complexity that can introduce IT and business risk. This is why governance has become an imperative for SOA projects today. This session will discuss the requirements for governing an SOA and the importance of a governance foundation for optimizing the value and mitigating the risks of a ... (more)

Top Two Counter-Recessionary Technologies

2009 is shaping up to be an "interesting" year. What makes 2009 interesting - rather than good, bad or indifferent - is the daily conflict between hope and despair for those on the good side of a bad trend. Like bankruptcy attorneys or pawnbrokers, some find themselves buoyed by a down economy, becoming only more relevant when the pressure is on to conserve. In the world of IT, perhaps the best examples of counter-recessionary trends are virtualization and its close cousin, cloud computing - both trends with direct cost benefits. When the economy contracts, the pendulum swings fr... (more)