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INSIDE SEPTEMBER
It's tear sheet time again. That's when I timidly open the new issue of Dirt Wheels and look for the good and the bad. Working on a hard-copy magazine is like building something with hand tools. When you're finished, you have something that you can look at, touch and feel. And it will be with you a long time. It's not like a website where things come and go rapidly. Once a magazine rolls off the press, it's officially a part of American lore. People routinely ask me about stuff I wrote 20 years ago. It isn't that they have such a great memory, it's more likely that they just opened an old box of stuff and saw an old issue of Dirt Wheels, Dirt Bike, Cycle World, Cycle Guide or Cycle News that had my name in it. Old magazines, like old editors, can lay around for a long time before they turn into dust.
So I just looked through the September issue of Dirt Wheels to see what people will be asking me about 20 years from now. There's a lot of stuff in there. Two tests really stand out. The new Can-Am DS450XXC is one of the first 2010 models that we've ridden. Cain went back east to test it in its preferred environment at a GNCC. The other machine that gets attention is the Polaris RZR-S. This is a wide, sportier version of the RZR. Brad compared it to a custom built-up RZR. Which is the best way to go? Should you build your own or let Polaris do it for you? Interest in the "S" version is so high that the aftermarket was going crazy trying to get our test-unit for product development. DG called us every day, wanting to know when the test would be done.
Brad put together a three-level Raptor 250 story that was pretty cool. The Yamaha Raptor is by far the sportiest 250cc ATV you can buy, but a the end of the day, it's still a 250cc, four-stroke, entry-level ATV. Brad built one version with budget constraints. He used some parts off eBay (like used TRX450R shocks) and a lot of good set-up. The next version was mildly modified with GYTR stuff and the ultimate version was built by CT Racing. That last one was capable of running with stock 450s.
On the milder side is a TRX450X that I tested with the help of Breanna Jones, daughter to four-time MX champ Gary Jones. The whole Jones family is involved with testing various hardware in Dirt Wheels.
Even closer to home, I had my kid Jesse help with the test of the 3Built remote kill switch. This is a device that lets me turn off the motor from 250 feet away. There's a not-posed photo of five-year-old Jesse with his hands in the air in frustration after the LTR50 stopped in its tracks. "What happened?" I'll never tell, but he'll dig seeing his photo on the newsstand. Cain's mom will also like seeing his picture in the axle buyer's guide (shown).
But one of the most interesting photos in the magazine is right up front, in "Over The Bars." It's a photo of a concept ATV of the future with something like a hundred wheels. I don't know where D. West comes up with this stuff, but if you blaze past OTB you're missing some of the best parts of the magazine.
I'm sure that ATV riders of the distant future will still have this issue laying around and they'll get a kick out of that photo, too.–Ron
2010 HONDA ATVs
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Q: Disable menu bar in Windows Mobile 6.5 I'm porting .NET application from WM5 to WM6.5. Besides new resolution I noticed different UI behavior for start menu and title bar (caption bar). My application needs to work in kind of kiosk mode where user can't exit application and bypass our authentication. For this purpose on WM5 I was hiding start button and close button. I am using following function:
SHFullScreen(hWnd, SHFS_HIDESTARTICON | SHFS_HIDESIPBUTTON);

Hiding buttons kind of works on WM6.5 too, but there is another problem. User can tap on the title bar (menu bar, caption bar - I'm not sure what is proper name for it - the bar on the top of the screen) and get access to Windows Task Manager. See attached screenshot

I cirlced places where user can tap and get out to Task Manager like this:

Any ideas how to disable that interaction? Device is Motorola MC65. Running Windows Mobile 6.5.
So, the final answer is part of an answer posted below:
IntPtr tWnd = FindWindow("HHTaskBar", null);
EnableWindow(tWnd, false);

We just find the HHTaskBar and disable it. It has some downside, but overall does the trick.

A: You can hide the whole top taskbar and maximize your form:
// the following three lines are p/invoked
IntPtr tWnd = FindWindow("HHTaskBar", null);
EnableWindow(tWnd, false);
ShowWindow(tWnd, SW_HIDE);

// maximize your form
form.Size = new Size(240, 320); // or whatever the device's screen dimensions are
form.WindowState = FormWindowState.Maximized;

A: Try the  method SHFullScreen with SHFS_HIDETASKBAR which is described this way on MSDN:

Put the taskbar at the bottom of the
  z-order. Note that a game or an
  application that requires the entire
  screen may use this flag. Be sure that
  your application is sized to full
  screen before using this flag.
  Otherwise, it will appear as though
  the function did nothing.

protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e)
{
    ...

    SHFullScreen(this.Handle, SHFS_HIDETASKBAR |
        SHFS_HIDESIPBUTTON | SHFS_HIDESTARTICON);

    base.OnLoad(e);
}

private const int SHFS_SHOWTASKBAR = 0x0001;
private const int SHFS_HIDETASKBAR = 0x0002;
private const int SHFS_SHOWSIPBUTTON = 0x0004;
private const int SHFS_HIDESIPBUTTON = 0x0008;
private const int SHFS_SHOWSTARTICON = 0x0010;
private const int SHFS_HIDESTARTICON = 0x0020;

[DllImport("aygshell")]
static extern bool SHFullScreen(IntPtr hwnd, int dwState);

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Home Breaking Korea to host global biomedical conference in Sept
Korea to host global biomedical conference in Sept
Hillary Lee
The KHIDI and the Seoul metropolitan city would host a global biomedical conference in the Seoul City Hall main building on Sept. 29. Photo courtesy of KHIDI
KHIDI and Seoul city government will bring participants from across world
The Korea Health Industry Development Institute (KHIDI) announced on Aug. 9 that the state-backed agency and the Seoul metropolitan city would host a global biomedical conference next month.
The 2022 Seoul International Biomedical Conference (SIBC) will bring thousands of participants to the Seoul City Hall main building on Sept. 29.
Biomedical enterprises, hospitals, scholars, and investors from across the globe are expected to join the single-day event, which will be pitched both online and offline.
The sixth edition of the annual event will delve into the new future for the bio-industry in the post-coronavirus era to share the latest trends and information.
Yoshitake Maeda, who heads the BMS Asia-Pacific office, will deliver a keynote speech on the open innovation strategies of global pharmaceutical firms.
Three sessions will follow on the global bio-cluster after COVID-19, the digital revolution in the biomedical sectors, and scale-up & opportunity in the healthcare business.
In particular, Korea Investment Partners CEO Hwang Mahn-soon would head the third session as a moderator, which is about the growth opportunities in the healthcare industries.
Hwang is one of South Korea's most famous venture capitalists in the bio and healthcare areas.
On top of the sessions, the KHIDI is scheduled to hold a demo day to bring together incubators, accelerators, and start-ups.
Start-ups, which were founded after 2013, can make applications between Aug. 10 and Sept. 15. Successful applicants will be able to pitch their business model on the sideline of the conference.
In addition, investment experts would offer consulting services to 30 start-ups on a first-come-first-served basis. They should apply between Aug. 10 and Sept. 8.
The KHIDI was established in 1999 with the goal of improving public health and helping the country's healthcare corporations enhance their global competitiveness.
Currently, the outfit is headed by President Kwon Soon-man.
2022 Seoul International Biomedical Conference
Korea Health Industry Development Institute
Seoul Metropolitan City
Hillary Lee studied literature in Seoul. Lee has big interests on various topics including IT, BT, business and finance. Lee can be reached at homin30@hanmail.net or 82-2-6956-6698.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


In this first blog sequence, I'll be breaking down the Buddha's teaching of Mindfulness of In-and-Out Breathing into four parts.
As we meditate, focusing on the breath – we can notice that the breath changes. Sometimes it is long deep inhalations and sometimes shorter breaths. When we meditate, we don't need to regulate the breath, and in fact we shouldn't try to do so since then the focus becomes on trying to do something, trying to control. In our every day lives, we're already overwhelmed with things we're trying to control. When we sit to meditate, it's a time to just sit and watch the breath. This is our only focus. If you're new to meditation, you will likely have bombardment of thoughts and may find it challenging to watch the breath for even one minute. This is the practice. Bring your focus back to the breath. Notice the breath without judgement. As one focuses on and follows the breath, you will begin to feel relaxed, calm. Research is showing that there is a correlation between breath and the feeling of calmness. Scientific American published an article in March 2017 – Meditation's Calming Effects Pinpointed in the Brain that discusses some surprising findings when studying mice – neurons in the brain stem appear to be the link between breathing and inducing a state of meditative calm.
From the Ananda Suttra – To Ananda: On Mindfulness of Breathing"Now how is mindfulness of in-and-out breathing developed and pursued so as to bring the four frames of reference to their culmination?
"There is the case where a monk, having gone to the wilderness, to the shade of a tree, or to an empty building, sits down folding his legs crosswise, holding his body erect, and setting mindfulness to the fore. Always mindful, he breathes in; mindful he breathes out.
We are an IRS approved 501(C)(3) tax-except non-profit organization.
Our mission is to lead, serve and promote teachers and organizations that support Secular Buddhism and secular meditation without reference to god(s), gurus or supernatural forces.


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Q: n1ql query to remove data from array which has parameter value null Following is the sample document (userdetails) in couchbase.
{  "friends":[
  {
     "company":"microsoft",
     "firstname":"criss",
     "lastname":"angel"
  },
  {
     "company":"google",
     "firstname":"captain",
     "lastname":null
  }  ] }

based on the company name, i want to remove the respective json document from the array.
n1ql query
update default use keys "userdetails" set friends=array_remove(friends,a) for a in friends when a.company="google" end returning friends

Im not able to remove the json data using the above query.
This query works properly, if we have empty string ( "lastname" : " ") rather than null value.
So, how to remove, if any of the parameter value is "null"

A: You can replace the whole friends array as follows:
UPDATE default
USE KEYS "userdetails"
SET friends = ARRAY a FOR a IN friends WHEN a.company <> "google" END
RETURNING friends;


Sharma's grant was awarded under the NIH K08 program, which was established to help promising young physician-scientists develop into independent investigators and to aid in filling the academic faculty gap in certain fields.
BUFFALO, N.Y. — A University at Buffalo researcher studying a protein involved in heart failure has received a five-year, $1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.
Umesh C. Sharma, MD, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Medicine in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB, a physician with UBMD Internal Medicine and a Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) Scholar in the Mentored Career Development Program, was granted the award to study a protein called galectin-3.
"Dr. Sharma has benefited from and also contributed greatly to the physician-scientists faculty mentored career development program established under the umbrella of the Clinical and Translational Science Award and our Community of Scholars," said Margarita L. Dubocovich, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor, senior associate dean for diversity and inclusion in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, principal investigator and lead of the KL2 Mentored Career Development Award and director of the CTSI's Workforce Development core.
"We are delighted that he is receiving the prestigious K08 career mentored development award, which will catalyze his path to research independence," she said.
Sharma is pursuing the research with his mentor John Canty, Jr., MD, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Medicine, chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine and deputy director of CTSI.
The mission of the UB CTSI is to improve health and reduce health disparities in Western New York through the development, testing and sharing of novel approaches to health care. The program is supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award numbers UL1TR001412 and and KL2TR001413 to the University at Buffalo.


text:
Home » Casino News - Latest Casino News » Hard Rock AC Brings Multi Tabling for Slot Machine Games
Hard Rock AC Brings Multi Tabling for Slot Machine Games
27 Jul, 2018 by Callum Whitaker
The Hard Rock Atlantic City was finally unveiled on June 28, 2018, and opened its doors for the public access. Since its inception, the casino resort has been booming with players, and people from different parts of the city are thronging this place.
Recently, it has launched an online gambling website that will cater to the gaming needs of only New Jersey residents. In this way, the Hard Rock AC becomes the 26th regulated online gambling website operating in the Garden State.
When it comes to playing poker in an online gaming environment, the majority of the casino sites offer multi-tabling options to the players. It comes with no surprise as the poker gameplay is quite slow. The multi-tabling gives the players the opportunity to play more than one poker game at a given time and keep them busy in return.
With Hard Rock Atlantic City offering multi-tabling on all its slot machines, it is welcome news and a pleasant surprise for all the slot lovers.
When it comes to slot machine games, the gameplay is quite faster than the online poker. The multi-tabling slots would undoubtedly speed up the gaming process, giving slot players to think about something new when they visit Hard Rock online casino.
The casino resort has entered into a partnership deal with Gaming Innovation Group and used their game platform for offering slot games to its players. Now people can play up to four slot games at a given time without any hassles and in a perfect gaming environment.
When the game loads, a sidebar pops up where players get the option to split the screen into two or four parts. Each game will occupy one small screen with a maximum of four screens at a given time.
Hard Rock AC Multi-Tabling Slot Games Limitations
For players looking to score bonuses and increase the bankroll subsequently, playing multiple slot games is indeed a good option for them. When players are playing more games at a time, they get several winning opportunities. One can play multiple slot games either manually or through the AutoPlay feature.
This new feature is likely to attract all the slot lovers throughout New Jersey state who want to play a wide range of slot machine games online from the comforts of their home.
However, the multiple slot games come with a few limitations. As a player, you would not be able to access this feature from your smartphone device. It is due to screen size limitation. It can be a little bit awkward playing four slot games on the small screen of the mobile device.
Apart from that, players would experience problems while playing the multiple versions of the same game. So they need to choose different slot titles while playing the game online from smartphones.
Callum Whitaker
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Redheads look great in earth tones, but blue seems to be a popular color to wear as well. A tip would be to look at your hair and wear similar colors in different shades of your hair. Also, white and beige matches really well with the earth tones. Enjoy our collection of fashion from redhead/ginger men, and we hope you get inspired!


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The Gloaming Episode 2: What release date and time on Disney Plus?
Big Sky Season 1 Episode 11: When is the Disney Plus release date and time?
Big Sky Season 1 Episode 15: When will Disney Plus be released, date and time?
Find out all the information about episode 2 of The Gloaming on Disney +! Date and time of departure, etc.
What is the release date and time of episode 2 of The Gloaming on Disney Plus?
What to remember from the episode?
The Gloaming is available on Disney Plus! If you want to know When will episode 2 be released?, keep reading! A woman is found dead and encased in barbed wire at the foot of a waterfall in Tasmania, Australia. Seemingly inexplicably, she has a decades old student ID with her. Is not him. And it is in this haunting scene that The Twilight it really begins.
The mystery begins with a flashback on July 11, 1999, when Tasmanian teens Jenny and Alex walk into what appears to be an abandoned gothic house, with a small cemetery in the yard. Jenny mentions that she lived on this property as a child. As they explore, Jenny loses track of Alex.
She finds him the moment someone in the house opens the door and points a shotgun at him. As Jenny walks behind her friend, the invisible person shoots. To know everything about him Launch of Episode 2 of The Gloaming on Disney Plus, keep reading!
The Gloaming episode 2 release date It has been set for June 18, 2021. For the most impatient who want to know what time episode 2 will be available. Gloaming Episode 2 release time was established at 9:01 am on Disney Plus in Spain!
As you can see, episode 1 of The Gloaming makes a lot of noise in an hour, not to mention the creepy dance teacher Grace and her connection to Gareth, and the supernatural elements. When Dorothy's name is revealed to the media, Grace, Gareth, and Freddie are shocked. And speaking of Freddie, he's obsessed with Lily, who's secretly a cam girl. Freddie regularly watches Lily's online performances.
When it comes to supernatural events, a lot of weird things happen around Freddie. It is difficult to go into the details of some of the things that are happening in this first hour, because The Twilight maintains a dark and surreal quality throughout the film, blurring the line between fantasy and reality. I imagine it will become easier and easier to discover the truth as the season progresses.
Magazine Dreams Review – Jonathan Majors delivers a jaw-dropping performance


text:
https://www.mrt.com/news/education/article/Bynum-upgrade-school-dedication-scheduled-for-13588782.php
Bynum upgrade, school dedication scheduled for Tuesday
By Brandi Addison, MRT.com/Midland Reporter-Telegram
Updated 5:54 pm CST, Monday, February 4, 2019
The new Bynum School on Avalon Drive has five classrooms with state-of-the-art technology. The school will be dedicated today.
Photo: Tim Fischer/Midland Reporter-Telegram
Built literally on a foundation of God's word, Bynum School will dedicate its new facility today and fill the walls with Scriptures.
When the school was under construction, Headmaster Keri St. John said students, faculty and families wrote Scriptures in the buildings' foundations. In honor of its dedication, visitors have highlighted their favorite verse inside a printed Bible, which will be put in a cornerstone of the main lobby during the dedication ceremony scheduled for 4:30 p.m. at 5100 Avalon Drive.
Founded in 1985, Bynum is the only school of its kind — a nonprofit private school focused on educating special-needs students into their adulthood.
In its early years, Bynum began a relationship with a student named Kara, who was 13 years old. While she has faced some significant challenges, she has overcome a lot since joining Bynum 33 years ago, St. John said.
"She is mostly non-verbal, but she communicates well and lets everyone know what she needs," St. John said. "She has a come a long way to be able to express her needs. She enjoys driving a tractor on their land. She enjoys sitting in her hammock. She will go to the food bank, and she is able to go with the rest of the class out into the community. She loves walking and (interacting with others). She's a very social person. She's not going to live on her own or work on her own, but in a group setting, she does ceramics and eats at Midland College and does all the things with her class."
Before moving into the new location in August, Kara and the other students attended a campus that was comprised of a farmhouse, concrete barn and a few double-wide trailers off West County Road 60. Now, they spend their day in a 33,000-square-foot modern building located on 61 acres.
Bynum serves not only students in Midland but across West Texas — even as far as Pecos and Seminole.
St. John said the school currently has 65 students with nine prospective families looking to enroll. Most students fit within a diagnosis of special needs and they typically are diagnosed with Down syndrome or on the autism spectrum, she said. Some have rare syndromes, but most have learning and intellectual disabilities, she said.
Students range in age from 3 to 46. St. John said the pre-school program is integrated, meaning any student 3 to 6 can be in the preschool program.
The classes are divided by age and ability levels rather than grades: primary elementary, intermediate elementary, junior high, high school and vocational. She said they plan to implement a new primary intermediate functional life skills class. Dividing classes in this way allows the teachers and assistants to focus on individual needs within the student's individual program plans.
Annual tuition for pre-school through high school and the vocational program is $12,360, according to Executive Director Bill Maurer. He said tuition for the adult program is $13,390 because the school day and calendar year are longer.
"We offer tuition assistance," St. John said. "This year, we've given over $140,000 in tuition assistance, so we always encourage parents to apply for tuition assistance, and we enjoy providing it. We don't ever give 100 percent, but we are able to give quite a bit because of the grants and the generosity of people that give toward that."
One of the junior high rooms at the new Bynum School facilities. 01/29/19 Tim Fischer/Reporter-Telegram
One of the junior high rooms at the new Bynum School facilities....
Parents can apply to Bynum year-round, she said. The application includes general information, such as the student's age and diagnosis; the last time the student was evaluated; the student's current placement of services, such as physical therapy, occupational therapy, or speech therapy; any medical needs; and any changes from what services the student currently receives.
"From that point, we set up an appointment for them to come to the school, and they take a tour," St. John said. "After that, we set up a free day for the student to come to the school, so the student comes and spends a day at the school, and we can see if we are able to meet that student's needs. We don't just talk on the phone and say, 'We don't accept your child.' But they do have to have a diagnosis."
She said sometimes they may not be able to meet someone's needs, such as if the student needs one-on-one guidance or if they have extensive health needs that would require a nurse to constantly be with them.
Amenities and learning spaces
Bynum's new campus features classrooms and spaces allocated to special programs, Maurer said.
"More importantly, we have room to provide services and increase enrollment to serve the students who need us here in West Texas," he said.
The classroom building and vocational program building are connected by a courtyard.
The main building houses:
--five classrooms with state-of-the-art technology, including Clever Touch boards — interactive whiteboards — three computers and a teacher's laptop.
Each class also has three work stations and two restrooms.
--a media laboratory that doubles as a library, with multiple desktop computers and tables where students can read and complete research.
--a sensory room available for students who may need time away from the classroom because of behavioral issues, overstimulation or understimulation.
--a clinic with two beds, medications and refrigerators.
It is staffed by a full-time nurse.
--a kitchen with a large pantry, lots of cabinet space, a microwave, stovetop and double oven with warming drawers and a sink.
--a large activities center for students to have P.E. or guest speakers to use as space for assemblies or other events.
--an art room.
--multiple therapy rooms.
--a greenhouse with a potting shed garden used for growing crops and flowers.
--offices for administration.
-- a faculty break room.
--a secure playground with specialized equipment.
The vocational program building has:
--three classrooms with the same technology and amenities as the main building classrooms.
--a ceramics studio with wheelchair-accessible tables and drying racks, along with multiple kilns, moldings and painting tools.
--a fully equipped kitchen and laundry center where students can learn to cook and do laundry.
--a dining area.
--a woodshop that is under construction.
The new Bynum School facilities located at 5100 Avalon Drive. 01/29/19 Tim Fischer/Reporter-Telegram
The new Bynum School facilities located at 5100 Avalon Drive....
Bynum has multiple activities for its students to do throughout the day.
"One of the things that we believe for all our students is that they have a quality of life and they have the ability to give to the community and they have the ability to do more than sit at home and watch TV," St. John said. "So, we try to give them the skills at whatever level they can do."
Bynum provides students with:
--multiple forms of therapy, including music, speech, physical, occupational, and mneme — a one-on-one session where students sing and paint.
--ceramics.
Students create angel figurines and doves that are sold to Hospice for Midland, which gives them to clients' families.
--gardening and growing produce for Bynum's kitchen, as well as a pumpkin patch.
--laundry training, which consists of ironing and folding clothes.
--life skills, independent skills and studies of novels.
--job training for vocational students at places in the community, such as the Petroleum Museum, Midland College, Carino's, West Texas Food Bank, Helping Hands, Super Mercado and Friends of the Library.
--volunteer work at various places, including Meals on Wheels.
--field trips to the movie theater, where students can learn how to purchase a ticket, order refreshments and sit quietly through a movie; the library for story time; and Chick-fil-A, where students take a tour and learn how employees work behind the scenes.
--a close partnership with students at Trinity School.
Both schools' students develop relationships across various activities, including P.E., flying kites at the park and pep rallies.
"We must recognize our community and the donors because this building wouldn't be here if it weren't for our community, individual donors, private donors, corporations and foundations who have again donated to the capital campaign," Maurer said. "We are so pleased and grateful to Don and Susie Evans who co-chaired with Mikell and Will Abney to conduct our capital campaign. They did great work, outreach to the community supporting Bynum School. We are very grateful to them for what they have done."
St. John said she has been working at Bynum on and off since 1997, and she loves it because of the students, and she enjoys being able to serve them and their needs. She said she sees the progress within every individual.
Maurer, who has been the executive director since May 2012, said he is not aware of another school like Bynum.
"Every year, I do some research and I have not found any school that provides or offers what Bynum school does," Maurer said. "I've found schools that may serve students with disabilities and diagnosis, but I have not found any school anywhere that provides an uninterrupted continuum of services. A child could enroll here at age 3 and stay through their adulthood."
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1999, c. 36, §4 (NEW). 2001, c. 410, Pt. B, §7 (AMD). 2003, c. 157, §1 (AMD). 2005, c. 401, Pt. C, §7 (AMD). 2009, c. 244, Pt. A, §1 (AMD). 2013, c. 94, §1 (AMD).


Transcript of Oct. 14, 2008 webinar on SOA research and how companies are implementing SOA more strategically based on essential adoption best practices.
Listen to the podcast. Download the podcast. Access the Webinar. Learn more. Sponsor: Hewlett-Packard.
Download the IDC report "A Study in Critical Success Factors for SOA."
Introduction: Hello, and welcome to a special BriefingsDirect presentation, a podcast created from a recent Hewlett-Packard (HP) webinar on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) adoption trends. The webinar examines recent findings and analysis from original IDC surveys and research into actual enterprise SOA use and their reported business outcomes.
We'll hear from executives at both IDC and HP on how SOA is rapidly increasing in its importance and value for developers, architects and IT strategists. The presentation is followed by a question and answer session from the live webinar audience.
Please now welcome the webinar moderator, BriefingsDirect's Dana Gardner.
Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to our live webcast, "Expanding SOA Adoption to Mainstream IT," brought to you by HP and InfoWorld. I'm your moderator Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions.
Today we're going to examine fresh research from IDC on SOA adoption patterns and what users of SOA identify as success factors. In other words, for those doing SOA right, what it is that led them there, and what is it that they're doing that others can learn from, in terms of best practices and insight?
We'll hear from Sandy Rogers, program director for SOA, Web services, and integration research at IDC. We'll also hear from Kelly Emo, SOA product marketing manager for HP Software.
Now let's dig into SOA use today, and the adoption patterns that show how and why SOA is moving into mainstream IT. We're seeing a move to a strategic SOA value that support business goals and not just SOA that supports IT goals, such as the benefits around code reuse or development agility.
We're starting to see a great deal of movement to the strategic value of SOA, and that means moving toward the aspects that create the need for governance, develops SOA benefits across larger business processes, and starts to show the paybacks in terms of actual business outcomes.
What are the factors that determine the success of SOA, generating that strategic and business level payback? Let's now go to Sandy Rogers at IDC, and learn more about her research into success in a SOA world.
Sandra Rogers: Thank you, Dana. Hello, everyone. First of all, what we want to do is take a look at what has brought us to this period of time -- where we now need to create enterprise-level systems.
Right now, we're seeing a lot of systems where their foundations are basically breaking, and we're dealing with a mixture of different generations, different types of systems, different ways that they were developed, different technologies, and different ways that they are and continue to be procured. Enterprises are challenged to address new and changing business requirements, and that volatility of business change is increasing at very rapid rate.
Organizations are looking for much more consistency across enterprise activities and views, and are really finding a lot of competitive differentiation in being able to manage their processes more effectively. That requires the ability to stand across different types of systems and to respond, whether in a reactive mode or a proactive mode, to opportunities.
The types of individuals who are being served by these systems are different, and that's because of the extended value change, new types of workers entering the workforce, and many different business models that require either some type of self-service capability, or even more of a high-touch personalized type of engagement and experience with systems.
What we're finding is that, as we go to this generation, SOA, in and of itself, is spawning the ability to address new types of models, such as event-based processing, model-based processing, cloud computing, and appliances. We're really, as a foundation, looking to make a strategic move. With that kind of structure, it's also balancing freedom.
So, moving on, what we see -- and this is a poll that was recently run by IDC this summer, primarily with mid- and large-sized organizations -- is that if they haven't already adopted SOA, they are planning on it, and at greater levels of engagement. So, if it is not going to be "the" standard for most or all systems, it's important, and will be used for all new projects, or it's a preferred approach.
The issue is not necessarily deciding if they should go toward SOA. What we're finding is that for most organizations this is the way that they are going to move, and the question is just navigating how to best do that for the best value and for better success.
According to the same poll, what we show is the top IT objectives and challenges for SOA. We also asked for business objectives and IT objectives. What's different from past surveys that we've run is that the flexibility and agility to respond to changing business needs is actually number one now. In previous responses, that had been in the top tier of three, but not necessarily the first one.
What are most interesting are the top challenges in implementing SOA. All of our past studies reinforced that skills, availability of skills, and training in SOA continue to be a number one challenge. What's really noticeable now is that setting up an SOA governance structure has reached the second most-indicated challenge. This is the top 3 of 18 options.
In the past you may have seen security or other technical elements, interoperability, or maturity of standards. What this is telling us is that we have reached another stage of maturity, and that in order to move forward organization will need to think about SOA as an overall program, and how it impacts both technology and people dimensions within the organization.
We find that when we ask this from a business objectives and challenges view, the business is looking at more efficient processes at greater levels of service and customer service throughout their entire environment. Some of their top challenges involve gaining agreement on what processes and services should exist, how to define those, and how to agree upon those, and also rallying individuals around support of budgeting and funding for SOA. This all points to an overall need to step up the ability to address this as a managed business discipline, versus a technology discipline.
We wanted to look at how SOA's success is actually defined, even though SOA can have varying definitions amongst individuals, and what factors and practices in these organizations that are successful have the most impact. We wanted to see what tactics and technologies are being leveraged, and how they are being leveraged, and how they are being introduced and expanded within the enterprise.
Then, we wanted to see what other words of advice experienced leaders want to impart to others, as we are seeing a next wave of adopters that may be a little bit new to SOA, versus those that had come before.
So, with this study, we did primary research, mostly U.S.- and European-based companies who had successfully implemented enterprise SOA programs. Most of them had from two, to two-and-a-half, to over eight years of experience. Some of these companies actually had started their SOA endeavors at the turn of the century.
They're senior level individuals with enterprise perspective and they're primarily from the IT ranks. They also have had certain levels of experience that might range from CIO to enterprise architect, to quality manager. So, we got a broad-brush view, but most of these individuals were actually charged with, or were a core part of who was driving their SOA initiative in their organization.
This was based on a semi-structured interview format, so that while we wanted to capture some basic information about the overall IT environment structure, the SOA initiatives in particular, the technology, topology, the business goals, and drivers of the organization, we really won't have that broad brush view to present a context.
We also did this in a semi-structured way, in order not to skew the results and to unearth varying elements that may have influenced their success, despite what these individuals brought to the table. And, there was representation across various sized companies and industries sectors.
A few of the overarching trends reinforced what we have been seeing in some of our studies. We are indeed moving from project- and application-level SOA to more of a system and enterprise scale. And, the short- and long-term impact of SOA needs to be better understood and addressed. Enterprises need to manage the expectations of the individuals in the organizations as to how their roles will be impacted, and what kind of benefits they may get on a short term basis, versus that long term view and accumulation, and they need to try to balance strategy with tactics.
While technologies are key enablers, most of the study participants focused on organizational and program dynamics as being key contributors to success. Through technology, they are able to influence the impact of the activities that they are introducing into the overall SOA program.
That success can be defined in multiple dimensions, but rising to the top, we found that, in part because of their roles, the pervasiveness of SOA adoption in the enterprise was a key determinant of how they were looking at it, whether their programs were gaining traction in the right ways, and were being successful. They were achieving clear business results, and those that can be measured.
When we gathered all of this information, we had many different tactics and activities, and some of them started to become repetitive in our research. We created a framework of varying components, and elements that impacted success. Then, we aggregated these into seven key domains, as we call them.
While different elements can impact each different domain, and vice versa, it was interesting trying to think of a way to present his. All the different domains impact one another. Therefore, if you're able to handle trust, you're able to influence organizational change management effectiveness. If you're able to address business alignment, then you'll have much more success in understanding the impact on architecture and vice versa.
With this, it's much more of a network of different activities and components. The technologies interact on the network's foundation. When you really think about it, services is basically a network topology. SOA puts a wrapper around this environment, and tries to give it a foundation and a framework, for which it will function effectively.
The seven domains are: Business Alignment, Organizational Change Management, Communication, Trust, Scale and Sustainability, Architecture and Governance.
Now, we're going to briefly go over these seven domains, and give some key trends that we discovered about how different activities and tactics can make each of these areas much more effective?
With business alignment we discovered that with these organizations and these individuals, SOA is truly understood as a business discipline. Now, many of them did admit that within their organization. They still have a way to go to educate, and incorporate SAO as more of a business view. It's often seen as more of an IT agenda, but that is starting to change. But, they themselves, in the way they have approached the issues, and the way that they are thinking about their program, see it as a business discipline.
That alignment of business to what is being incorporated in the program, services, and processes that are being created means the involvement of key individuals who have a keen understanding of the business. Sometimes, it might mean involving someone at a high enough level within a business division who can see how activities within that business division may be impacted or may impact other divisions, yet have enough understanding of some of the details around what transpires, what incorporates the business, what defines the business -- the elements and the processes -- and get them involved in the overall initiative.
These individuals also can influence others. They not only influence outcomes of what is actually being created, but they can actually influence the acceptance rate, the understanding of services of SOA within their network of individuals, and within the activities that they are involved in.
Many of these individuals can help with reflecting on what the current state of the environment is. That can actually help define what future state might need to be created. Think about the overall framework. I believe that you can get access to this and that HP is making it available to you for more detail. I know it's difficult to see here on the screen.
One of the factors highlighted here is indeed getting those individuals really involved, and helping them with determining a key business taxonomy, and vocabulary. It's very important that everyone get on the same page of how they are going to communicate with one another, and define that within an aligned business appropriate to what is being presented.
If we look at the next domain, organizational change management, one of the key factors we found is that many of these individuals did what they could do to ease the transition to ensure that individuals may not have overly complex requirements posed to them at the onset. They tried to figure out what the existing modus operandi was, incorporate what they could into that, and move the organization along. The key is to disseminate that knowledge, and give tools and different technologies that can help with that change, without imparting too much complexity, which disrupts, and/or impacts the goals that they are trying to achieve on a day-to-day basis.
This is very important, versus task initiatives that we have seen, where organizations put together a road map, expected the individuals to follow certain protocols, but really didn't think about how that would impact everything else that these individuals were involved in.
It also gets them to think outside the box across the enterprise. A way to do that is to show how different services are being created and what it looks like, giving them an overall understanding of the program, and driving cooperation through examples, and helping with their understanding by presenting them with concrete examples in their context. Then, they can start to envision what other types of services and processes it could be impacting, and who to get also involved if they want to build out this network impact.
One thing we found is that it's important to have that overall view of the program, of the enterprise, and to have key individuals as part of the central architecture team, the center of excellence, or whatever, work side-by-side with individuals on the different divisional development teams, the different business analysts involved. They can start to understand and impact the outcomes of initial projects.
Then through a train-the-trainer approach, they can get more individuals involved in utilizing what could be at their disposal. As time goes on and these organizations start automating more of the capabilities in the foundation for SOA, all of these different parties understand how to engage with the systems, take advantage of it, and then can start envisioning how to utilize them to their own success.
The next major domain is around communication. It was very important to these leaders that they were seen as a business leaders, as well as an IT leader. They were also evangelists, and politicians. They actually went out and did one-on-one discussions with key stakeholders. They would have discussions about what policies, protocols, and standards they were thinking about incorporating.
By the time those decisions needed to be agreed upon to gain that buy-in, a lot of that lobbying had happened behind the scenes, and there were a lot of lunch-and-learn type of sessions. That was really making those connections, and showing individuals how they could not only impact the success of the overall initiative, but also how they could actually gain some things from cooperating and drive that network effect.
In order to do that, a lot more visibility needed to be presented in a variety of different forms that these institutions used, and accessibility to this information is key. Trying not to have too many middlemen and trying to automate it, so individuals find what they needed, was very important.
Many of them had designed their own dashboards and wikis, different ways to present information on the overall program. They were thinking about the details, introducing things like registries and repositories from a more technical dimension. Engaging in more of a collaborative atmosphere really drove a lot and also allowed individuals to communicate with one another, and not always through the central team. This was very important.
Some smaller initiative may be able to run manually through a central group, but as soon as it started to extend, that's where they found that allowing different conversations and negotiations to happen, being able to have a potential policy consumer, finding various services, knowing how to engage with the service provider, and having that as automated as possible will not disrupt their daily routine. It will make it easier and will also capture all the necessary information to go forward, without having a lot of rework and lot of hand-holding. This was again very important that that kind of visibility and accessibility is so key.
That dovetails with the next domain, which is really about building trust, enabling cooperation, and building in a sense of security that these services are going to run and be available for someone to consume. Developers can now think about that loose coupling and drive more of a SOA architecture in what they're developing. That sense of security is beyond just traditional security. It's performance. It's ensuring that the availability of that service is going to be there under load. There are lots of different concerns.
We found that many companies standardize security in the form of services embedded within the framework, foundation, and infrastructure that they had created for the SOA program. That, in and of itself, started alleviating the pressure on individuals to know exactly what security protocols to cover. They ensured identity rights and they could be protected, and mitigated their risks on inappropriate use of services.
They understood that this secure environment is important, and that the reputation of a service matters. That means validating that standards and policies were upheld and integrating what they could regarding testing and validation in the course of the lifecycle of developing their services. By the time a service was posted and available, that service could be depended on and there were no concerns about it. If this was being done manually or ad hoc, people found that they had different experiences.
One organization we interviewed found that over 50 percent of the services that were in production didn't adhere to policies. As soon as they automated that and brought it up to 100 percent adherence, the network effect started to take over, regarding the consumption, use, and even the development of services.
The transparency and visibility into past behaviors and the history of the service is very important to individuals who are going to take that risk and take that step that they are not going to develop something on their own, but are going to reuse and capitalize on what is built out as this network of resources and services.
Of course, we can't talk about SOA without mentioning architecture, and what we kept hearing over and over again was that architecture should come first over technology. Many of these companies had to come up with reference architecture and had to prototype the technology and the reference architecture, so that it would be able to address reality.
In the past, I've heard, some of these enterprise architecture teams actually did, beyond a proof of concept, prototype the varying scenarios that were likely to serve in rolling out the architecture to more entities, more systems, more and system type.
So, setting the standards, setting the reference architecture, defining messages, schemas, and protocols -- more so than mandating the specific use of certain technologies -- was a real learning experience for these organizations. Large organizations, especially, may not be able to influence every technology that will be used or can't envision every single technology that will be introduced to the environment in the future.
What they needed to do was focus on all the architectural dimensions, best practices, and standards, and define those, so that when they needed to test whether technology could interact appropriately, they had much of this defined. That allowed that level of flexibility to flow through to the different divisions and teams. Thinking about architecture beyond technology, about the process of how you are dealing with setting up architecture, how you are engaging with architecture, and seeing it through it's different stages and lifecycle are very important.
Updating process and SOA technologies, vis-à-vis the overall IT environment, started to surface as a key concern in what needed to transpire. You can't treat SOA as a silo. You need to think about this as an overall environment that incorporates many different options. One of the major reasons people are moving to SOA is to take advantage of a heterogeneous mix of resources, whether internal to an organization, or external through an organization.
Thinking through those dynamics leads to the next domain, which is scale and sustainability, to prepare for that viral network effect and to automate and test for higher volumes of demands early on. We found some organizations that had either built some of their own technologies, or had sort of incorporated things that were available very early on in the decade. When it came time to scale out, and there was more pressure imposed on these systems, they really couldn't handle the demand.
What we learned from them is to really make sure that you test that early. Even though you may not have the volume now, you may some day, and even one service could get hit by an unknown amount of consumption. Being able to prepare for that, and prepare your architecture, as well as your policies and your governance processes, to be more distributed and federated to prepare for more of a federated type of environment, means that these policies and technologies can scale out.
We found that it's a learning experience to get the right definition around a service, the right fit, and the right granularity. That's something that comes with experience, and you might need to go through a couple of iteration of services before people understand how to best keep volatility down on services, put the right level of abstracted tiers for processes and rules, and plan and test that you have the right levels. Then, you can scale out.
That may mean atomic services at some levels and more broad-grained services at others, and seeing how that impacts the infrastructure, and testing that out in all the different scenarios and dependencies that could exist.
Last, but not least, the final domain, where we start impacting everyone, was the issue of bringing in proper governance. Thinking about it in balancing control with empowerment and driving consistency throughout the environment is very important. People needed to plan on the processes and ramp up the speed of development and deployment into production, until having that level of consistency was giving them huge amounts of business value, savings efficiencies, and opportunities in the market to differentiate and compete.
Making moves early to automate was a learning experience for a lot of these organizations that didn't do this. They found that they could have not only expanded their programs more effectively, but they could have mitigated their risks. They could have avoided a lot of rework, as they had automated governance processes earlier on, integrating it into the overall flow, as we stated before, and thinking about it not as a just "these are the things that need to be met and this is the information that needs to be captured." It's really thinking about the processes.
What happens is that there are these exceptions, dealing with review committees that should be involved, determining the right roles and responsibilities, and sometimes that may mean amending what you have.
In other instances, it was creating anew. We found in other studies that a lot of organizations did not have strong governance. SOA almost forces these companies to do what they should have been doing all along around incorporating the right procedures around governance, and making that a non-intrusive approach.
If you make it too complex, no one is going to follow it. If you make it a mandated activity, without a lot of tools to help facilitate, it becomes a chore to do that non-intrusively. Also speaking to non-intrusive runtime governance, many of these organizations found that you really should have a centralized foundation of runtime governance incorporated into the fabric of the SOA architecture, and technology infrastructure.
From all the right monitoring and management around services, in particular portions of this network that's integrated together, you can gain that overall perspective and drive what's necessary to move forward, both from a business goal perspective and from an IT topology perspective.
To quickly wrap up, here are some additional words of advice from the field. We found that enforcing policies, not putting off governance till later on, was very important, putting more efforts into business modeling, which many of these organizations are doing now. They said that they wished they had done a little bit more when thinking about the services that were created, focusing on preparing the architecture for much more process and innovation.
So, with that, I'd like to hand this off to Kelly Emo to speak on HP's offerings in the SOA space.
Kelly Emo: Thank you, Sandy. And good morning and afternoon, everyone. I'm just going to wrap up the webinar with about 10 minutes or so. I'm going to hit four main points that I think will dovetail nicely with what you heard today from Sandy Rogers, some great insights coming from customers who have "been there, done that," and have been working with SOA for while. It's real advice that we all can learn from.
I'm going to dive now into a little bit more context around why, if you're doing SOA, now is absolutely the right time to be thinking about and working on a governance program. I'm going to share a few key governance-specific best practices that we've also gleaned from our customers who have been down the road of their SOA journey.
We'll talk a little bit about the value of using an automated SOA governance platform, to help automate those manual activities and get you there faster. And, I'm going to wrap up with one customer success story, a customer who is almost complete with their SOA journey -- about 70 percent there -- and who sees significant business benefits through their investments in not only SOA, but SOA governance, and SOA management.
You heard from IDC the seven critical SOA success factors that came from this in-depth analysis of customers. The point that I want to reiterate here that was so powerful in this discussion is the idea that the seven domains are linked. By putting energy and effort in any one of them, you are setting yourself up for more success across the board.
What we are going to do now is drill down into that domain of governance. You'll see as we talk through some of the key capabilities for SOA moving to the enterprise from a governance perspective, how it will help establish other success factors, like building our trust, or facilitating communication across IT silos, for example.
I'm just going to touch on this briefly. It's interesting here. HP has used this graphics for quite a while in talking about the need for governance, having a governance program that helps bring together the different IT stakeholders that play a part in the successful delivery and realization of business services that return the results that the business expects and that behave, so that they can be easily consumed, and reused for even more responsiveness and agility.
This graphic rings true even more now with the kind of pressures that our businesses and IT are under to realize the results of their investment in SOA faster with existing resources. What we're seeing again and again with customers who have been implementing SOA and going down to the path of scaling it out, is that they have to invest in processes and best practices to not only deliver services, but to ensure that the services are of the highest quality, that they can be managed over time, and that policies are consistently applied, so that we can handle events like change and new consumption in a way that delivers the result that we expect.
We see many of our customers now crossing the enterprise scalability divide with their SOA, looking to incorporate SOA into their mainstream IT organizations, and they're seeing the benefits of that initial investment in governance help them make that leap.
So why invest in SOA governance now? It's an interesting question I've been getting a lot lately. "Hey, you know, we're under a lot of economic pressure, budgets are tight, there's fewer resources to do the same work." This sounds counter-intuitive, absolutely, but this is the right time to make that investment in SOA governance, because the benefits are going to pay off significantly.
SOA governance is all about helping IT get to the expected business benefits of their SOA. You can think of SOA governance, in essence, as IT's navigation system to get to the end goal of SOA. What it's going to help IT do, as they look to scale SOA out, is to more broadly foster trust across those distributed domains. It's going to help become a catalyst for communication and collaboration, and it's going to help jump-start that non-expert staff.
You may recall that Sandy mentioned one of the biggest challenges with SOA is building out the education and expertise among the staff. If governance can assist in shrinking that learning curve, enable IT organizations to understand the unique attributes of SOA and what process is need to be applied to successfully realize their SOA goal, that will help accelerate the transformation that needs to occur from the SOA perspective.
The thing that's key about governance is that it helps integrate those silos of IT. It helps integrate the folks who are responsible for designing services with those who actually have to develop the back end implementations and with those who are doing the testing of performance and functionality. Alternately, it integrated them with the organizations that are responsible for both deploying the services and the policies and integration logic that will support accessing those services.
So, governance becomes the catalyst for integrating these silos and facilitating communication. One of the keys, one of the best practices we are seeing across these customers, is that they approach governance from a lifecycle perspective. They are not just thinking of one aspect, but they are actually thinking of all the different collaboration points, all the different key decisions that need to be made, as a service goes from initial concept, into its design, into the development organizations that are responsible for delivering the implementations, out into the QA organizations that are responsible for defining the requirements for testing aspects of those services.
This includes the functional test, the performance test, the security test, and then out into the operational teams. These teams will be responsible for deploying services into the network, and understanding the implications on the stacks, and data sources, services access, and those that are responsible for deploying policies, such as authentication policies, authorization policies, the protocol mediations, and all the way back into the change process.
I'm not saying that an organization has to automate and create a complete governance infrastructure for all aspects of the lifecycle on day one. Certainly, there's going to be the starting point that's going to make the most sense, based on the organization's maturity. Maybe the first thing to bite off is automating how organizations can get visibility of services and putting some automated policy checks in place on the design side for testing supportive standards and interoperability.
By keeping a perspective on lifecycle governance, your organization can be primed and ready to handle SOA, as it scales, as more and more services go into production, and more and more services are deemed to be ready for consumption and reuse into new composite applications.
The key is to keep a service lifecycle governance perspective in mind, as you go about your governance program, and automation is key. Sandy touched on this, and my intent here is not to talk through all aspects of this slide, but just to show you that there are a number of different aspects of governance that can be automated. If they are, that will have significant efficiency pay off downstream.
Automating policy compliance can bring a huge pay off. Sandy mentioned an example where a customer went into their governance program assuming that people were doing the right thing and found initially that fewer than 50 percent of the services being built were actually in compliance with the design policies that they have established to meet their corporate and IT objective.
Automation that will ensure that those issues can be caught quickly, and the collaboration and processes can be put in place to affect that behavior, and alternately work into that network effect that Sandy talked about can not only be in compliance, but also be something to brag about.
This next slide makes a point that I think is important here. I talk to a lot of folks about SOA. When you talk about a service lifecycle, it's very different than a traditional application lifecycle. It builds upon the concept of an app lifecycle, where you have a planning, building, testing, deploying, and changed cycle, but you also have the impact of consumption. Those are the consuming services and will have a lifecycle of their own.
It involves planning what services they are going to consume in the building out of the composite application, locating those services, engaging in a contractual relationship with the service provider, and alternately testing and delivering that composite application. Then, if there is a change on either side of the equation, if there is a change to the underlying service or a change to the composite application that, in turn, impacts, both the service and the composite application from a expectations perspective and, potentially, in performance and quality perspective.
The SOA lifecycle can actually be thought of as concentric circles. It's an iterative, living, breathing thing, and that's why service lifecycle governance is so key, to keep all these dependencies and the synthetic relationship, moving smoothly forward in terms of meeting its business objective over time, not just the initial deployment, but as both services and consumption patterns change. And governance is a powerful tool to manage this power, and complexity downstream.
So what I am going to show you next are a couple of key things you can do with the governance program to help you manage and scale. The first is really thinking about this idea of the service manager. I talked about the lifecycles of providing a service and consuming a service. A service manager is either a real or virtual person who is responsible for ensuring that the service is delivering against the goals of the business, not just at its initial deployment, but as different people are consuming it.
When I say a "virtual person," I realize how funny that sounds. I don't literally mean a virtual person. What I mean is that it could be the service provider, or could be a committee of service providers, key service consumers, and maybe a line-of-business owner.
What we are finding more and more now is that organizations are actually investing in a role known as service manager, someone who oversees the implication of not only delivering a service over time, but those that are consuming it. I see this as a best practice that can be supported by SOA governance, and which helps empower them by giving them a foundation to set up policies and have visibility in terms of how this service is meeting its objective and who is consuming the service.
Sandy talked a little bit about this as well. This is another best practice we are seeing mature customers that are being successful, and that's the way SOA governance deploys out there. That's bringing together the robust and well-developed processes around SOA governance and quality assurance, and creating a collaborative environment between those that are responsible for managing the entire testing process of new applications and services and those that are involved with the initial planning, with the design of services, and the governance of services.
You can actually get a dialog going between your enterprise architecture and planning teams, your development teams, and your testing teams, in terms of the expectations, and requirements right upfront, as the concept of the service is being ferreted out.
Get that communication occurring, so that everybody knows what are the key aspects we are going to test, how we are going to deliver it, what the expectations are, and what the policies are from a quality perspective that's going to drive governance decisions downstream.
A really simple example comes from a customer who automated a very simple policy, which said that if a service has any critical or serious defects, we won't allow it to be pushed into the staging environment, but rather we'll flag it, bring it back into the testing process, and have it a discussion around how we're going to mitigate those requirements. That doesn't sound like a lot of work, but it was important as the number of services scaled up to really automate that collaboration, and ensure that things didn't fall in the cracks.
Ultimately, it's about driving collaboration between the enterprise architecture and development team and the quality assurance team through automated governance, connected to quality. The same thing can be said about operations, by aligning and integrating the processes and knowledge that's gleaned through the planning, and design processes, and the governance processes about how services are expected to behave once they go into deployment.
With the information that flows to the operations team, what we avoid is throwing a service over the wall, and then testing to figure it out. As a result, the SOA and the operational aspects of a service that ultimately get realized in production align with the original expectations that we are established.
You get the service behavior that was originally intended, and as your SOA scales and you get more and more services out there, this becomes essential. It keeps that line of communication seamless and flowing between the planning side and the delivery side, so that you get the behavior that meets the needs of the service consumers, and ultimately the business. And again, automated governance can help with this.
HP just recently announced the third generation of our automated governance platform, HP SOA Systinet. We're positioning this as IT's navigation system for SOA. It's designed at the core to guide our customers through their SOA journey by automating the governance aspects of the service lifecycle. This will ensure that the policies that are defined and automated, at the design, planning, and build side, as well as at the testing and run side, will map to the goals of the business in IT.
There are a number of functions inside Systinet designed to empower that concept of the service manager, supporting both parts of the lifecycle by providing a service, and the consumption of services, and supporting that collaboration between those responsible for providing services, and those who want to engage in a contractual relationship with them. Ultimately, the idea behind Systinet 3.0 is IT's objective in scaling out their SOA across their enterprise to realize the business value of their SOA investments faster, which is so important in today's environment.
Let's talk about a customer who has actually done this. This is the success story of a major European telecom provider. They've implemented approximately 70 percent of their SOA objective and right from the get-go, they made an investment in SOA governance. What they have seen over the last three years is an ROI of 327 percent, and it's really benefited them in four main dimensions.
First, they've been able to reduce the amount of downtime in the provisioning and delivery of new mobile subscribers services. A lot of this has to do with the fact that the services that are being delivered have been designed compliant to policies and have been tested and confirmed that they will deliver the behavior that was expected in terms of how they execute an operation.
The customer has also been able to increase customer retention, which has really resulted from two things, faster delivery of new services, and reduced downtime.
They've been able to reduce the time to market behind the delivery of new services, because of the timing of the communication flows, and ensuring interoperability and compliance.
And, they have seen an overall IT cost reduction of a significant amount of money, almost a million dollars, with their investment in SOA governance from the get-go.
Investing in SOA governance, as I mentioned at the very beginning of my presentation, while it may require a little investment upfront, can have a significant and powerful payoff downstream, when you go to move SOA out into the mainstream.
With that, I'm just about out of time, and I want to make sure that we have some time for Q and A, for both Sandy and myself. So, here is a pointer to where you can learn more, as both Dana and Sandy mentioned upfront. The IDC research is available on www.hp.com/go/soa, so you can download the reports and dig in to the specific detail behind what was shared with you today.
So, I'm going to turn it back to Dana and let him lead Q and A.
Gardner: Thank you, Kelly. Now that we've had a few questions, I'm going to direct the first one -- from me, actually -- to Sandy. I wanted to find out if there were any real surprises, any unexpected results, when you went out to the field to uncover SOA practices. Was there anything that caught you by surprise?
Rogers: What was interesting was that when it comes to providing metrics around the SOA experience, we have got a long way to go. A lot of organizations knew about different approaches to SOA management in monitoring, and understanding dimensions around the environment well before they made those investments.
Then, they still followed the same pattern that we have seen in past generations of technology where, when we were first being introduced in the marketplace, people said they weren't going to make the same sort of mistakes. It seems that SOA is very much like other initiative.
What they are doing now is a really fast catch-up in finding a lot of immediate value from doing that. Part of that had to do with gaining the buy-in, justifying the investments. What most of these organizations are discovering is that the last mile is dealing with that funding hurdle, showing that kind of value. What they're realizing is that if they have these kinds of capabilities, they would have been able to measure that value much earlier.
It's more of a word of advice that we were getting than it was a real surprise, but it's something that, as an industry watcher, you just sort of see. Also, a lot of these organizations are indeed starting to tackle Web 2.0, and mashups for other kinds of dimensions within their organization. They really see it as an overarching type of trend. They don't see these as separate technology initiatives, and that's actually a pleasant type of view and a surprise to me as an analyst to see that. That sort of holistic view is starting to take hold.
Gardner: Here's another question directed at Sandy. You mentioned that the automating governance is an important element. What best practices have you seen for convincing the management in these enterprises to start an automated governance program?
Rogers: I was mentioning that just a moment ago. The kind of visibility that you are able to give to management presents the information on what services are being incorporated. But, if those services are designed well, you can actually be able to track that to key performance indicators (KPIs) in business measures and understand how this can be justified and funded? That kind of visibility is very important.
The other thing with automating governance, and I think Kelly referred to this, is that you do not need to do it all at once. That really targets protecting the environment, being able to automate as much as possible, have standards services, and schema automatically populated in the tools, and have that shared metadata concept start to expand. So, whether you're creating services from one tool or another, that metadata is being captured. As time proceeds, you act on that metadata in the form of what kinds of policies you need, and so the threshold you measure that you can achieve is an overall process.
Gardner: This is a question for Kelly. The European company mentioned that had the 320 percent-plus return on investment. Did they start their SOA with SOA management or governance? What best practices have you learned about when to start managing SOA?
Emo: It's a very good question. In that particular scenario, they actually started first with management, because they were having downtime issues. What they found right away, as they started to instrument their SOA environment and understand where the issues were taking place, was the part of the problem was inconsistency, in terms of what the operational team understood they were supposed to do, when they provisioned out of service from a load balancing, a security, and an overall performance perspective.
They found very rapidly that if they put governance in place to start to capture those expectations back on the design side, and then communicate those expectations to operations, they were able to alleviate that gap. They are now at a point where they're automating a production deployment of services using templates that come out of the governance side. So, they're seeing additional timesavings in terms of how quickly they can provision new mobile subscriber services to their customer base.
Gardner: Okay, I have another. I think it's directed to Sandy. SOA is not happening in a vacuum. There are other major undertakings in IT departments and across enterprises of virtualization, cloud computing, data center consolidation have all have been quite prominent lately. The question is, how does SOA help or align with these other types of goals that IT is tackling?
Rogers: When it comes being able to support an effort like consolidation, the whole idea behind what a lot of people are doing with SOA is to try to consolidate on core functional and information elements, and then share those to the rest of the enterprise, and through different applications and systems.
So, it dovetails very nicely with consolidation. What a lot of organizations might do is try to consolidate first and then think about enabling with services. However, being able to expose varying parts of different systems and have that visibility into the core services and how they are being used can actually facilitate on both consolidation and modernization efforts.
When it comes to initiatives like cloud computing and virtualization, it's really thinking about the overall architecture, what kind of interfaces that you have, what kind of service needs to be supported in a virtualized environment being able to componentize, and modularize it, and allow for that necessary interoperability.
When you think about virtualizing systems, and when you think about that overarching idea of on-demand cloud computing, the first step is interoperability. We found a lot of even on-demand providers who didn't go down the Web services and services-oriented route, having to go back, and re-architect their solution. It's important to have that kind of interoperability facilitated on a standardized basis to enable those kinds of activities to proceed.
Gardner: I believe we've run out of time. I certainly want to thank our guests. We've been speaking with Sandra Rogers of IDC, and Kelly Emo of HP Software. This webcast is sponsored by HP Software and includes commissioned research from IDC.
You can get more information at www.hp.com/go/soa.
This is your moderator, Dana Gardner, principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Thank you all for joining the webcast.
You've been listening to a sponsored BriefingsDirect Podcast on SOA adoption patterns based on original research from IDC and HP. Thanks for listening and come back next time.


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US Dept. of State and MTVU Announces Artists to Help Nominate Candidates for 2012-2013 Fulbright-MTVU Fellowship
Christopher Simmons B.o.B. and Diplo, Foster the People, Fulbright Program, Fulbright-mtvU Fellowships, fullbright, J. Cole, MTV, MTV College Network, MTVU, US Department of State Feb 23, 2012
WASHINGTON, D.C. (MuseWire) – The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) and mtvU, MTV's 24-hour college network, announced today the musical artists who will review and help nominate candidates for the 2012-2013 Fulbright-mtvU Fellowships. This year's artists include Foster the People, J. Cole, B.o.B. and Diplo.
ECA sponsors the Fulbright-mtvU Fellowships to promote the power of music as a global force for promoting mutual understanding. Applications for the 2012-2013 fellowships will be accepted through March 1, 2012. Winners are chosen through a multi-tiered, merit-based selection process including merit reviews by U.S. and foreign academic leaders and area experts. The final selection will be made by the presidentially appointed J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. A video marking the fifth anniversary of the fellowship demonstrates its impact around the world. More information is available at http://www.us.fulbrightonline.org and http://www.fulbright.mtvU.com.
Winners of the 2011-2012 Fulbright-mtvU Fellowships are currently conducting research in United Kingdom (Northern Ireland), Mongolia, Argentina and South Africa for one academic year on projects of their own design focused on an aspect of international musical culture. The four 2011 winners include Kyle Inman, a graduate of DePauw University; Lauren Knapp, a graduate of Grinnell College; Jennifer Saura, a graduate of Harvard University; and Meja Soba, a graduate student at UCLA. Each has been sharing her or his experiences with peers via video reports, blogs and podcasts on mtvU and http://www.fulbright.mtvU.com.
The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government's flagship international educational exchange program and is supported by the people of the United States and partner countries around the world. Since 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 310,000 participants from over 155 countries with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.
Broadcast to more than 750 college campuses, mtvU reaches upwards of nine million U.S. college students, making it the largest, most comprehensive television network just for college students.
Christopher Simmons has been a working journalist since his first magazine sale in 1984. He has since written for wide variety of print and online publications covering lifestyle, tech and entertainment. He is an award-winning author, designer, photographer, and musician. He is a member of ASCAP and PRSA. He is the founder and CEO of Neotrope®, based in Torrance, CA, USA.
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Bob Moog Foundation moving to downtown Asheville NC, future home of the MOOGSEUM
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Q: Converting hour, minutes columns in dataframe to time format I have a dataframe containing 3 columns including minutes and hours.
I want to convert these columns (namely minutes and column) to time format. Given the data in drame:
Score Hour Min
10    10    56
23    17    01

I would like to get:
Score Time
10    10:56:00
23    17:01:00

A: You could use ISOdatetime to convert the numbers in the hour and min to a POSIXct object. However, a POSIXct object is only defined when it also includes a year, month and day.  So depending on your needs to can do several things:

*

*If you need a real time object which is correctly printed in graphs for example and can be used in arithmetic (addition, subtraction), you need to use ISOdatetime. ISOdatetime returns a so called POSIXct object, which is an R object which represents time. Then in ISOdatetime you just use fixed values for year, month, and day. This ofcourse only works if your dataset does not span multiple years.

*If you just need a character column Time, you can convert the POSIXct output to string using strftime. By setting the format argument to "%H:%M:00". In this case however, you could also use sprintf to create the new character column without converting to POSIXct: sprintf("%s:%s:00", drame$Hour, drame$Min).

A: You can use paste() function to merge the two column data into a char and then use strptime() to convert to timestamp
x<-1:6
##1 2 3 4 5 6
y<-8:13
## 8 9 10 11 12 13

timestamp <- paste(x,":",y,":00",sep="")
timestamp

will result in
#1:8:00 2:9:00 3:10:00 4:11:00 5:12:00 6:13:00

If you prefer to convert this to timestamp object try using
strptime(mergedData,"%H:%M:%S")
## uses current date by default

if you happen to have Date in another column use paste() to make a char formattted date and use below to get date time
##strptime(mergedData,"%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S")