VOSibilities

Please forgive me. This post strains two metaphors and doesn’t do it very artfully. One, the camera obscura, represents, literally, the “dark room” in which many developers find themselves when working with a non-standards-based SOA development platform. The second, “through a glass darkly” represents the transition, indeed, the revolution, that developers need to accept in order to get SOA applications widely deployed.

Because this metaphor exists only in my head, I’ll spare you the rest of this post if you can’t figure out what I am talking about. Here’s the bottom line: ActiveVOS is the answer. Read no further, just download the product and see for yourself.

OK, back to my strained, mixed metaphors. The camera obsucra projects the application you’re trying to create from the other side of the wall. Building that application with proprietary tools is the equivalent of getting there “darkly.”

What I am trying to say is there are three things about building SOA applications you should always keep in mind:

• If it ain’t standards-based, just don’t do it. For those of you who have wedded yourselves to Oracle or whatever-your-favorite-proprietary-vendor-stack-is, you are trying to trace the image on the wall using doomed technology. (Now that was a good use of the camera obscura metaphor, don’t you think?)
• You need the complete package. Piecing stuff together yourself is the ultimate in getting there with muck all over you. It will take longer, cost more and be less flexible. Period, end of story, full stop.
• You gotta reuse what you already have. Nothing is worse than being told you can’t start with at least a trace of the image on the wall. Maybe you’ve got lots of what we used to call “legacy mainframe” stuff (which we all know is running the business). Maybe you want to use Java. Maybe you need to include human workflow. Whatever the situation, having to start over just isn’t an option.

Mercifully, I’m gonna stop here. It may be that you have no idea what I am talking about. But I don’t think that’s the case. More likely, you are mounting a defense in your head of why you cannot “abandon” the path to SOA-based applications you’re on.

C’mon, just between you and yourself, aren’t you willing to admit there’s a better way? Visual orchestration systems, and ActiveVOS in particular, are the digital camera to proprietary systems’ camera obscura.

Our first podcast episode features our CEO, Mark Taber, detailing Active Endpoints’ vision for making possible the mass adoption of services-based applications. Mark touches on the problems facing developers and project teams who struggle with today’s overweight, expensive and hard-to-use tools. He also details how ActiveVOS is the most open and flexible solution to what has until now seemed like an intractable problem.

We hope you enjoy this podcast. If you have any comments or questions, please email us or leave a comment on the blog.

 

 VOSibilities podcast #1: Mark Taber on Visual Orchestration Systems [2:38m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (456)

This is a big moment for me…if not for you. This is the first post on our brand-spankin’ new blog. And I’m all excited about the possibilities.

I’ve been involved with a number of blogs for other companies over the last year or two. And I’ve discovered that a surprising number of people come back to read the first post. A first post therefore needs a little of the mixture of celebration and relief people feel when that new ocean liner actually launches when the woman (always a female for some reason) breaks the bottle of champagne over its bow. Or maybe it’s just me being traditional, but it seems all new blogs that are any good start with a bit of …ahem… manifesto.

So, herewith our objectives. We hope this blog will be informative and in the words of some people I recently worked with, cheeky. We already are showing a little cheek (sorry, it starts right away) by naming this blog "VOSibilities." The pun on visual orchestration systems and the word "possibilities" is courtesy of our own Victor Chan.

Let me say for the first time something we’ll be saying repeatedly: we believe strongly that visual orchestration systems will revolutionize the way project teams design, develop, test, deploy and maintain composite applications. We seek nothing less than mass adoption of services-based applications, all done in an open, standards-based way. So, VOS is the category, VOS is the means, VOS is the objective…VOS is the answer.

But it’s the answer to what, exactly? It’s the answer to app dev miasma. That big, dark, noxious cloud of proprietary this and that, the uncertainty of being able to leverage skills and the inability to effectively absorb technology in a way that makes developing composite applications not just fast and efficient, but fun.

And because good technology is always fun, we’re gonna have a lot of it here. We’re going to get loud, we’re going to get visceral and we’re going to say what we think.

So, if you found this post before there was anything else on the blog, thank you. If you are reading it to wonder who the heck these loudmouths are, thank you. If you are one of the competitors I intend to skewer regularly here, a special thank you. And remember…it’s all in the name of open, direct debate.

This is just the first of many times we’ll get to talk to each other.

Active Endpoints to Drive Mass Adoption of Services-based Applications

 Active Endpoints to Drive Mass Adoption of Services-based Applications: Download (226)