[ Bill Burke ] [Permalink]
Posted on Tue, 6 Jan 2009 19:25 by Bill Burke ( day(s) old) Trackbacks [0]
[ Pierre Fricke ] [Permalink]
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense, Scribner's, 1905, page 284".
We know how the mania-bust cycle works. We have many examples in history. Seems like our "FIRE"-driven economy forgot it. FIRE=Financial, Insurance and Real Estate industries. In 1920s, it was stocks and too much debt. In the 2000s it's real estate and too much debt. It absolutely makes no sense to buy a house for a mortgage payment that is two times the rent cost! It's even more foolish to take a HELOC up to the manic value of a house to pay for consumer goods like cars, vacations and a lifestyle that otherwise one cannot afford. The industries that supported all of this activity expanded to a oversupply condition that must contract. So now we unwind...we may be halfway there; there being appropriately valued real estate that people can purchase with confidence...if the government let's the cycle play out without interference. If not, then we (the USA and EU) may follow in Japan's footsteps and it will take a while.
Nevertheless, it's not the end of the world, just the end of an era. In economic depressions and deflations, business activity continues. It just doesn't continue at the previous pace. However, there are still growth opportunities. We can look at the 1930s for instruction. We know auction houses, bars, home entertainment, repo businesses, bankruptcy and divorce lawyers will have a lot of business. But also the government will expand. Regulation and the implementation of regulation will expand. Industries will be transformed (finance, insurance, government, energy, real estate, manufacturing, health care, education, etc...).
In the 1930s, emerging high technology in the form of tabulator machines and improved telephonic services continued to grow. IBM led the charge and had growth every year in the 1930s with expanded opportunities for tabulators to support the new regulatory environment and to help industries become more productive and reduce costs. New Deal government programs drove a lot of demand and the companies that were looking ahead also took advantage of the new technology to improve their businesses. Remember, 75% of the people were still employed and even with pay cuts, many were coming out ahead due to deflation (as long as they had little debt!). They saved a lot more and spent less, but business was still transacted and those businesses positioned to serve the government and remaining consumer demand with new products, services that solved problems did OK to well.
Today, we will see the same thing. Not everyone will go out of business and whether we see 8%, 12% or 18% unemployment, business activity will continue. Certainly the government will expand...trillions of $ are being lined up. The FIRE industries will need to be re-invented to operate in a much different regulatory environment. Existing IT assets, configured as they are, will become obsolete. They can be reused, but need to be augmented and reintegrated to operate in the "New New Deal".
Today's business productivity and transformation tools will include further transition to an SOA-enabled environment. Since there likely will be several waves of regulation and increased change in the business environment, enterprises that set themselves and their value chain to respond to change rapidly will win. Beyond re-integrating IT assets to operate in the "New New Deal", businesses will also need to pull their business rules out of scattered applications, consolidate them in business rules management systems and present them to the applications, people and business processes as SOA services. This will be required to be responsive to a rapidly changing environment.
But these enterprises and value chains will need to do this with reduced budgets, even with bailout money available! Local and state governments cannot print money and will have reduced tax revenues. They will not be able to afford the $50K / CPU closed source SOA platforms or $100K+ / CPU BRMSes that require a lot of capital expenditure up front. Fortunately, open source SOA and BRMS (Business Rules Management Systems) are maturing and offer a more simple, open and affordable way to weather these challenging economic and turbulent times. Indeed, business and government will need to serve picky customers with better service on reduced budgets and open source can help lead the way!
Maybe we will get lucky and this will only be a "serious recession" like 1980-82. Or this could look more like a modern version of the 1870s, 1890s or 1930s. Or 1990s-2000s Japan. Either way, Red Hat, with its high value, cost-effective open source subscriptions and services, stands ready to serve and help enterprises, value chains, and governments not only survive, but to prepare for prosperity again!
Posted on Tue, 6 Jan 2009 17:13 by Pierre Fricke ( day(s) old) Trackbacks [0]
[ Pierre Fricke ] [Permalink]
I will be presenting "Open source SOA: Strategies for affordable business integration and automation" at 10am on the business track.
Abstract: Open source software continues to advance in the enterprise, moving up the stack to solve higher value business problems. With the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform, open source has advanced to solve value chain integration and business automation challenges. This new generation of platform finds, integrates, and orchestrates SOA business services and applications.
In this session, Pierre will explore how enterprises are using open source to build multi-platform SOA solutions. He'll present a tool that can help you assess your current SOA optimization and determine the best path for SOA success. You'll also hear about future directions of open source SOA and how things might evolve over the next few years.
Thanks and look forward to "seeing" you there!
Posted on Fri, 2 Jan 2009 16:25 by Pierre Fricke ( day(s) old) Trackbacks [0]
[ Andrew Rubinger ] [Permalink]
Posted on Sun, 21 Dec 2008 21:10 by Andrew Rubinger ( day(s) old) Trackbacks [0]
[ Andrew Rubinger ] [Permalink]
Posted on Thu, 4 Dec 2008 07:15 by Andrew Rubinger ( day(s) old) Trackbacks [0]
[ Pierre Fricke ] [Permalink]
Posted on Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:46 by Pierre Fricke ( day(s) old) Trackbacks [0]
[ Pierre Fricke ] [Permalink]
Posted on Wed, 8 Oct 2008 10:11 by Pierre Fricke ( day(s) old) Trackbacks [0]
[ Pierre Fricke ] [Permalink]
Rogue Waves are spontaneously generated large waves that may appear suddenly even on a calm sea, surprising ship crews that may be in their path, and wreaking havoc and destruction.
Black Swans are a rare type of swan mainly found in Australia. The term, black swan, has also been applied to rare events that suddenly and unexpectedly occur. Black swans in business have been popularized and described in depth by the book Black Swans: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.
The financial oceans have been quite turbulent with rogue waves and the sky filled with black swans over the past year and especially over the past weeks. We've seen a ongoing real estate crash spread to a number of markets around the world (See The Housing Bubble Blog). We've had credit markets deteriorate over the past year and accelerate in recent weeks as market participants realize that the real estate bubble and bust are much larger than previously thought. We've seen banks reel and be bought or go out of business. I personally saw a physical bank run 11 days ago at my bank with the line out the door here in Atlanta. Electronic bank runs have been rampant.
Recalling the stories of the 1930s my grandmother used to tell me when I was a child was chilling during some of these events of the past weeks. Heck, didn't we learn anything? (I guess not). Weren't we “smarter” than they were? (No...maybe not even as smart). Didn't real estate “always go up” and we'd all be rich just like they said on various home TV shows? (Having lived through the real estate crash of the late 1980s in Austin Texas, the short answer is NO).
JBoss Enterprise Middleware Delivers Enterprise SOA
What does this have to do with open source SOA? It's quite simple. We live in dramatically turbulent times. And the turbulence is not going to end soon. More on that below. SOA is an architectural approach to designing IT systems to automate business processes with greater agility and flexibility enabling a business to be responsive to rapid change. Seems like larger doses of SOA-enablement with accelerated project schedules will be forthcoming by enterprises that will survive these times and even prosper. SOA will give them competitive advantage by allowing them to respond to new customer requirements and differentiate their products and services faster than competitors locked into a stove-piped application strategy.
However, many enterprise IT budgets may be cut. IT organizations won't be able to fund projects based on complex, hard-to-develop-to and deploy, and expensive SOA Platforms. They will have to do more with less as we've seen earlier this decade when open source came to the rescue at the operating system and application server level. This time, JBoss offers the simple, open and affordable JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform that is ready and able to deliver on your enterprise integration and process automation needs. Open source SOA, battle hardened in the worldwide open source community and in an increasing number of enterprise deployments, is the ideal platform to gain competitive advantage with during these challenging times.
I was talking with one of our major financial services customers, a major American bank a couple of weeks ago as the "Panic of 2008" (We used to call them “Panics” in the 19th century) was getting underway in earnest. They've taken their lumps and face smaller budgets with demands to make the business more agile and cost-effective. They also are looking beyond this crisis by preparing the business to exceed customer expectations in service and product offerings with open source SOA deployments built on JBoss Enterprise Middleware. They are finalizing two significant deployments centered on the JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform and then will take their experience and look to expand the use of JBoss Enterprise Middleware for more SOA projects. We are excited to be working with them!
Looking Ahead
So as we deliver JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform 4.3 to help businesses weather and prosper through this financial storm, what are we likely to see? While I cannot know for sure, of course, I can draw upon my experiences living through several other manias and busts including the oil boom and bust of 1973-86, gold and coin boom and bust of 1978-82, Austin real estate boom and bust of 1983-92, stock market boom and bust of 1996-2003 and the real estate boom and bust of the late 1990s till sometime in the next couple of years when we will see the "bottom".
Since this is a real estate bust, I'd offer the following...
While there is pain, there will be great opportunities to build the next generation of great companies of the 21st century out of this turmoil. With JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform, we aim to help our customers become part of that community of leading enterprises in the coming years!
The JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform 4.3 is planned to be available by the end of October. Also, please visit the JBoss SOA Resource Center and try out our new JBoss SOA Assessment Tool to start paving your way to the new business opportunities of 2009 and beyond!
Posted on Wed, 8 Oct 2008 08:36 by Pierre Fricke ( day(s) old) Trackbacks [0]
[ Pierre Fricke ] [Permalink]
Along with JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform 4.3, Red Hat is helping enterprises understand where they are in their SOA strategy development with a new JBoss SOA Assessment Tool. The JBoss SOA Assessment Tool is designed to help companies assess their current SOA Optimization and determine their best path for SOA success. It will analyze them in any one or more of 6 capabilities:
The tool was developed jointly by Red Hat and the experts at Alinean, Inc. Their database of more than 20,000 organizations allows us to provide you with a complete, customized analysis of your SOA readiness. Your personalized report will explain how you compare to your peers, the risks of not addressing the identified SOA capabilities and recommended next steps including resources to help you along the way.
This is a great way to get a different view point, based on a lot of other companies' experiences, of where you stand on your SOA journey to business automation and agility.
Link to the JBoss SOA Assessment Tool
Link to the JBoss SOA Resource Center
Posted on Tue, 7 Oct 2008 09:21 by Pierre Fricke ( day(s) old) Trackbacks [0]
[ Andrew Rubinger ] [Permalink]
Posted on Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:07 by Andrew Rubinger ( day(s) old) Trackbacks [0]
[ Bill Burke ] [Permalink]
Posted on Wed, 10 Sep 2008 10:53 by Bill Burke ( day(s) old) Trackbacks [0]
[ Aaron Darcy ] [Permalink]
Posted on Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:26 by Aaron Darcy ( day(s) old) Trackbacks [0]
[ Pierre Fricke ] [Permalink]
Posted on Fri, 8 Aug 2008 15:02 by Pierre Fricke ( day(s) old) Trackbacks [0]
[ Pierre Fricke ] [Permalink]
Best open source developer tools - Drools - Business Rules Management System.
Best open source plaforms and middleware - JBoss Enterprise SOA Platform - ESB.
Posted on Mon, 4 Aug 2008 17:31 by Pierre Fricke ( day(s) old) Trackbacks [0]
[ Anil Saldhana ] [Permalink]
Posted on Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:56 by Anil Saldhana ( day(s) old) Trackbacks [0]
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