The New Language of Business: SOA & Web 2.0

By Sandy Carter

""This book clearly shows how today's industry pressures and business challenges mandate renewal of the contract between organizations and their IT assets and people-and it illustrates how a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 013195654X
• ISBN13: 9780131956544
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: IBM Press
• Length: 299 Pages
• Weight: 1.39 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

You can't change everything to SOA, but SOA changes everything

After reading and recommending Sandy's book to my customers, I realized that it has always been about the business, so Sandy has it right. Technology has always been important but instead of buying technologies that assumes will somehow improve the business; we should examine aspects of the business that most require improvement. Sandy's book does a great job in reminding us that as we look into the future flexibility through SOA and Web 2.0 can give us what we are all looking for - shorter cycles of innovation. I congratulate Sandy for a well written book, simple to understand and most important the insight she brings from her experiences, customer engagements and thought leadership. I recommend this book to c-level execs, project managers, line-of-business leaders and new hires.

Comprehensive overview moves beyond bits and bytes

If you're looking for code samples, topologies, software products, speeds, and feeds, this book is not for you. But if you're after real-world insights into how companies solve real problems, it should be right up your alley. For those looking for pure IT, the good news is, there are many other volumes of technology-focused guides and books about SOA and Web 2.0 available. Conversely, books about using SOA and Web 2.0 as a means of attaining real business benefits are in painfully short supply. While other writings may claim to fill this void, Sandy Carter's book actually fulfills this objective. While this book is not for the person who is looking for a first introduction to SOA, it does a very nice job at describing how to put the concepts of SOA into practice for business benefit. In other words, the book is less about what SOA IS than it is about when and how SOA can be used and what results can be expected. There are illustrative examples drawn from IBM implementations sprinkled throughout the book that bring the concepts that the author introduces to life. I would say that the ideal audience for this book is the business-minded IT manager/executive or the line of business executive who recognizes that IT is best approached as a means of strategic advantage rather than mere overhead cost. I'd recommend this book for personal and professional enrichment. I can imagine this book as being used as a business technology textbook although it lacks the dry academic tone of many other textbooks I've read. It is a lively read so perhaps "guidebook" would be a more appropriate term than `textbook'.

Excellent reference book on SOA

This is a great reference book on SOA. The author nicely takes the reader on a SOA journey from innovation to don'ts of SOA. It is information packed with rich set of customer real world case studies and plenty of information collated from years of research done at IBM labs. Chapter 3 on Component business model lays the foundation for how an enterprise can link the business and IT alignment for success. Chapter 9 on the top 10 don'ts reflects some true real world experience and the easy to make mistakes when one undertakes SOA projects. ESBs to Governance are explained in terms that both business and IT execs can understand quickly while carrying enough content for the techies to refer back. Overall it is a very well written book on SOA and an excellent reference material. Suresh Ganesan Chief Architect Cognizant Technology Solutions

How to Achieve Business/IT Alignment

While lots of books discuss the technology of service-oriented architecture (SOA), The New Language of Business focuses on the need for business flexibility and how to achieve it with SOA, by applying SOA not only to the IT department but also to the business as a whole. Not only does IT need to align to the business, but the business needs an architecture that IT can align to; this book shows how to use SOA to make that happen. This book introduces the reader to many important aspects of SOA and shows how to use them to achieve business flexibility: component business modeling, the SOA reference architecture, the SOA lifecycle, SOA governance, and the SOA entry points. This is great information for explaining to the business why SOA matters and what the business (not just IT) needs to do.

Right on the money!!!

"The New Language of Business" is exactly right on here. Before this book, I found SOA difficult to grasp, especially as IT in business is more and more blurred by the vast amounts of emerging technology that is available today. The business cases and examples were invaluable and help in understanding not only SOA, but how SOA can help you grow and innovate during the day to day pressures of an ever changing business (Thank You Sandy).