Mark LaJeunesse

As IT departments continue to prioritize their investment initiatives, many will find Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a critical item to tackle. Although key business projects must always take precedence, McKinsey & Company reports that more than 60% of surveyed CIOs plan to use SOA projects as a way to achieve associated business objectives. For good reason SOA is being heralded as a major architectural shift that enables IT teams to reduce costs and improve responsiveness and flexibility - two key business objectives for CIOs today. With SOA, IT ultimately becomes a service provider to the business itself - delivering infrastructure, applications, and processes as services throughout a company. SOA certainly offers promise; but at the same time, successfully navigating the people, process, and technology changes associated with it can be risky. Of course, c... (more)

SOA World - Legacy Systems, The Risks & Misconceptions

One of a CIO's top priorities is to leverage information to enable better business decisions and outcomes. Many CIOs trace constraints on their business back to the limitations of older legacy information systems - specifically, outdated applications. A legacy-based environment can make it difficult to attain the level of agility, flexibility, and responsiveness that growing enterprises need from their applications. For many organizations, the application has become the business - powered by technology. Modernizing applications is a key step to providing agility and lower cost o... (more)