Ron Schmelzer

Reducing the cost of IT management is one of the primary pressures for most organizations. One of the most common ways to reduce such costs is to enable the reuse of applications that developers have already created and configured for the enterprise. In the past decade, especially in the past 3-5 years, companies have spent millions of dollars on enterprise software applications of all sorts: CRM, ERP, and other operational applications. The next few years will be less about new application development, and more about existing application integration and reuse. The Service-oriented approach helps solve the challenge of reuse by imposing a design methodology that promotes the use of self-describing, published, loosely coupled, and dynamically bound components rather than ... (more)

Why Current Network Protocol-Based Firewalls and Routers Can't Handle XML

Look in the network closet in any good-sized company today and you’ll find a wide assortment of network gear: firewalls, switches, gateways, routers, hubs, bridges, the list goes on and on. Each of these devices essentially either directs or secures the packets that form the automobiles on the streets and freeways of today’s networks. All data networks -- including the mother of all data... (more)

ZapThink Announces Release of Online, Computer-Based SOA Training

ZapThink today announces the availability of its online, computer-based Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Licensed ZapThink Architect (LZA) training and credentialing course. In this first-of-its-kind offering, attendees can get access to over 20 hours of self-paced video instruction and slides, online testing and evaluation, and opportunity to submit architectural exercises to ZapThin... (more)

The Dissolution of the Rich Internet Application (RIA) Market

Traditional market research focuses on the size and growth of well-defined market segments. As vendors enter and compete in those markets, customers participate by purchasing products and services within those segments, and market research seeks to establish the patterns of such transactions in order to predict the future trends for such markets. In the Information Technology (IT) space,... (more)

SOA Pundits Unite to Chat about SOA Futures

Notable SOA experts and pundits are getting together to explore the future of SOA at the ZapForum evening networking event in Washington, DC on October 1, 2009 from 5:30PM to 8:30PM. At ZapForum DC, dozens of experts, pundits, and influential guests will gather for an evening of networking and discussion on the topics of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Enterprise Architecture (EA... (more)