• “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 service-oriented approach to IT can help organizations go through the necessary transformation. The role of governance in bringing IT and business closer together is particularly well explained, and the book is worth reading for that alone.”

  –Neil Ward-Dutton, Research Director, Macehiter Ward-Dutton

  “It’s easy to pay lip service to the concept of business/IT alignment, but in The New Language of Business, Sandy Carter walks the walk. Few treatments of SOA ground this admittedly difficult topic in the world of business as thoroughly as Sandy has here. I’d recommend this book to any business reader who wants to leverage IT to make their business more agile and innovative, and to any technical reader who wishes to understand how to place SOA in the business context where it belongs.”

  –Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst and Principal, ZapThink LLC

  “A very valuable read. In today’s globally connected marketplace profitable growth requires business flexibility and continuous innovation, both of which are increasingly proving to be impossible without business modularity and the new table-stakes technology SOA.”

  –Ron Williams, Professor, Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  “Sandy has provided a pragmatic and holistic perspective on Service Oriented Architectures. She adds credibility by sharing IBM’s in-depth customer research as well as case studies to support the findings. The book is a strong source book for those wanting to get started with SOA.”

  –Judith Hurwitz, President & CEO, Hurwitz & Associates, coauthor,

  Service Oriented Architectures for Dummies

  “Few people have thought as long or as hard about SOA as Sandy Carter. This book embodies her invaluable work and the work of many at IBM to research, define, deploy and make SOA happen. Useful not just from a SOA perspective, but also as a concise articulation of the contemporary concepts fundamental to understanding where business and IT are heading.”

  –Carol Baroudi, coauthor Service Oriented Architecture For Dummies, Senior Analyst, Aberdeen Group

  “The New Language of Business: SOA & Web 2.0 is based on the collective feedback from industry leaders at organizations of all sizes, in more than 50 countries, who shared their views, experiences, and challenges of aligning technology with business goals.”

  –From the foreword by Steve Mills, Senior Vice President and Group Executive,  IBM Software Group

  There is now a direct, provable link between an organization’s flexibility and business performance. To optimize flexibility, companies must achieve unprecedented levels of integration and automation of key processes and infrastructure, both internally and externally. At the same time, they must learn to manage their processes far more dynamically and responsively.

  They must become flex-pon-sive*.

  Until recently, technology stood in the way of achieving these goals. Thanks to the emergence of service oriented architecture (SOA), Web 2.0, and open standards, technology now enables companies to achieve those goals. In The New Language of Business, one of IBM’s top SOA strategist demonstrates how business leaders can use innovations in technology to drive dramatic process improvements and support accelerating change.

  Sandy Carter shows how to deconstruct your business into a “componentized” business model, then support that model with linked, repeatable IT services that can adapt quickly, easily, and economically. These techniques will help both IT professionals and business leaders reach new levels of operational excellence to deliver the market-focused innovations that matter most.

  Drive competitive advantage through Service Oriented Architecture

  Leverage the value of business process components and IT services

  Achieve one version of the truth–finally!

  Use information as a service to improve business insight and reduce risk

  Master SOA governance and the service lifecycle

  Manage IT infrastructure for business results, both short-term and long-term

  Start fast: choose from three winning approaches

  Get quick wins with business process management, collaboration or information

  Implement on demand: what works–and what doesn’t

  Discover key success factors–and ten critical mistakes to avoid

  Create the flex-pon-sive* business!

  •Learn the secrets of success from industry leaders at organizations of all sizes, from over 50 countries–and why SOA was unanimously chosen as the best way to address their challenges

  •Leverage the IBM roadmap for SOA and Web 2.0 deployment, plus proven best practices learned in the field

  •Understand what it means to be flex-pon-sive*–and how your organization can get there

  In The New Language of Business, senior IBM executive Sandy Carter demonstrates how to leverage SOA, Web 2.0, and related technologies to drive new levels of operational excellence and business innovation.

  Writing for executives and business leaders inside and outside IT, Carter explains why flexibility and responsiveness are now even more crucial to success–and why services-based strategies offer the greatest promise for achieving them.

  You’ll learn how to organize your business into reusable process components–and support them with cost-effective IT services that adapt quickly and easily to change. Then, using extensive examples–including a detailed case study describing IBM’s own experience–Carter identifies best practices, pitfalls, and practical starting points for success.

  Build the flex-pon-sive* business

  * Flex-pon-sive* companies respond with lightning speed and agility to rapidly changing business needs. Flex-pon-sive* companies are focused on processes that are enabled for change through IT.

  Foreword
  

  Part I: Start at the Beginning–The Business

  Chapter 1: The Innovation Imperative
  

  Chapter 2: What Is Flex-pon-sive*?
  

  Chapter 3: Deconstructing Your Business: Component Business Model
  

  Part II: A Flexible Business Requires Flexible IT
  

  Chapter 4: SOA as the DNA of a Flex-pon-sive* and Innovative Company
  

  Chapter 5: SOA Key Concepts
  

  Chapter 6: SOA Governance and Service Lifecycle
  

  Chapter 7: Three Business-Centric SOA Entry Points
  

  Chapter 8: What about Web 2.0 and SOA? Are They Related?
  

  Part III: How to Implement Flex-pon-sive* in Your Business
  

  Chapter 9: The Top 10 Don’ts!
  

  Chapter 10: Case Study: IBM
  

  Chapter 11: Putting It All Together
  

  Glossary
  

  Index
  

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 10 Ratings

SOA as a Business Philosophy - 2008-02-10
Reviewer Rating:
Is Service-Oriented Architecture primarily about technology or business? Sandy Carter, Vice President for SOA and Websphere at IBM, comes down squarely on the side of business. In The New Language of Business: SOA and Web 2.0, Carter defines Service-Oriented Architecture as "a business-driven IT architectural approach that supports integrating your business as linked, repeatable business tasks or services" (44). Her introduction to SOA is geared for CI0's who need to make a business case for designing and implementing an SOA.

Carter's strongest chapters focus on conceiving of the enterprise as sets of services and processes. Her third chapter, titled "Deconstructing Your Business: Component Business Model," provides an excellent guide for breaking down a business into a sets of discrete components, which can then be sorted out into commodity and differentiating activities. This component business model can serve as a road map for deciding which activities to outsource and where to invest in building services to increase the flexibility of key differentiating components. Her discussion of "business process management" in the seventh chapter supplements and extends this business perspective on SOA. Carter makes a compelling case that the move to a SOA cannot succeed if it is conceived simply as an I.T. project. A prerequisite for achieving an SOA is to change business practices by encouraging greater horizontal collaboration between I.T. and business leaders and by setting up strong governance committees to overcome inevitable turf wars.

The weakest chapter is on the relation between Web 2.0 and SOA. Carter briefly introduces some of the key ideas behind Web 2.0, but she does not analyze at any length the difference between the rather formal architectural approach advocated by proponents of SOA, which typically draws on all the WS-* standards, and the more freewheeling style propounded by so-called 'RESTafarians,' who regard WS-* specifications as unnecessary baggage. "Web 2.0 and SOA are both about weaving preexisting services together into useful new business applications," she writes optimistically. "The connection in the technologies is clear: both AJAX and REST are enablers for SOA" (198). Is this actually the case? Web 2.0 and SOA obviously share some aspects in common, but I wish that Carter had dwelt longer on the philosophical differences. The chapter seems like an afterthought added to capture some of the current trendiness of Web 2.0.

In the end, this is a practical book about how to make a business case for Service-Oriented Architecture. Carter offers thirty plus case studies to shed light on the benefits of SOA adoption. Despite being a little wordy and repetitive, this book successfully bridges the gap between I.T. and business. Its primary audience will be business leaders who need a comprehensible, non-technical introduction to the leading ideas behind Service-Oriented Architecture.

You can't change everything to SOA, but SOA changes everything - 2007-07-17
Reviewer Rating:
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 - 2007-07-16
Reviewer Rating:
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'.

Goes beyond Just SOA - 2007-10-30
Reviewer Rating:
Sandy Carter definitely has the credentials to write a book on SOA & Web 2.0 as she is the VP of SOA & WebSphere: Stragegy, Channels and Marketing. I have to say I enjoyed the book since I am a Business Analyst and it is written towards the Business Person even though I thought the use of Flex-pon-sive as pretty hokey.

This book goes beyond talking about SOA and includes Web 2.0 technologies and how these technologies work together. I would recommend this book.

One area that I was disappointed in was her coverage of WebSphere DataPower products since DataPower falls under her responsibility. You would think she would have plugged these products.

Gary E. Smith
THE SOA NETWORK
www.soanetwork.net

SOA is just about business - THANKS Sandy! - 2007-07-17
Reviewer Rating:
It has been hard for me to understand the value of SOA from a business perspective - Your book realy helped me to understand the linkage between IT and business and the value of SOA for my company.
I do recommend reading your book !!!!

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