Service Concepts 101

The use of the term ‘Service’ is somewhat overloaded. Everyone will have heard or used the terms Business Services, IT Services, Software Services, and now Cloud Services, and yet often there is much confusion and misunderstanding in their use.

As my colleague David Sprott suggested in a CBDI Journal Report, “Everything is a Service” . In that report David suggested that the idea that “everything is a service” could be developed to clarify the taxonomy for Cloud Services and Services in the form of a Unified Service Model that would deliver convergence of business and IT perspectives.

Consequently, I have penned a research note available on Everware-CBDI site , that provides a concept model that explores the basic concepts of Service and Service-Orientation taking into account this broad perspective including Business Service, IT Services, Software Services, Cloud Services and even Human Services

On Reuse

As long as I have been in IT - since I coded my first subroutine library 35 years ago - the debate on reuse has been ongoing. At times, it has seemed like a ‘Holy Grail’ for software delivery and like the Holy Grail it also seems to give rise to endless opportunities to debate whether it is exists or not, if it is good or bad, or even what it actually is.

Now entering into another, I thought it worth putting down some observations [1].

Developing Reference 'Things' - Reference Architectures, Reference Models, Reference Frameworks

I have spent a lot of time in recent years developing various reference 'things' for clients and as part of our own research. Whether it has been SOA, Enterprise Architecture, Cloud Computing or more recently Enterprise Mobility, one thing has been clear - that organizations often lack a framework that should form the basis for consistency in these domains.

It is tempting, and common practice, for organizations to respond by acquiring such a framework 'off the shelf'. TOGAF in the EA domain would be a prime example. However, in our experience such 'off the shelf' solutions rarely provide a 100% match to requirements and must be customized and extended to be effective, especially if you want them to be easily assimilated by the organization and not become divisive. Nothing is worse for example than EA becoming just another silo because people don't agree with the framework foisted upon them.

Enterprise Mobility Framework

It won't be long before Enterprise Mobility is considered 'business as usual'. But right now, it is analogous to the early days of PC adoption, where end users are largely creating the ‘pull’ for enterprise mobility, rather than the IT department driving this out from the center. The mobile market is driven by consumers. The consumer (led by consumer-oriented vendors) is setting the trends and establishing the de jure standards, not the enterprise. Inconveniently for organizations, their employees are consumers too – hence the demand for BYOD.