Desktop virtualization is a need-to-know technology for 2008 that's transforming the way organizations handle complex desktop computing challenges: Provides hardware independence, enabling support for legacy applications while embracing new standards. Simplifies desktop management, reducing operational risk and support costs. Promotes security and data confidentiality using encryption and leak prevention techniques. Enhances mobility and disaster recovery planning, enabling employees to access corporate applications and data from anywhere, without requiring server farm and enabling access even when disconnected from the network.

rPath, whose unique technology creates virtual appliances and simplifies application distribution, has announced that Vice President of Engineering Brett Adam has been selected as a speaker at the Virtualization Conference & Expo 2007 West, which will take place at The Grand Hyatt in San Francisco. Adam will speak about 'Best Practices for Building a Virtual Appliance Across Multiple Platforms' on Monday, November 12, at 2:30 p.m. The conference is co-located with the (Service-Oriented Architecture) SOA World Conference & Expo 2007 West.

Apache Tuscany provides an open source services infrastructure for building SOA solutions. It's based on emerging Service Component Architecture (SCA) specifications. With the Tuscany implementation of SCA, application developers can easily create or reuse services in different languages (Java, C++, BPEL, XQuery or various scripting languages), assemble and deploy them in a distributed environment. It now becomes a reality that application developer can really focus on the business logic without being puzzled by the plumbing technologies. In this session, we will introduce the key aspects of SCA by real examples and demonstrate how simple, flexible and powerful the experience can be to develop SOA solutions with Tuscany.

Virtualization is one of the most interesting IT topics these days. Whereas one can find a lot of concepts and high level content provided by various vendors, it's still a challenge to find detailed technical information on how to use it in SAP landscapes. This session will show you in detail how SAP is using virtualization in its datacenters today, what is really working and what is not, what the pain points are, how SAP solutions behave in a virtualized environment with products offered by partners like VMWare, and which guidelines customers should look at.

When it comes to cutting I/O cost, power, management and real estate requirements in blade servers, the ideal I/O solution is a single, unified I/O adapter that can provide required services for all data center traffic types - LAN, SAN and IPC. This is because blade server form factors by nature are limited on space, power and cost requirements. While I/O may be unified on the server using a high performance converged I/O adapter, the demands on the LAN and SAN infrastructure sides of the data center are different. Ethernet and Fibre Channels will coexist in the infrastructure. Finally, there are issues around separation of management domains of the compute servers, LAN infrastructure and SAN infrastructure because they are managed by different groups and capacity scaling and budgetary cycles are independent of each other. All of the above make consolidation of I/O on the blade servers a daunting challenge.

WSO2 is an open source middleware company founded by pioneers in Web services and of members of the Apache Software Foundation Web services community. The company delivers a new, entirely open source middleware stack that is optimized for Web services and SOA and built on Apache Axis2. WSO2's first products are the WSO2 Web Services Application Server (WSAS) and WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), which are built on the WSO2 Web Services Framework. The company maintains operations in the United States, United Kingdom and Sri Lanka. For more information about WSO2, visit http://wso2.com/

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has been discussed as an important architectural style for the last few years. Organizations have started to develop service-oriented solutions and many are now leveraging services in their production environments. SOA introduces new technical complexities and challenges and makes testing a critical component of the development lifecycle.

Widely discussed in IT circles are the limitations of traditional application management products in enabling organizations to achieve maximum return on their SOA investments - often thanks to the higher level of complexity for applications running in this environment. Application Performance Management (APM) solutions provide deep visibility into the performance of an application's code, but fail to associate this code performance with visibility to the performance of the 'business services' delivered by these applications.

Complex Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) based SOA environments pose a whole new level of management challenges. In this session Albert Mavashev will explore the nature of those challenges by illustrating the need for a Complex Event Processor (CEP) to proactively manage your Enterprise Service Bus.

The original goal of the service-oriented architecture (SOA) concept was to build flexible, loosely coupled systems. But any two components in a system that communicate with each other are coupled to a certain extent. As architects, our aim in deploying real world SOAs is to lessen that coupling between components. That means removing or lessening the runtime dependencies between them.

As companies embrace SOA and begin breaking apart monolithic applications, the question of how to control and secure access becomes mission-critical. How do you take advantage of the flexibility inherent in a SOA while ensuring that component services are properly secured and managed through established access control policies?

For enterprises looking to create mission-critical applications, the benefits of transitioning to an SOA environment are many. However, the number of legacy applications and systems with proprietary protocols that do not support a Web services interface, and therefore cannot connect directly to an SOA-based system, can make this transition extremely difficult.

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) has taken modular programming principals into the distributed computing environment. But the functionality provided by such modules are much broader and, hence, can be considered as services. When applications are deployed in a distributed computing environment there is a need for a set of infrastructure services.

The Enterprise Service Bus provides event-driven and standards-based message services that are fundamental to large and complex enterprise infrastructures. Traditionally the ESB has focused on message delivery between different disparate server-side systems. With the use of modern Web 2.0 techniques we can now extend the ESB all the way to the browser.

SOA concepts have been around for a while and all of the benefits and promises it offers look good on paper. The complexity of implementing and deploying SOA in large enterprises is, however, often overlooked. The problems get further exacerbated when trying to migrate from existing monolithic Web applications and its infrastructure to an SOA model, rather than starting fresh from the ground up.

Four years in the making, WS-BPEL 2.0 has emerged as the definitive standard to define stateful, complex, and robust service orchestrations. But why does WS-BPEL exist, what role does WS-BPEL play in a service-oriented architecture, and where is WS-BPEL being used? This session will introduce you to the benefits and constructs of WS-BPEL 2.0.

Many organizations make the assumption that SOA is a panacea that can and should be applied to every situation. The reality is that service orientation is not the right answer for every scenario. The expense of service orientation cannot always be recouped and in some cases service orientation can actually do more harm than good.

Many large SOA deployments face two major challenges: how to promote service reuse and how to manage the complexity of a heterogeneous, distributed SOA that includes Java, .NET, and various legacy and packaged applications deployed across the enterprise. The solution is to implement service virtualization to make services portable and protocol independent.

Popular assumptions can often be dangerous. We will consider how the many unique and highly-regarded architectural characteristics of SOA, such as loose-coupling, can actually be a two-edged sword affecting the requirements, nature, and success of many important aspects of SOA, especially runtime governance. The success of any SOA requires that one must gain an understanding of the true nature, performance characteristics, and availability of the business transactions that flows in real-time through these highly distributed services and their supporting IT infrastructure. This session will emphasize practical considerations that impact SOA architects, security managers, application support personnel, and designers so that you can be prepared to deliver a verifiably reliable and successful SOA, and can effectively remediate SOA failures and risks in real-time.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has taken modular programming principals in to the distributed computing environment. But the functionality provided by such modules are much broader and hence, can be considered as services. When applications are deployed in a distributed computing environment there is a need for set of infrastructure services like, life cycle management, service announcement, service discovery, security, integration, etc. Applications which provides these infrastructure services make up the SOA platform. The most common approach to implement applications using SOA is to make use of web services. Considering the advantages of use of FOSS solutions in application development, its worth evaluating web service based FOSS options in building a SOA platform.

To ensure successful SOA implementation, companies should reconsider how they provide decision services. The unmanageable, black-box approach of wrapping legacy code does not work. BRMS (Business Rules Management System) helps companies meet the SOA promises of reuse and agility with Transparent Decision Services that are truly reusable, modeled by business analysts, maintained by business teams, and managed by IT. BRMS allows externalized decision logic, are modeled and maintained by business teams and analysts, managed by IT, allow automatic auditable capture with extensive reporting, and are easy to repurpose and maintain.

Apache Tuscany provides an open source services infrastructure for building SOA solutions. It's based on emerging Service Component Architecture (SCA) specifications. With the Tuscany implementation of SCA, application developers can easily create or reuse services in different languages (Java, C++, BPEL, XQuery or various scripting languages), assemble and deploy them in a distributed environment. It now becomes a reality that application developer can really focus on the business logic without being puzzled by the plumbing technologies. In this session, we will introduce the key aspects of SCA by real examples and demonstrate how simple, flexible and powerful the experience can be to develop SOA solutions with Tuscany.

'We are proud to offer our customers a virtualization solution that, along with non-disruptive deployment and comprehensive reporting of existing storage environments, can take proactive action to avoid problems before they occur and preserve customer investments,' said Daniel Liddle, vice president of marketing for Attune Systems, Inc., as Attune recently announced the Maestro File Manager FM6100, a new low-profile platform.

Web Age Solutions is a leading provider of technology mentoring and education to the Fortune 500. Our 'Preferred Vendor' status with these global leaders is a result of our highly progressive approach to knowledge transfer and relentless pursuit of customer satisfaction. While many of our competitors are just now getting their feet wet with SOA, we have been delivering SOA training and mentoring since 2003. Moving well beyond theoretical discussions of SOA, we have a deep library of practical SOA curriculum backed by hands-on experience.

Software AG, a global leader in business infrastructure software, announced that it was the recent recipient of eleven 2007 SOA World Magazine Readers' Choice Awards. Winners were recognized in twenty categories by SYS-CON Media, the world's leading i-technology media and events company, on the basis of voting by subscribers.

I will be attending the Ajax World Conference next week in Santa Clara. I will also be at the opening reception on Monday and the conference party on Tuesday. Over the weekend Jesse Liberty blogged about this as well 'If you are going to be at AJAXWorld, look for me on Twitter, and let's see if we can set up a meeting or a lunch.' Other faculty members, according to the Ajax World website, who will be at these parties include...

While these experts differ on issues like the importance of SOA ROI, how to calculate SOA ROI (if at all), and why we don't have more/better of it, they all seem to agree on one thing: 'Enterprise-wide support for SOA hinges on the ability to demonstrate value to the business at large - more growth, revenue opportunities, and all that good stuff.' (Joe's words, not mine.) And that's where your job is at stake. Or, at least, the long-term support of your SOA efforts.

One of the business benefits organizations strive to achieve by implementing a Service-Oriented Architecture, or utilizing Web Services, says Parasoft's Rami Jaamour, is the opportunity to reuse business components. 'Asset reuse is one of the core drivers of the SOA or Web Service ROI calculation,' he notes.

Paul Lipton, a Senior Architect in the CA Intellectual Property and Standards Group, likes to remind audiences wherever he speaks that popular assumptions can often be dangerous: the many unique and highly-regarded architectural characteristics of SOA, for example (such as loose-coupling) can actually be a two-edged sword.

SOA is all about reuse and leveraging existing investments, according to Ian Thain, senior technical evangelist / software engineer in the Worldwide Marketing Organization of Sybase, Inc. In Thain's view, 'model-driven SOA' allows for an intersection between requirements established as services and their implementation based on existing infrastructure and new components.

I will be teaching a one day Bootcamp course on Ajax at the AJAXWorld Conference in Santa Clara, California on September 23, 2007. Details are at http://aja xbootcamp.sys-con.com I will be expanding the Ajax construction tools section from the Ajax Bootcamp I taught in New York at the SOA World conference. I am very impressed with TIBCO GI and Sun jMaki

The inaugural iTVCon - Internet Video Conference & Expo (November 12-13, 2007) is building out its program and the Conference Advisory Board is busy sorting through the hundreds of proposals for technical and strategic sessions that have been coming in. Final deadline for proposals is September 10, 2007.

AJAXWorld 2007 West will take place on September 23-26, 2007, at the Santa Clara Convention Center, in Santa Clara, California, and will offer a new dedicated 'iPhone Track.' Another dedicated track will offer a comparative education opportunity for conference delegates on emerging RIA tools, including a Diamond track on OpenLaszlo and sessions on Microsoft's Silverlight, Adobe's AIR and Sun's JavaFX.

The single-day, multi-track Real-World Java Seminar will be held at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York on August 13. Produced by SYS-CON Events, this is the largest Java developer event on the East Coast, and features a business track as well as two technical tracks. All attendees will have full access to all sessions at the event, so can either stay with one track or pick and choose specific sessions.

Can afford to take just one day off, get out of your cubicle and see what other people up to these days? Is J2EE still in favor? What's this ESB is about? Have you even heard of using Flex as a Web front end of your Java applications? Do not miss an event in NYC this Monday, that is created for people who think that they are way too busy to take several days off and spend them in the class. Just take one day off and attend the Real-World Java event. The discounted rate for this event is $395. To get this discount, enter the coupon code ?JUGgold' while registering

Panelists included SOA World Magazine editor-in-chief Sean Rhody (CSC), Open Source Specialist and SYS-CON's Industry Blogger Debbie Moynihan (IONA), Nexaweb's founder and CTO and SYS-CON's Industry Blogger Coach Wei, ColdFusion Developer's Journal editor-in-chief Simon Horwith (AboutWeb), and SOA World Conference & Expo 2007 East speaker Jason Bloomberg (ZapThink). The panel was moderated by SYS-CON.TV founder and host Roger Strukhoff.

Ruby on Gears is a content plus framework built in 100% Ruby on top of the popular Ruby on Rails. Ruby on Gears provides a turn-key user & administration environment suitable for CRM, Project Management, Document Management, Corporate Intranets, Expert Systems, Vertical Search Engines, Social Information Networks, Corporate Blogging, Public websites and as core code for custom development projects.

Securent, Inc., the award-winning leader in the Entitlement Management market, today announced that Co-Founder and CTO Sekhar Sarukkai has been selected to present in multiple stand-alone sessions at the annual SOA World Conference and Expo 2007, to be held June 25 - 27 in New York. The 11th International SOA World Conference & Expo 2007, co-located with the Second Annual Enterprise Open Source Conference, will take place at the historic Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. SOA World brings together the best minds in the business for a three-day conference that offers comprehensive coverage of SOA and what it means to enterprise IT today.

Oracle chief SOA technologist Dave Chappell will present a session entitled 'SOA Reality Check' at the upcoming SOA World Conference & Expo 2007 East, which will take place June 24-27, 2007, in New York City. The landscape of Web Services, and the shape of the SOA Infrastructure is changing. Widespread adoption of SOA concepts has gripped the attention of IT organizations worldwide, causing most to charge headfirst into strategic architecture and planning efforts that will have their long reaching effects into the next few decades. Different standards, new technology, and performance and security requirements all have an influence on the outcome of these initiatives. This session will identify the current trends, capabilities and limitations of implementing an SOA, along with the best and worst practices learned from early adopters.

Leading technologists--from Layer 7, Oracle, Thinstall, Nastel, Solstice Software, and iTKO--joined SYS-CON.TV Founder and Host Roger Strukhoff in a discussion on SYS-CON.TV about the state of SOA among enterprise customers, the challenges they face in solving their customer needs, and the recent success they and their customers have experienced.