The Agile Architecture Revolution: How Cloud Computing, REST–Based SOA, and Mobile Computing Are Changing Enterprise IT

"So, if business agility is good, how can IT achieve it? The current thinking is that we need to change our approach to design and development and move to newer methods and approaches around software architecture. The right answer is that we need to change what we build, not how we build it. This book describes a true revolution, a different way of thinking about how we build and leverage software." —From the Foreword by David S. Linthicum , Cloud Computing and SOA Thought Leader, Author, Blogger, and Consultant How can your business get what it really wants and needs from IT? How can your business aim to survive, even in environments of unpredictable change? The answer is business agility. A revolution in how we think about architecture, about software development, about IT supporting the business, and in how we think about leveraging new platforms such as cloud computing, The Agile Architecture Revolution reinvents Enterprise Architecture as you know it to support continuous business transformation. Laying out a multidimensional vision for achieving business agility through agile architectures, author Jason Bloomberg reveals how your business can—and indeed, must—build a system that can change its behavior and data semantics on-demand, in support of your changing business. Both visionary and realistic, The Agile Architecture Revolution looks at the convergence of concepts that have the power to change the way we think about software, and finally bring IT back to a place of productivity and value.

FOREWORD xi PREFACE xv PART ONE—Enterprise as Complex System 1 CHAPTER 1 Introducing Agile Architecture 3 Deconstructing Agile 4 Architecting Software/Human Systems 8 Meta Thinking and Agile Architecture 10 Defining Architecture: Worse Than Herding Cats 12 Why Nobody Is Doing Enterprise Architecture 13 Complex Systems: At the Heart of Agile Architecture 16 CHAPTER 2 Shhh, Don’t Tell Anyone, but Let’s Talk about Service–Oriented Architecture 21 Rumors of SOA’s Demise . . . 23 Thinking Outside the SOA Box 26 Okay, So How Did SOA End Up Dead in the First Place? 28 Services: The Core SOA Lesson 31 Implementing Policy–Driven Behavior 34 What’s the Deal with Web Services? 38 The Third Conversation 41 Freeing Architecture from the Underlying Infrastructure 44 Implementing SOA without an ESB 47 The SOA Marketing Paradox and the Wizard of Oz 48 CHAPTER 3 Governance: The Secret to Satisfying the Business Agility Meta–Requirement 51 Organizational Context for Governance 52 Architecture–Driven Governance: Beyond IT Governance 54 Rethinking Quality 57 Introducing the Agility Model 60 Meta–Policy Governance 63 Interrelationships among Governance, Quality, and Management 64 Four Stages of Agile Architecture Governance 67 Architecture–Driven Governance and the Butterfly Effect 70 CHAPTER 4 The Enterprise as Complex System 73 Engineering the Enterprise with Complex Systems Engineering 73 Best–Effort Quality and the Agile Architecture Quality Star 76 Best–Effort Quality in Action 80 Resilience: The Flip Side of Agility 83 The Flash Mob Enterprise 86 CHAPTER 5 Agile Architecture in Practice 89 The Composition Vision for IT 90 Vision to Reality: Rethinking Integration 93 Aligning Agile Architecture with BPM 96 Business Modeling and Agile Architecture 98 Processes That Satisfy the Meta–Requirement of Agility 100 PART TWO—The ZapThink 2020 Vision 103 CHAPTER 6 You Say You Want a Revolution . . . 105 Five Supertrends of Enterprise IT 108 Continuous Business Transformation: At the Center of ZapThink 2020 110 Where’s Our Deep Interoperability? 112 The Crisis Points of the ZapThink 2020 Vision 113 Big Data Explosion and the Christmas Day Bomber 116 Stuxnet and Wikileaks: Harbingers of Cyberwar 119 Cybersecurity the Agile Architecture Way 125 The Generation Y Crisis Point 128 CHAPTER 7 The Democratization of Enterprise IT 133 Demise of the Enterprise IT Department 134 The Agile Architecture Approach to IT Project Management 136 Crisis Point: The Enterprise Application Crash 138 Replacing Enterprise Software: Easier Said than Done 144 PART THREE—Implementing Agile Architecture 147 CHAPTER 8 Deep Interoperability: Getting REST Right (Finally!) 149 Programmable Interfaces: The Never–Ending Story 150 REST to the Rescue 155 Dogmatic vs. Iconoclastic REST 161 REST vs. Web Services 163 Can REST Fix Web Services? 166 Does REST Provide Deep Interoperability? 168 Where Is the SOA in REST–Based SOA? 170 REST–Based SOA: An Iconoclastic Approach 173 CHAPTER 9 Finally, Let’s Move to the Cloud 177 Deja Vu All Over Again 179 Countering Vendor Spin with Architecture 181 Interlude: Neutralizing the Cloud Threat 183 Why Cloud Computing Scares the Platform Vendors 186 Architecting beyond Cloud Computing’s Horseless Carriage 187 BASE Jumping in the Cloud: Rethinking Data Consistency 190 Cloud Multitenancy: More than Meets the Eye 193 Keys to Enterprise Public Cloud 197 Why Public Clouds Are More Secure than Private Clouds 200 Why You Really, Truly Don’t Want a Private Cloud 202 Avoiding Unexpected Cloud Economics Pitfalls 205 Rethinking Cloud Service Level Agreements 208 Are Your Software Licenses Cloud Friendly? 212 Garbage in the Cloud 214 Beware Fake Clouds 217 Learning the Right Lessons from the 2011 and 2012 Amazon Crashes 219 Failure Is the Only Option 221 Cloud Configuration Management: Where the Rubber Hits the Clouds 223 Clouds, SOA, REST, and State 225 The Secret of a RESTful Cloud 229 BPM in the Cloud: Disruptive Technology 232 Cloud–Oriented Architecture and the Internet of Things 236 Location Independence: The Buckaroo Banzai Effect 238 Postscript: The Cloud Is the Computer 241 CHAPTER 10 Can We Do Agile Enterprise Architecture? 243 Frameworks and Methodologies and Styles, Oh My! 245 The Beginning of the End for Enterprise Architecture Frameworks 248 How to Buy an Agile Architecture 250 The Dangers of Checklist Architecture 253 CONCLUSION 257 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 261 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 265 INDEX 267

JASON BLOOMBERG is President of ZapThink, a Dovel Technologies Company. He is a thought leader in the areas of Enterprise Architecture, Service-Oriented Architecture, and Cloud Computing, and helps organizations around the world better leverage their IT resources to meet changing business needs. He is one of the original Managing Partners of ZapThink LLC, a leading SOA advisory and analysis firm, which was acquired by Dovel Technologies in August 2011. He developed the only vendor-independent, Enterprise Architecture–focused SOA and Cloud Computing training available on the market. This training includes Enterprise Architecture considerations for various Cloud-based options, how to put together a Cloud road map, and how best to communicate the position the Cloud should take in the greater context of agile Enterprise Architecture.