It's hard to ignore the focus that Service Oriented Architecture is getting, and while SOA may be the main focus for enterprise application architecture, here at Hubstone we see a medium to long term strategy for most organisations who engage this approach. Web services is still a moving target and likely wont justify the investment in skills and infrastructure for a lot of smaller organisations. The standards are firming up all the time and the gaps are closing, but most architects recognise that there are still challenges to be addressed. Whatever your application strategy, keeping a flexible approach to solving and supporting tactical application integration projects can complement and enhance both a SOA focused enterprise and the smaller player.

Even in a SOA environment, while your business leaders may have signed on the dotted line for the concept of IT applications as a set of service components there must be a continued focus on the current application portfolio ensuring adequate integration tools are available to support on-going tactical business requirements. There is no mistaking that a move to a service oriented architecture will deliver far reaching business benefits for some organisations. However, we believe the old sledgehammer to crack a nut may creep in here if you don't ensure each of your integration projects are reviewed carefully. Does the business benefit and overall return justify the investment integration projects entail. 

It's a sad fact that integration is an expensive business and anyone that's been through it generally has the scars to prove it. As the industry moves into a new era of integration technologies and standards, do you feel like this is going to get any easier? At Hubstone we see two extremes of integration projects out there; the architectural nirvana and the scripted Gordian knot. Somewhere in between these extremes you wrestle with the realities of delivering supportable infrastructure and applications. Ultimately at both ends and in between what you are really trying to do is meet business need.

At the architectural nirvana end, there is an underlying belief that if you get the architecture right then you needn't worry about mapping IT to business strategy. The architecture will give you the platform from which to respond to the business whichever direction it takes. There's a lot of sense in this approach, but it raises questions too:

There's a similar leap of faith with this as there is for some organisation with open source. There's a certain amount of believing in your investment. Strategy is great, but at some point even the most ardent strategists want to see delivery and execution.

We'll ignore the history lesson on the Gordian knot, but the term should clearly resonate with some organisations in their approach to integration. On the dark side of integration sit the organisations that spend the majority of their time delivering quick wins, tactical projects and dirty fixes. The problem with this type of integration is that the project numbers generally stack up. At some point though, it just becomes unsupportable and your strategy is lost. The complexity of the tactical solutions becomes an increasing barrier to doing anything right. Something we all like to do from time to time.

So is there a happy middle ground to be found in what is certainly one of the most challenging aspects of IT? At Hubstone, we believe a product called Jitterbit can sit somewhere in between. It's probably best described as a consolidated tactical tool that wont hurt your longer term strategy. It is standards based and its roadmap should give your strategists warm fuzzy feelings. It is also a fast, visual tool, focused on reusable integrations and a non-developer skillset. Some level of scripting is a given in an integration, but this needn't be the level of complexity that your current solutions have. See our partneship announcement later on in the newsletter for more information and opportunities to train in the Jitterbit product.

We're very pleased to announce our recent partnership with Jitterbit. We believe this product really adds some bite to our portfolio of solutions. We also pleased to announce that we will be running Jitterbit's first european training course in London from 25th - 27th July. This 3 day course will give organisations a head start with this powerful integration product  and the opportunity to shave time and cost out of their projects. For more details about the product click here and to register for the training click here .

We're finally there, so we'd be pleased to talk with you about SpikeSource solutions. Our key focus at the moment is on Alfresco document management and we still have some work to do in pulling together our overall solution. We believe this gives us more breadth in our service offering and enables us to offer a more complete solution portfolio to our clients. For more information about SpikeSource click here .