Kyle Gabhart

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you are aware of the hype around Big Data and Predictive Analytics.  The potential is mind-blowing, but organizations looking to pursue Big Data must be cautious and consider the enabling pieces that need to be in place in order to be successful.  Otherwise, irrational exuberance may well lead to a Big Investment in a Big Disappointment. Earlier this month, I was interviewed for the Cloud Computing Journal as a survey of IT pundits on the subject of Big Data Predictions for 2013.  While many were extolling the virtues of Big Data, I was the proverbial party-pooper.  My cautionary tale is repeated here for ease of access and in hopes of facilitating a dialogue on the subject: 2013 holds the potential for Big Data and Analytics to either generate real returns for the next wave of adopters or potentially ‘jump the shark’ and be... (more)

The Hype About .NET

You've heard the hype about .NET. You've read a couple of vague articles about dynamic discovery and invocation, service-oriented architecture, and how SOAP and a handful of other XML standards are forever changing the software industry. These ideas have intrigued you and you're interested in learning more - or at the very least, you recognize the importance of being able to add these acronyms to your resumé. In either case, you want to explore the world of .NET, but are unable or unwilling to fork over a thousand bucks for Microsoft's Visual Studio .NET product. This article is ... (more)

Agile Enterprise Architecture

Old News. Long Shorts. Jumbo Shrimp. Agile EA. What’s the common thread?? They are all oxymoronical statements. But does it have to be that way? Does the implementation of Enterprise Architecture, or for that matter Solution Architecture, necessarily have to be a cumbersome and heavy-weight initiative? In my experiences with countless organizations from a wide range of industries, the answer is a definitive – NO. Your architecture practice can be robust, and still be nimble. Bigger is not always Better In spite of what you may have been led to believe, a bigger EA initiative is n... (more)

Ten Steps to Successful Cloud Adoption

A Journey of False Starts This is not the first time you’ve had your heart set on revolutionizing your information systems: One year, you rolled out a big Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) initiative, but it was too brittle and carried high maintenance costs. For a while you experimented with Web Services, but found that while they were easy to work with, they were largely insufficient to meet your broader needs due to a lack of architectural design guidelines. Out-sourcing, in-sourcing, up-sourcing, down-sourcing, and cross-sourcing just seemed to shuffle the work aroun... (more)

Book Excerpt: Enabling Agile Business with SOA

This content is excerpted from Service Oriented Architecture Field Guide for Executives (978-0-470-26091-3) with permission from the publisher, John Wiley & Sons. You may not make any other use, or authorize any others to make any other use of this excerpt, in any print or non-print format, including electronic or multimedia. SOA Value Story Ronald Schmelzer, of industry think tank ZapThink, describes four key benefits to SOA.[1] Reducing integration expenses (both development costs and maintenance costs) Increasing asset reuse (no need to re-invent the wheel each time) Increasin... (more)