WS-BPEL 2.0 . BPM & Web 2.0 . SOA . XSLT . JSON

JOHN EVDEMON
Architect, Microsoft, with the Architecture Strategy Team focusing on BPM and SOA

E.F. Schumacher, a well-known British economist, once wrote: "I cannot predict the wind but I can have my sail ready." With that thought in mind here are ten predictions and hopes to help get your sails ready for 2007:

1.  The WS-BPEL 2.0 specification will finally be approved as an OASIS standard. Adoption of WS-BPEL will initially be slow, driven by customer demand. BPEL will evolve beyond a "check box requirement" if people begin using it as a foundation for defining process profiles (conceptually similar to how people use WS-Security today). An updated mapping from BPMN to WS-BPEL will also be published.

2.  The convergence of BPM and Web 2.0 begins. BPM is about improving performance by optimizing key processes. Web 2.0 is about capturing the wisdom of crowds (or as O'Reilly puts it, the architecture of participation). The convergence of BPM and Web 2.0 enables collaborative development and tagging of sub-processes, establishing a "process folksonomy" where the best processes can evolve organically. Collaboration can occur over simple but highly scalable pub/sub mechanisms (like Atom or SSE). Lightweight tools will enable users to model or reuse sub-processes using a broad set of metadata. While this is an exciting opportunity, there are several technical and non-technical issues that must be addressed before this convergence becomes a reality.

3.  Improvements in SOA management and governance. Tools, frameworks and platforms will emerge that better enable:

• Defining and enforcing service development guidelines
• Modeling, managing and enforcing operational policies (e.g., security, service level agreements and others)
• Service simulations (what-if scenarios, impact analysis, etc.)
• Modeling and managing service dependencies
• Service provisioning and de-provisioning
• Configuration management

4.  Workflow isn't confined to the datacenter anymore. Lightweight, extensible frameworks like Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) enable workflow in places where it may not have been previously considered.

5.  Better UI Experiences. Declarative user interfaces will enable rich user experiences that can be easily modified or extended with simple mechanisms like XSLT. Familiar business applications like Office provide the user interface to back-end line-of-business systems. The line between AJAX-based UIs and rich desktop UIs will blur, enabling users to enjoy both connected and occasionally-connected experiences. Tools and guidance will make building, testing and deploying these composite UI experiences much easier.

6.  A new category of architecture emerges: Software + Services. It is hard these days to find an architectural concept that is not some how tied to services. The line between Web services, SaaS and traditional applications will blur to the point where the location, contract and hosting of a service are less important than the capabilities exposed by the service.

7.  JSON without AJAX. We'll start to see more people using JSON to address the XML bloat problem outside of simple AJAX-based applications. The downside is that this may result in more tightly-coupled applications.

8.  Events and states instead of EDI-style messaging. Lightweight frameworks will empower developers to starting thinking about solutions in terms of event notifications instead of simple messages passing from point A to point B. Hierarchical state machines enable state synchronization across complex, federated processes.

9.  We stop talking about SOA and "just do it." Sometimes we spend more time arguing about IT trends than actually using them. In 2007 the tools and specifications we need for enterprise-strength, loosely-coupled solutions have finally arrived - it's time to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

10.  IT finally admits that there is no silver bullet. Every year I hope to see this happen and every year my hopes are crushed by buzzword-of-the-minute hype machines. (Hey I can dream, can't I?)

AJAX Over-use . JSF . Relational Object Mapping . Macs

BILL DUDNEY
Editor-in-Chief, Eclipse Developer's Journal

1. AJAX will continue to gain momentum as folks continue to have the epiphany that Web 1.0 UI is not good for users. Overuse of the technology will be a real problem. JSF will finally start to become a de facto as well as actual standard due to its ease of integration with AJAX.
2. Open Source enablement will continue to be a hot spot for VC investment. I don't think the perfect business model will emerge in '07 though so the market will still remain 'immature.'
3. Java Persistence API will bring relational object mapping to the long tail of the market. Early adopters will be wondering what all the hype is because the technology is so old in their eyes.
4. Macs will continue their 'thought leader' adoption curve. This is not the year they start to penetrate the corporate IT department.

Web Service Orchestration . Web Services Explosion

ADAM KOLAWA
Co-Founder & CEO, Parasoft

1.  I anticipate a significant demand for Web service orchestration in the upcoming year, especially in the United States.

Many organizations now have at least one Web service, and a growing number already have two or more related Web services. Managing multiple related Web services is considerably more challenging than managing the same number of separate, unrelated Web services. To use these related Web services to achieve your business goals, you need to consider how high-level operations pass through the Web services, then determine how to implement this high-level flow- from start to finish. This can be accomplished in two ways:
- By programmatically coding the application logic required to tie the involved elements together.
- By using an orchestration tool to direct the flow through the involved elements, which remain separate.

I predict that the latter method will be the favorite because it is easier.

2.  I also expect an explosion of Web services because they are so easy to expose. Once exposed, Web services basically create interfaces which can be reused. This will significantly reduce the amount of code that needs to written, which will in turn cut the demand for "bare bones" development.

Server Virtualization . Container-Based Hosting . Linux Rails . Django . Agile Development

BRANDON HARPER
Senior Software Developer at Acxiom Corp.

The top five technology trends I see happening in the New Year are:

1.  Server virtualization is just getting started, and will really make itself known in the coming year. Once we start seeing the quad core CPU architectures as a part of standard infrastructure, it really starts making a lot of sense to start deploying and managing servers and applications as virtual entities rather than specific pieces of hardware. This helps manage the cost and pain of software configuration management, take advantage of being able to process many tasks simultaneously because of hardware support, as well as allows legacy hardware to be retired in favor of applications running on virtual servers.

2.  Container-based hosting is the new kid on the block, and will also start making its presence known in the upcoming year. Commonly labeled as "grid" hosting (which is a technical misnomer if you understand distributed computing), it essentially claims to be an infinitely scalable hosting platform. This technology still seems to be half-baked at the moment, but you could have said the same thing about Linux ten years ago.

3.  People who normally wouldn't use Linux start to explore it and even replace Windows with it permanently. With Vista, Microsoft seems to be moving to a model in which the Windows operating system is a method to police users with DRM and other nonsense rather than provide developers with a good platform on which to use hardware, which is what operating systems are really supposed to be. A lot more consumers who haven't noticed this happening in the past will stand up and notice this year.

4.  Dynamic languages and frameworks will continue to make leaps in popularity and adoption. Given the current squeeze on technology talent in the US, companies are going to have to learn how to do more with fewer resources. Moving to dynamic languages and frameworks as well as other simplification such as varying Agile software development practices will enable this to take place. I think the obvious leading candidates here are Ruby on Rails and Django.

5.  The enterprise will embrace ways to simplify develop-ment by continuing to embrace open source software and Agile Development strategies. While there are a lot of cries to the effect of Ruby on Rails replacing Java, I think that's complete nonsense as Java is a language and Ruby on Rails is a framework. Rapid development languages will certainly make some inroads, particularly where heavy tools have been used to build simple applications, Java is still going to be a major part of the service-oriented enterprise for years to come because of the power and tools it provides as well as its industry support.

SIDEBAR

SaaS . Open Source . Mobile . Enterprise IM Social Networks . China . Virtualization . RFID . Internet Video . Prediction Networks . Intelligent Wikis

The Z Generation CIO & IT Professional
By Bob Zurek
Director of Advanced Technologies with IBM Information Integration Solutions

The Z Generation is typically described as those who are born sometime during the early 2000s and continue to the 2017 time frame. So what will these Generation Z IT Professionals be experienced with. Here's my prediction for the Top Ten characteristics (and this is just the tip of the iceberg):

1. Grew up in the world of SaaS and open source and wonders why you would ever license and install software. If you still needed to install software, then it should be available in the form of open source. Expects all internal projects to be developed using the open source model.
2. Grew up with a mobile technology and wonders how anyone could run a business without it. Insists everything be available on a highly portable digital device and everyone in the organization have a device. No exceptions.
3. Grew up knowing how to leverage the power of social networks for the benefit of the corporation. This includes the ability to build out these networks and use them to help build new products and technologies. Generation Z CIOs will have a huge advantage as they have grown up as participants in many social networks. China will be a big source of these networks. Websites will be built by the Z Generation CIO to invite outsiders in to help build new and innovative products that have yet to be thought of by the enterprises internal employees.
4. Grew up using Instant Messaging and will insist that the enterprise use IM as a priority over email and that email will only be used if the communications can't be done using the features of the future enterprise IM platform.
5. Will tap into offerings such as TopCoder.com to supplement project teams. There will be a world of competing Topcoder.com like sites where the best coders in the world will be found to solve very complex algorithms and other challenging software projects facing the IT department. China will be a major provider of these teams.
6. Grew up with a complete understanding of the value of virtualization and therefore, their datacenter will be virtualized and the IT operating fabric will be grid-based, tapping the power of external grids of CPU.
7. RFID Everywhere. The Z Generation will be the ones that take RFID to new heights. Everything that is taggable will be tagged and tracked.
8. CIO and Z Generation IT Professionals will leverage the power of Internet video by taking advantage of companies like BrightCove Networks which will bring knowledge workers engaging channels like "The Customer Service Channel", "The Corporate Strategy Channel", "The M&A Channel" and others. I can see companies like Harvard Business Review and others producing content for these channels. Imagine the "The DataCenter Channel." The topics are endless and will be as easy to find as bringing up your favorite search engine. New content will be generated targeted for companies like "The IBM Channel" or the "GE Channel." I would love to see "The Institute of The Future Channel"
9. Intelligent Wikis will be the primary source of knowledge in an enterprise and will eventually do what data warehousing did for business intelligence. Furthermore, new internal employee-generated communities will spin up to voluntarily invent new projects during their off-hours to showcase their creativity that is typically not known by the employer.
10. CIOs will aggressively adopt Prediction Networks as part of the core business strategy to better help the enterprise gauge where everything from sales to new product development will be successful.

Open Source Java . General Public License v2 . GPL v3

Consequences of Open-Sourcing Java
by Tony Wasserman
Professor of Software Engineering Practice at Carnegie Mellon West and Executive Director of the Center for Open Source Investigation (COSI) The open-sourcing of Java under the GPL 2 license will have a ripple effect on various technical and business issues in 2007:

• First, people will closely study the Java source code and find one or more serious bugs, at least one of which has been there since the earliest days of Java.
• Second, a real-time systems vendor will fork the source code, as permitted by the GPL, and create a variant that is "tuned" for real-time applications. This step will be the focus of a major debate within the Java community.
• Third, the open-sourcing of Java will have a positive impact on the adoption and use of open source software in general.
• Fourth, the use of the GPL 2 for open-sourcing Java will inhibit the completion and acceptance of the GPL 3 proposal.

Open Sun . iPod Uno . IT2 . Microsoft VAPOR

...And in Other 2007 News
by Richard Monson-Haefel
Award-Winning Author & Senior Analyst, Burton Group

1.  Jonathan Schwartz open-sources Sun Microsystems.
In a move that will surprise everyone Sun Microsystems will announce that it will open source its entire company. Sales, marketing, finance, and even operations will be open to the community for anyone to contribute.

2.  Apple computer announces the iPod Uno.
The size of a match stick with no screen or controls, the iPod Uno plays one song in a constant loop. Despite its limited capabilities, the tiny device becomes an instant hit and a cultural icon.

3.  In what is heralded as the seminal article on the subject, Tim Berners-Lee mentions "IT2"
Overnight the term morphs into "IT 2.0," spawning thousands of blog entries and press articles, a dozen books, five conferences, and millions of dollars in venture capital. It turns out that the original article, incomprehensible to most readers, was actually another attempt to explain the Semantic Web and the IT2 reference was just a typo.

4.  Microsoft will create the first CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) position.
The new CMO will immediately change his own title to Chief Command & Control of Packaging Officer (C3PO) and then announce that Vista will be delayed and renamed Microsoft Virtualization Application Program Operating system Reloaded (Microsoft VAPOR).