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Welcome
Welcome to the premier edition of the Scient Technology Journal. It is our goal with this publication to share with you Scient's perspectives on the most critical - and at times, controversial - technology issues of the day. It is our intention to arm you with in-depth analysis and informed opinions of key technology topics, and it is our hope that you'll view this Journal as a trusted source of highly relevant, insightful information critical to guiding your technology decisions.
In this introductory issue of the Scient Technology Journal, we share our point of view and lessons learned about optimizing architectures, offshore development and emerging technologies such as Web Services. Enterprises today are increasingly becoming real-time enabled due to the growing need to provide more transparency to customers and business partners. Reporting of events as they occur and reacting to this information in real time enables organizations to optimize their business processes and improve their overall operational efficiency.
We at Scient believe that the strengths of recent technological advances are fast transforming the "information age" into the "real-time information age." From real-time account access to real-time monitoring of technology infrastructure, the need for real-time information processing is more important than ever, and ever growing. As a result, there is currently a strong drive to integrate heterogeneous IT systems into a single, coherent information-processing engine. However, there are inherent conflicts between this need for significant integration and the desire to optimize IT infrastructures and processes to rationalize IT investments, reduce cost and leverage past investments. Added to the mix is the desire to harness new technologies to gain strategic business advantages. These key issues are more often than not at odds with each other, and as a result, today's IT managers increasingly face the challenge of prioritizing their initiatives against the backdrop of these disparate driving forces.
In this edition of the Scient Technology Journal, we tackle these issues through our discussion on optimizing architectures, offshore development and emerging technologies such as Web Services. We highlight the challenges that are inherent when optimizing architectures to support the convergence of multiple channels in "Unified Channel Architecture, Not Independent Channel Architectures." We discuss the challenge of deriving ROI from integration efforts in "Getting ROI from EAI." The pros and cons of optimization through outsourcing IT development to offshore vendors are the central themes of "How to Approach Offshore Development." "Stateless Web Services in a State-Full Enterprise" highlights a potential challenge in the emerging Web Services technology. Optimization of IT infrastructure through innovative use of Storage Area Networks (SAN) technology is the underlying theme of "Storage Area Networks."
I hope that you find this premier issue of the Scient Technology Journal useful and I look forward to your feedback. If there are any topics that you would like to see discussed in upcoming editions, please contact me at ScientTechnologyJournal@scient.com and we'll do our very best to address them.
With regards,
Sushil Prabhu
Chief Technology Officer
Scient Inc. |
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Stateless Web Services in a State-Full Enterprise
Ronald Bostic, Jagdip Grewal, Ray Velez, Garner Andrews
Introduction
Web Services is the latest evolution of the industry's effort to enable distributed computing. Cross-platform and standards-based, Web Services currently supports a stateless messaging model. Its stateless nature is very well suited for the implementation of loosely coupled systems across heterogeneous platforms. As organizations identify pilot applications and roll out their Web Services infrastructure, they will face specific architecture challenges related to managing state across applications. Ignoring these challenges will inhibit these organizations from effectively using this exciting technology in transacting with their business partners and extracting the maximum ROI from existing legacy systems. This article will highlight the different scenarios where managing state is a key requirement and the current options to handle state in the context of Web Services should such a need arise.
For more, please view the entire article.
A PDF version of this article is available for download.
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Unified Channel Architecture, Not Independent Channel Architectures
Mohit Doshi
Introduction
As customers, employees, and partners increasingly demand availability of diverse channels to interact with the organizations with which they do business, enterprises are faced with the importance of building architectures that expand their operations across multiple channels. The complexity of developing these architectures, however, has often led to unexpected, undesirable outcomes, including high investment expenditures, long-term operational costs and a sub-optimal customer experience. Scient feels enterprises can address these issues by building unified channel architectures as opposed to multiple independent channel architectures. In this article we debunk commonly held beliefs about the benefits of multiple independent channel architectures and the reasons why they don't often deliver on their promise. We also provide suggestions on how to build enduring unified channel architectures to deliver superior and sustainable levels of customer experience that lead to increased revenue generation, reduced technology investment and long-term operational costs.
For more, please view the entire article.
A PDF version of this article is available for download.
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Getting ROI from EAI
Jim Kenyon, Jagdip Grewal
Introduction
Organizations trying to drive ROI from Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) technology need to create an organizational structure that supports a coordinated EAI strategy. When a governance model is in place, enterprises should approach integration in manageable chunks, business process by business process and system by system. This article highlights the differences between the technology industry's aspirations for EAI and the reality encountered by Scient's consultants on client engagements.
EAI is used to describe a class of technology that facilitates the routing of messages from sources to targets, optionally transforming or interrogating the message content, and potentially guaranteeing delivery to subscribers. The heavily technical nature of these products, and the view of the technology as "plumbing" between systems, has resulted in many enterprises overlooking the strategic and operational considerations necessary to yield a return from the investment.
For more, please view the entire article.
A PDF version of this article is available for download.
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Storage Area Networks
Mohit Doshi, Ken Thompson
Introduction
The fact that Storage Area Networks (SAN) provide superior solutions at the data level for managing mission critical information is well understood by the industry. Additionally, as SAN technology becomes more prevalent, less expensive, and better understood, enterprises will find innovative uses for it at the application level. While current investment costs of a SAN may be high, they deliver higher ROI, increase IT infrastructure efficiency and reduce IT maintenance costs. In this article we highlight the well-known uses and intrinsic characteristics of SAN technology, discuss application-level issues ripe to benefit from SAN and provide suggestions on how SAN technology can address those issues.
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) defines Storage Area Network as any high performance network whose primary purpose is to enable storage devices to communicate with computer systems and with each other. The storage in SAN is provided via devices such as disks, tape drives, and RAID subsystems. The area uses Fibre Channel technology for connectivity. The network is enabled via storage switches that connect the storage devices to the systems effectively creating a Local Area Network (LAN) dedicated to storage.
For more, please view the entire article.
A PDF version of this article is available for download.
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How to Approach Offshore Development
Bill Sommers, Bob Reveal
Introduction
Scient believes that offshore development can play a significant role in reducing development costs. However, we caution that highly innovative and collaborative projects demand a more informed evaluation of offshore risks and rewards. In sum, Scient's approach recommends:
- Select offshore projects based on project characteristics, not project type. Project and organizational characteristics, such as technology maturity and outsourcing firm's project management experience, should drive offshore decisions. A more simple-minded focus on project types, such as applications maintenance or size can result in cost overruns, not cost savings.
- Optimize onsite, offsite and offshore capabilities. A detailed plan that integrates the best onsite, offsite and offshore capabilities can lower project lifecycle costs, ensure quality and mitigate delivery risk. Keep project leadership close to the client, design the project for distributed implementation, and address cultural and geographic challenges up-front.
- Hire an experienced 3rd party to manage the offshore vendor. This 3rd party offshore program management partner can help identify suitable offshore projects, plan and direct project efforts and lead the offshore teams directly. Vendor certifications and skill sets do not guarantee successful delivery in the absence of an experienced, local and loyal program management partner that ensures compliance with development specifications, quality standards, milestones, timeframes and budget.
For more, please view the entire article.
A PDF version of this article is available for download.
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This release contains certain forward-looking statements regarding Scient, including statements about its operations, prospects and expectations about future financial results. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially. These risks and uncertainties include the ability to complete the anticipated transactions on acceptable terms, the ability to implement the strategies outlined above, the demand for Scient's services, Scient's ability to obtain additional projects with existing or new clients, Scient's ability to provide services to existing and new clients, the sufficiency of Scient's sales and marketing teams, future growth, absence of long-term contracts with clients, key management and employee retention, competition, technological advances, and other factors identified in Scient's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to the 10-K and subsequent 10-Qs. Copies of those filings are available from the Company and the SEC. SOURCE Scient.
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