Ed Vasquez, Tom Myers, Jerry Flasz & Derek Butcher

Expert Panel

SOA Reality Check Part II
47 minutes, 21.7mb, recorded 2005-11-08
Ed Vasquez

Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) is quickly becoming the "big project" for many IT organizations. Whether it is to obtain regulatory compliance, or to integrate disparate systems across the organization, an SOA project is probably in your future. Sharing real-world experiences with SOA implementation, Ed Vasquez, Jerry Flasz, and Tom Myers address the following issues and more at the SOA Executive Forum, held November 7 & 8, 2005, in New York City:

  • Vetting the vendors - Choose your platforms and your vendors wisely. Will they be there when the difficult issues surface?
  • Selling the service - For the IT executive, solving all of the technical issues is only half of the equation. Plan to spend an equal effort to market and sell the services you're working on as assets to your organization.
  • Visibility vs. Viability - With SOA at its current level of maturity, most organizations choosing to implement SOA will start with a proof of concept project. Maximize the visibility of the project by addressing issues that are critical to your organization. At the same time, the project must be successful in order for the company to move forward with SOA, so be sure to take on a project that is reasonably achievable.

The panel discussion was moderated by Derek Butcher, CTO of InfoWorld.


Ed Vasquez leads Sprint-Nextel's Web Service Integration Product Development team. He has been managing enterprise web platform, infrastructure, and development projects for the last six years as well as web service integration projects for the last four years. Having worked at multiple levels and in several different divisions at Sprint, Mr. Vasquez has a unique understanding of Sprint-Nextel's internal organizational needs and is very familiar with the needs of external clients, customers, and partners. His efforts to transform Sprint-Nextel's infrastructure towards SOA was recently featured in the September 12, 2005 issue of InfoWorld entitled "Sprint rationalizes its infrastructure with SOA" Mr. Vasquez graduated from the University of Kansas in 1994 and recently completed his Masters in Applied Behavioral Analysis at KU as well.

Jerry Flasz is Vice President of Web Services for the Avaya Corporation. Prior to joining Avaya, Mr. Flasz was Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Moore Medical Corporation. Prior to joining Moore Medical, he was Vice President of eCommerce/End User Computing Information Systems, Revlon Corporation, from 1998 to 2001; and Vice President of Operations, A.P. Products LTD, from 1993 to 1998.

Tom Myers is Application Architect at financial services company Evergreen Investments/Wachovia Corp.

Derek Butcher is the CTO of InfoWorld Media Group and is charged with spearheading InfoWorld's technology initiatives. He is responsible for implementing the technology and best-practices that define the expanded role of IT in today's business environments. Prior to the CTO position, Derek served as Director of Engineering for InfoWorld, where he created and managed long-term plans for technology initiatives, including web publishing systems, content redistribution, and syndication. Derek has also served as Senior Engineering Manager at Disney Internet Group. Derek studied Computer Science and Psychology in the Bachelor of Science Honors Program at the University of Washington.

 

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