Marley Gray's WebLog

Composite Applications for Financial Services

Finally I have put the finishing touches on a presentation that puts our Connected Systems theme together with a Composite Application approach that supports both a Smart and Web Client interface.  (Nothing new and groundbreaking here, just composing a message that resonates with a mix of business and technical audiences.) The presentation blends together and end to end scenario that deals with Entity Aggregation, Comprehensive Workflow/Orchestration, Service Orientation, Dynamic Messaging and Composite applications to present the big picture.

Part of my reasoning for building this message is trying to articulate to people what the value is in differentiating your applications using the UI.  What sort of infrastructure is required to enable a composite application approach is required and finally what Microsoft products fit where in the architecture?  Among the topics are questions like:

• So you measured what the TCO is for your Web Application UI for operations and maintenance...did you look at the cost for the additional time it now takes all of your users to conduct a transaction?  TCO is usually measured over a 3 year period, but the average lifespan of an application is 7.  Let’s say your application adds 2 seconds to every user transaction due to the Web UI architecture and you have 2000 users.  What is the cost of the additional 2 seconds * 2000 * 7?  Depends on how much a second costs.  In a call center there are places where shaving a second off each call saves a million dollars a year.  If you app is a call center application, your UI choice just cost and addition 2 million per year.
• Service Orientation is not architecture!  Architecture is what we use to build our houses; we do not pour a foundation for a house before the architecture is complete.  We use services in our houses: water, electricity, cable tv, gas, phone, etc.  We do not architect these services to use them.  Now each service is architected internally & differently with a service orientation mindset for how the services are consumed.  (Water - On/Off; Gas - On/Off, etc)  We as house builders can then compose the services together to create new value...electricity/gas + water == hot water!  So if you insist on making Service Orientation a TLA, then use SOM (Mindset).
• Using SOM we expose our infrastructure in simple ways that application for applications to combine them to create new value....this is Connected Systems enabling Composite Applications.
  

Enough of the rant…