Work with ZapThink
SOA & EA Mentorship
ZapMentorship: Hands-on SOA Guidance
ZapAdvisory: Unlimited SOA / EA Advisory
ZapCheck: One-Day Quick Assessment & Sanity Check
SOA Training & Events
SOA & EA Training
SOA & EA Events
SOA Research & Analysis
ZapAdvisory: Unlimited research
ZapFlash Newsletter
SOA & EA Marketing
ZapAccess: Reach the SOA market
Marketing & Visibility
ZapMentorship: Hands-on SOA Guidance
ZapAdvisory: Unlimited SOA / EA Advisory
ZapCheck: One-Day Quick Assessment & Sanity Check
SOA Training & Events
SOA & EA Training
SOA & EA Events
SOA Research & Analysis
ZapAdvisory: Unlimited research
ZapFlash Newsletter
SOA & EA Marketing
ZapAccess: Reach the SOA market
Marketing & Visibility
ZapThink Features
SOA Research
Implementing SOA
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
Service-Oriented Integration (SOI)
SOA Tools & Development
Security & Identity Management
Content & Presentation
Service-Oriented Process
XML Infrastructure
Governance
Best practices
Web Services Management
Web Services
Composite Application
Business Process Management (BPM)
SOA Management
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
Service-Oriented Integration (SOI)
SOA Tools & Development
Security & Identity Management
Content & Presentation
Service-Oriented Process
XML Infrastructure
Governance
Best practices
Web Services Management
Web Services
Composite Application
Business Process Management (BPM)
SOA Management
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SOA Implementation Roadmap Poster
ZapThink's Roadmap to SOA adoption is a
one-of-a-kind, full-color poster that provides organizations an at-a-glance view at how to approach implementing SOA.
Download for FREE or purchase a 10-pack for $29.95*!
Expand Your SOA Skills and Opportunities:
Become a Licensed ZapThink Architect (LZA)
Become a Licensed ZapThink Architect (LZA)
- Are you an enterprise architect or an aspiring architect looking to get third-party backing for your SOA capabilities?
- Are you not finding what you want in self-serving, vendor-specific "certifications" that don't provide the credentials you need to advance your architecture skills, career, and future direction?
- What does it even mean to have SOA on your list of qualifications?
- Do you want to leverage ZapThink's brand, reach, reputation, and network to advance your SOA efforts?
Increasingly, individuals like you are looking to get the backing of a qualified third-party organization to not only endorse their existing SOA skills, but also enable continuous improvement, enhanced networking with those looking for architecture resources, or enhance their current SOA-enabled careers. ZapThink is filling the unmet need for knowledge and credentials in this area, and we want you to be a part!
What does it mean for ZapThink to Endorse your Capabilities?
While Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) is clearly returning significant and tangible benefits to those that know how to implement the architectural approach properly, to many others, it simply represents the buzzword du jour. Frankly, if you are a end-user architect practitioner, a consultant at a large firm or an independent, or even a vendor with a professional services practice, saying that you "know how to do SOA" is simply not enough. Smart organizations are asking now to dig deeper behind the buzz and want to know what specific skills, capabilities, and credentials you have as a qualified architect.This is where the LZA program steps in. Rather than you having to back your own word that you know how to do SOA. Let us share the burden. We want to not only qualify and credential you to represent yourself with certain skills, but we will prominently mention that fact in our online LZA directory and be willing to provide the credential evidence you need to show that you have what it takes.
What does an LZA Credential mean for your SOA Skills?
Service-oriented Architecture, and indeed all of Enterprise Architecture, is a continuously evolving field. What might be today's best practices might be yesterday's inefficient methods. Furthermore, many SOA "practitioners" lack critical skills around Service design, analysis, organizational alignment, and domain modeling, among other key skills, as well as knowing which artifacts and approaches to use to get the best value from those skills. LZAs are constantly on the cutting edge of the best thought-leadership, expertise, and methodologies for SOA. Learn not only from ZapThink Master Architects on how to do SOA with the best, emerging practices, but also learn from other LZAs. Like a true skills-development program, the LZA credential is an opportunity to sharpen, develop, and extend your skills in SOA.LZA Credential Levels and Requirements
Since architects come in all shapes and sizes, and since the credential program sets a quality bar for those that go through it, ZapThink has the following levels of credential to match your skills and capabilities:Junior Licensed ZapThink Architect
- Completion of four-day LZA Bootcamp including completion of all the exercises at the Bootcamp within the previous twelve months.
Senior Licensed ZapThink Architect
- Senior LZA credential OR two years of experience as an Enterprise Architect AND
- Completion of four-day LZA Bootcamp including completion of all the exercises at the Bootcamp within the previous 12 months; AND
- Passing scores on written exercises at the Bootcamp, as determined by the instructor(s)
Licensed ZapThink Architect Fellow (Trainer)
- Active Senior LZA credential; AND
- Five years of experience as an architect; AND
- Participation as an apprentice ZapThink trainer at two four-day ZapThink training events.
The LZA Credentialing Process
The LZA credential is an annual credential. Since SOA and enterprise architecture as a whole undergoes continuous change, our ability to back your capabilities lasts as long as the knowledge is still thought-leading. As such, we offer our LZA program on an annual basis. The process for becoming a Licensed ZapThink Architect is straigth-forward and simple if you already have some enterprise architecture skills.- Pre-Qualifications: You must have at least some demonstrable enterprise architect experience as an individual, with an enterprise end-user firm, or at a consulting practice with a consulting firm or vendor company with a consulting practice. We ask that you submit your current CV or resume and answer a few survey questions as a means to ascertain your applicable skills.
- The LZA Bootcamp: The credentialing process itself consists of a four-day workshop structured as a means to exchange the latest SOA practices, methodologies, and artifacts, and finishes on the last day with a one-on-one evaluation of your capabilities for credentialing. You leave the LZA bootcamp with a credential for your efforts, and with our knowledge of your expertise. LZA bootcamps are offered multiple times a year at designated training locations. Class sizes are limited to no more than fifty (50) so that we can properly credential each individual architect.
Licensed ZapThink Architect Course Agenda
Day One
(Classes usually start at 8:30 and end at 5PM)Module 1: Fundamentals of SOA
- Business Agility
- The Business Inflexibility Trap
- Business Agility
- Service Orientation
- Service Orientation: A Business Approach
- What is SOA?
- Is SOA New?
- One Difference is Web Services
- SOA vs. Web Services
- If not Web Services, Then What?
- The Distributed Computing Pendulum
- Service orientation -- the next big thing?
- Business Drivers for SOA
- SOA: Paradigm Shift?
- SOA as Architecture
- What is Architecture?
- The Service Abstraction & SOA Tenets
- Levels of Service Abstraction
- What are Services? (Technically, Service interfaces)
- What’s a Service Contract?
- Service Interfaces Aren’t Good Enough!
- The Difference is the Abstraction
- The Fundamental Technical Challenge of SOA
- Key Service Abstraction Enabler: Coarse Granularity
- Achieving Proper Granularity
- Service Identification: Top Down vs. Bottom Up
- Granularity vs. Atomicity
- Consumers & Providers
- Loose Coupling
- Loose Coupling: Separation of Concerns
- Levels of Coupling
- Loose Coupling and Context
- Interoperability vs. Portability
- RPC vs. Document-Style
- Metadata & SOA
- The Secret Sauce: Metadata
- Programmatic vs. Declarative
- Role of Metadata
- What are Metadata?
- Metadata for SOA
- Service Contracts: The Key to Loose Coupling
- What’s in a Contract?
- What’s NOT in the Contract
- WSDL: Service Contract Starting Point
- Contract Metadata Beyond WSDL
- Service Model Drives Contract-First Development
- The Challenges of Contract-First Development
- Different Views of SOA
- SOA: A Technology View
- SOA: Infrastructure Service View
- SOA: A Business Service View
- Service Composition: An overview
- Service Composition: Supporting Business Process with Services
- SOBAs: Rethinking the Application
- Service-Oriented Process
- SOA Fundamentals Wrap-Up
- Business Empowerment vs. IT Control
- Governance: The Key to Business Empowerment
- How to Think Service-Oriented
- In this exercise, teams will create their own Service Contract Template, explaining all the elements of metadata and information needed to describe appropriately abstract, loosely coupled, and composable Services. Then, they will use their Service contract template to sketch out the contents of a contract for a particular Service.
Module 2: Service-Oriented Analysis & Design
- Architectural Artifacts
- Initial Assessments
- Building Support for SOA
- Defining SOA Success
- Challenges in Calculating ROI
- The Business Case
- Milestone / KPI Plan
- The SOA Roadmap
- The ZapThink SOA Roadmap
- In this exercise, teams will craft a SOA Roadmap based on the ZapThink SOA Roadmap that addresses the key milestones and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that they can use to gauge the progress and value of their SOA efforts as they progress with their SOA initiative.
- Defining Services
- SOA Modeling
- The SOA Metamodel
- Building the Service Model
- Defining Services
- Services & the Process Model
- SOA Foundation: Model-Driven Architecture
- The Service Model: Building Business Services
- Architectural Views
- SOA Foundation: The 4+1 View Model
- SOA as Enterprise Architecture
- The Zachman Framework
- Pros & Cons of Zachman
- SOA & Zachman
- Data & Semantics
- The Semantic Model
- Semantic Level Understanding
- Understanding Application Semantics
- Semantics Challenges
- Physical & Logical Data Models
- Leveraging Existing Data
- Leveraging Data Services Layer
- The Data Services Layer Abstraction
- Service Modeling
- The Service Model
- Service-Level Understanding
- Validating Service Assumptions
- Role of a Service Directory
- For homework, participants analyze a set of high level current, and future, business and technical requirements, evolve an SOA strategy and then perform a top-down and bottom-up plan for Services, identifying their core components and key characteristics.
Day Two
(Classes usually start at 8:30 and end at 5PM)Module 2: Service-Oriented Analysis & Design (Continued)
- Service-Oriented Process
- The Process Model
- Process-Level Understanding
- Discovering Processes
- Shared vs. Private Processes
- Using the Process Catalog
- New Service Definition
- Exposing Existing Capabilities
- Service Identification: Process Decomposition
- Exposing Composite & Data Services
- Defining New Processes
- Configuration & Design
- Business Logic at the Composition Level
- SOA Governance Intro
- The Governance Model
- SOA Governance Steps
- Measuring SOA Progress
- Governance/Security Model
- Measuring SOA Maturity
- Agility Models
- SOA Maturity Model: Wipro
- SOA Maturity Model: HP
- Service Integration Maturity Model: IBM
- SOA Maturity Model -- Sonic/Systinet
- SOA Maturity Model: Oracle
- In this exercise, teams will assemble an ROI analysis of a proposed SOA project.
Module 3: Building the SOA Infrastructure
- Service Intermediation
- Technology Selection
- SOA Infrastructure Starting Point: The Intermediary
- Some Intermediary Roles
- SOA Depends upon Transformation & Content-Based Routing
- Challenges in Content Processing
- Multiple Interfaces per Implementation
- Multiple Implementations per Interface
- Multiple Interfaces per Business Service
- Actualizing the Business Service Abstraction
- Levels of SOA Infrastructure
- SOA Infrastructure: More than Intermediation
- SOA & Legacy
- The Continued Value of Legacy
- SOA, Integration & Legacy
- Legacy Migration
- Legacy Enablement
- Legacy Rejuvenation
- SOA & "Legacy" Heterogeneous Data & Data Stores
- Data Services
- The Data Services Layer
- Understanding Data Services
- Data Integration & the Data Services Layer
- Messaging & Events
- Messaging Infrastructure
- SOA Message Exchange Patterns
- SOA Tenet: Asynchrony
- Messages vs. Events
- Messaging Challenges at the Content Level
- The Role of XML
- XML: Foundation for Web Services
- Is XML Required for SOA?
- The XML Processing Problem
- The XML Performance Crisis
- Hardware vs. Software Approaches to Improve XML Performance
- Distributed XML Processing
- SOA Security
- Critical XML Processing Challenge: Security
- The Context of IT Security
- XML Threat Prevention
- Web Services Security
- The SOA Security Challenge
- The Security Context Challenge
- Security Context Kludges
- The Role of Entitlement Management
- Federated Security
- The Governance, Quality, Management Trifecta
- The GQM Loop
- Corporate Governance
- What is a Policy?
- The Challenge of Policy Automation
- Steps for Automating Policies
- Supporting Policy Changes
- Quality & the Service Lifecycle
- SOA Quality Assurance
- The Challenge of SOA Testing
- Quality & Management
- SOA Management: Many Facets
- The Problem with SOA Management --
- The First Rule of SOA Management
- The SOA Management Conundrum
- Exception Management & SOA
- Metadata Management & SOA
- Complexities of SOA Metadata Mgmt. Marketplace
- What is a Registry?
- What is a Repository?
- Evaluating SOA Infrastructure
- Purchasing SOA Infrastructure
- The Great ESB/SOA Middleware Boondoggle
- Compounding the Problem: No Clear ESB Definition
- Do You need an ESB for Service Mediation?
- Intermediary-Based Service Abstraction
- Building Intermediary-Based SOA Infrastructure
- SOA & Semantics Revisited
- Semantics: The Greatest Challenge of SOA
- Resolving Semantic Issues
- As homework, participants will think through and plan aspects of the SOA Infrastructure. They will use their SOA roadmap as a starting point for the SOA infrastructure plan.
Day Three
(Classes usually start at 8:30 and end at 5PM)Module 4: Planning & Running SOA Implementation Projects
- Iterative approaches to SOA
- Iterative: More than Step-by-Step
- SOA Project Approach
- Implementation Notes
- Iterate your Architecture?
- Handling Service Versioning
- Process-Level Understanding
- Service-Level Understanding
- Data-Level Understanding
- Testing
- SOA Pilots
- Iterative Problem Domain
- Iterating SOA Initiatives
- Developing a Governance Framework
- Corporate Governance
- Governance & Regulatory Compliance
- The Business Motivation for Governance
- How to Tackle Governance?
- Governance Relationships
- The Cornerstone of IT Governance is Architecture
- Elements of IT Governance Strategy
- Architectural Governance Processes
- IT Governance Feedback Loop
- SOA Governance "in the Narrow"
- Creating the Governance Framework
- Teams will lay out a plan for governance within each of the teams that will address governance issues.
- SOA Project Staffing
- Project Leader
- Project Management for an SOA Project
- The Relationship with Program Management
- Data Specialists
- Security Specialists
- Native Systems Specialists
- Service Development Specialists
- BPM/Composition Specialists
- Governance Specialists
- Testing & Deployment Specialists
- Project Archivists
- External Services Specialists
- How Many of Each?
- Teams will put together a project plan for completing the first phase or iteration of the SOA project from their SOA Roadmap/KPI Plan and Service Model. They will take into account the various tasks that go into early iterations of SOA projects, as well as the project staffing they will need to complete this project.
- SOA Quality
- How do you manage change?
- Service Lifecycle Governance and Quality
- How do you Test Architecture?
- SOA Testing Domains
- Service Testing Principles
- Test for Reuse/Reusability
- Test for Heterogeneity
- Test for Abstraction
- Test for Aggregation
- Security Level Testing
- Composition Level Testing
- Governance Level Testing
- Integration Level Testing
- Creating a Test Plan
- In this exercise, teams will use the scenarios from the exercises up to this point to put together a test plan for the project as scoped in the project plan exercise.
Module 5: Overcoming SOA Challenges
- Budgetary Challenges
- Challenge Area #1: Funding
- The Business Case
- Traditional IT Funding: Project Based
- Initial SOA Funding
- Funding SOA Rollouts
- Budgeting SOA Projects
- Calculating your SOA Project Budget
- Completing the Project Budget
- Business Driver: Cost Savings
- Reducing Integration Cost
- Business Driver: Reuse
- Benefit: Increasing Efficiency Thru Service Reuse
- Business Driver: Visibility
- Visibility & Control
- Business Driver: Business Empowerment
- Business Driver: Business Agility
- SOA Best Practice Challenges
- When Not to Apply SOA
- Challenge Area #2: SOA Pitfalls
- SOA Growing Pains
- SOA = Best Practices
- The Problems with "VDA"
- Confusing SOA & Web Services
- Governance Pitfall: Versioning
- Organizational Challenges
- Architecture is not About the Technology
- Is there an Architect in the House?
- Challenge Area #3: Organizational Issues
- Challenge: Inertia in the Organization
- Challenge: Balancing IT Control & Business Empowerment
- Challenge: Reuse = Sharing
- Building the right SOA team
- Interaction Challenges
- The "Ivory Tower" Problem
- The Power of the SOA Center of Excellence
- Convincing Technical Specialists
- Working with IT Middle Management
- Architectural Challenges
- Enabling Service Domains
- Service Domain Roles
- Enterprise Architecture Challenges
- EA Challenges: The Role of the EA
- The Real Challenge: People, Change and Fear
- For homework, participants will craft a sound, well-reasoned, and well-supported business case for a SOA solution to a business problem. They will discuss a specific business problem scenario that is specific and relevant to any of the team members.
Day Four
(Classes usually start at 8:30 and end at 5PM)Module 6: Applying SOA
- The Service Lifecycle
- The Service Lifecycle vs. the Software Lifecycle
- Building for ongoing change: Beyond the SDLC
- The Dual Lifecycle
- Building Applications the New Way
- Where’s the code?
- The Agile SOA Lifecycle
- An Instance of the Dual Lifecycles in Action
- Visibility & Heterogeneity
- Complex Event Processing & SOA
- Service Reuse
- Achieving Reuse with SOA
- SOA Reuse Governance
- Reuse Challenges
- More on Service-Oriented Process and Enterprise Applications
- Applying SOA to Business Process
- The Role of Business Process Reengineering
- The Automation Paradox
- Problems with Traditional BPM Tooling
- Varieties of Business Processes
- Example: Orchestration vs. Choreography
- WS-* Standards for Orchestration & Choreography
- Limitations of BPEL
- Maintaining Process State
- What about Workflow?
- BPEL4People Scenarios
- Portals as Gateway to Workflow
- Abstract the User
- Enterprise Applications and Process
- Example: SAP NetWeaver
- Transactions w/ SOA
- Transactions and SOA
- Transactions the Loosely-Coupled Way
- Service Consumers, Mashups, and SOBAs
- Service Consumers & Enterprise Mashups
- The Services Tipping Point
- SOBAs & Service Consumers
- The Rise of the Service Consumer
- The Rise of the Mashup
- Web 2.0 vs. SOA
- Enterprise Mashup in Action
- Achieving SOA Nirvana: Flat Cost of Change
- SOA & Change Management
- Dealing with Service Implementation Change
- Service Contract Change
- Policy and Service Metadata Change
- Supporting Policy Changes
- Data Layer Change
- Service Infrastructure Change
- Business Process Change
- Participants will consider all of the Services in their Service model, as well as the business processes in their scenario. Teams will construct at least three new business processes that in part reuse some of the Services in the Service model..
Final exam: SOA Jeopardy!
- Test your SOA skills with this lively version of the popular television quiz show!
LZAs and the Licensed ZapThink Partner (LZP) Program
Are you interested in taking your relationship with ZapThink a step further? Are you part of a company who can leverage the benefits of ZapThink's brand, network, reach, and expertise? Then, once you become an LZA, the Licensed ZapThink Partner program might be just the right thing for your company.The LZP Program offers a number of significant benefits above and beyond LZA credential for companies who want a deeper relationship with ZapThink. This includes marketing of your offerings on the ZapThink website and ZapFlash newsletter, joint-marketing activities including partnership on local events and in-person advisory, joint-collaboration with ZapThink on SOA-related topics, a licenseable curriculum for your use in training, education, and other activities, quarterly training sessions and on-site bootcamps, partner support, and other beneifts. For more information, click here. All you need to become an LZP is just have five LZAs credentialed at your company and pay a small annual partnership fee, and you're in!
LZAs and the ZapThink Architect Resource Center (ARC)
In 2007, ZapThink will be launching its newest online feature: the ZapThink Architect Resource Center (ARC). Above and beyond the listing LZAs get on our online directory, the ZapThink ARC provides a way for indepdent consultants or consulting firms with available resources to list their resources online for firms to locate and hire. In addition, the ARC will serve as a resource for enterprises looking to hire such architects. Not all LZAs need to post their availability on the ARC, but it is made available to those who wish to use the service at no additional charge!Exclusive LZA-only Events
As the LZA community grows, ZapThink will host exclusive events targeted and tailored specifically for our growing LZA community. Come to our LZA events and learn from other architects, find out emerging best practices, and hear from customers about what makes their SOA implementations tick or causes the most significant problems. More information on these events will be released in the upcoming year, and we want you there!Opportunities to Contribute to the ZapThink Community
Want to get visibility in front of the over 24,000 readers of the ZapThink ZapFlash newsletter as well as tens of thousands of others who read our syndicated research? Then, become an LZA so that you can have your works published as special research on our site and in our newsletters (subject to editorial approval, of course). This unique benefit is not extended to any other type of ZapThink customer and is another exclusive benefit of becoming an LZA.Cost and Structure
Becoming a Licensed ZapThink Architect (LZA) is not only straigthforward, but affordable. The annual cost for an LZA credential is just $2495 (USD), and significant discounts apply for early registration and renewal of the credential. Your only additional cost is travel, if need be, to come to one of our sessions. To book your space at an upcoming event, just click on one of the current bootcamp sessions below and we'll work to get you scheduled and confirmed right away.LZA Boot Camp and Credentials Terms and Conditions
Attendance at an LZA Boot camp is not a guarantee of receipt of any particular level of LZA credential. To receive an LZA credential, you must meet the conditions for granting as defined above for each LZA credential level. If you attend an LZA boot camp and are unable to qualify for an LZA credential, you will be given the opportunity to attend another LZA boot camp within 12 months for no additional cost. LZA credentials are only valid for a period of 12 months from granting of the credential.Register for an Upcoming LZA Bootcamp
ZapThink is looking at running many LZA credentialing bootcamps in 2007. The below list is our current list, but is subject to change both in time and location as we work to get LZAs scheduled. Please note that class sizes are limited to no more than 50 people, so if they are sold out, you will have to wait for the next opportunity, or joint a bootcamp that is open in another location.| Location | Date | Register Now |
|---|---|---|
| Bangalore, India | May 20-23, 2008 | Register Now |
| Hyderabad, India | May 26-29, 2008 | Register Now |
| Tel Aviv, Israel | July 8-11, 2008 | Register Now |
| Jersey City, NJ | July 29-August 1, 2008 | Register Now |
Click here to Register for an LZA Boot Camp! Join the growing multitudes of enterprise architects with real SOA credentials!
Recent News
Licensed ZapThink Partners:
ZapThink Training Partners:
Industry Partners:
 |  Qubit Consulting |
|  DWS |
  |  Wipro |
  |  Web Age Solutions |
|  ISQT Intl. |
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