SOA:SOA:Syndication-Syndication-Oriented Architecture?Oriented Architecture?

Rohit Khare, Co-FounderRohit Khare, Co-Founder

28 August 200728 August 2007

KnowNow © 2007

Information Overload

Exponential Information

Growth

Employees

Enterprise

Customers / Partners

Internet

Exponential Information

Growth

searching

searching

searching

searching

searching

searchingsearching

searching

searching

searching

Information overload creates a gap.

Blogs & wikis

KnowNow © 2007

Business IntelligenceBusiness IntelligenceThat’s That’s Actually IntelligentActually Intelligent

• Real-time, Social Collaboration (“Web 2.0”)• There’s a new opportunity to connect employees, partners, and customers

that bypasses overflowing inboxes, static portals, and empty search boxes.

• The “Web 2.0” buzzword refers to a very real phenomenon: unlocking the long-

awaited potential of large-scale, real-time social collaboration inside the enterprise.

• Extending Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)• IT Architects have adopted the concept of a ‘service bus’ that can route

messages and notifications between any set of applications and hosted services.

• The SOA approach to application integration applies to people and groups, too.

• Benefits of Syndication-Oriented Architecture (SynOA)• This talk introduces our vision for connecting people to applications and each other.

• RSS/Atom feeds can begin bridging the “information gap” between existing

information systems and the new world of blogs, wikis, and instant messages…

KnowNow © 2007

AgendaAgenda

• Introductions

• A ‘Social Software’ Scenario

• SynOA in a Nutshell

• SynOA in Detail

• KnowNow’s Approach to SynOA

• Questions & Answers

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Introductions: Dr. Rohit Khare

• Co-founded KnowNow in 2000• Based on doctoral research at UC Irvine and at Caltech.• Extended HTTP to support real-time “push” event notification.• Developed powerful new JavaScript techniques to deliver a

new generation of Web browser-based applications.

• Grew out of experience with Web standards• Worked at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), MCI’s

Internet Architecture group, edited the O’Reilly Web Journal, and established 4K Associates, a strategy consultancy.

• Later, led research at CommerceNet Labs• Established an ‘entrepreneurial research institute’ to

investigate decentralized systems and marketplaces.

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Introductions: Software Architecture

• Examples of Architectural Styles• Pipe-and-Filter: components process text streams in series• Client/Server: components coordinate with single data store• REST: Web pages that ‘represent’ objects can be cached

• Service-Oriented Architecture isn’t quite a style:• SOA doesn’t quite constrain how applications behave

• Underlying services can exhibit any of the styles above• … but SOA does prescribe how they communicate.

• Syndication-Oriented Architecture is analogous:• People and groups have all sorts of collaboration patterns• … but it would be better to integrate messages from

applications; and to track how information flows to optimize it.

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A ‘Social Software’ Scenario

• Imagine you’re managing a field service force:• Trouble tickets, dispatchers, spare parts, mobile users…• State-of-the-art reporting of key performance indicators.

• Current Challenges• What if one repair team missing a part could fire off an SMS to

ask everyone else working in their area to check?• Can sales reps stay on top of disruptions to their clients?

• New Opportunities• Suppose Engineering could track chatter about problematic

parts from field notes — without reading everything else…• Could you mine industry ‘buzz’ to keep your employees,

partners, and customers in the loop on the latest news?

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SynOA in a Nutshell

1. PUBLICATION

• One standard for capturing all messages (‘RSS-ifying’)

2. SUBSCRIPTION

• Easy rules for filtering interesting messages

3. DISTRIBUTION

• Wide range of delivery options to PCs, smartphones, etc.

4. PERSONALIZATION

1. Learning what each recipient really needs to know, now.

5. COLLABORATION

1. Tapping into the ‘Wisdom of Crowds’ to learn from groups.

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1. PUBLICATION

• Make it easy to “RSS-ify” all of your data feeds• Just keep track of the Author, Date, Headline, Body, and

Attachments for exporting business events• For legacy databases, re-run standing queries automatically

• Features• Capture all human-readable messages to use standard

RSS/Atom syndication feed formats.

• Use ‘Pings’ to convert existing ‘pull’ systems to ‘push.’

• Benefits• Ensures flexibility, security, internationalization,traceability.

• Enabled unified, real-time monitoring of all systems.

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2. SUBSCRIPTION

• Make it easy for users to remix new feeds• Even though the old system reports by state, a syndication

bus should let you match just the Zip codes you need

• … but it should also make sure you’re still authorized to know.

• Features• Simple text filtering of article as well as richer XML queries.

• Customizable rules for de-duplication and trend detection.

• Benefits• Empowers end-users (as well as developers) with ‘self-

service’ access to enterprise knowledge.

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3. DISTRIBUTION

• Make it easy to use any device users want• Long and growing list of notification protocols and devices:

• Instant messaging, email, feeds, SMS, voicemail…

• Choose the right tool for the job, at the right time of day.

• Features• Unifying a single distribution interface that spans multiple

protocols & devices

• ‘Track-and-trace’ to guarantee delivery or escalate.

• Benefits• Assures users that the alerts are pushed according to their

current online presence & preferences.

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4. PERSONALIZATION

• Make it easy to ‘tune in’ to just what users want• Spam filtering depends on what you consider spam…• Ambiguous search terms differ even for the same subscription

• ‘Adam Rifkin’ the entrepreneur, or the movie director?

• Features• Keeping track of every alert delivered to enable relevance-

feedback analysis, detect duplicates, and remove spam.

• Bookmarking and tagging past events; UI customization.

• Benefits• Increases efficiency by minimizing interruption, without

compromising discovery of new information sources.

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5. COLLABORATION

• Make it easy to ‘tune in’ to what groups want• The signature success of Web search is link analysis.• The emerging opportunities are in social network analysis• What if the future of enterprise collaboration is… Facebook?

• Features• Keeping track of the relationships between events and

people, to enable social-network graph analysis and detect trends as information spreads.

• Benefits• Continuously optimizes the entire organization’s attention to

its internal and external stakeholder communities.

KnowNow © 2007

SynOA: A Roadmap

• SynOA levels can guide deployment strategy• Consider implementing each of these levels in order.• There are concrete benefits and ROI at each stage.

• SynOA levels can guide development strategy• Helps analyze the capabilities and relationships of competing,

overlapping products and services already on the market.• Also defines software interfaces for developing custom plugins

• SynOA levels can guide business strategy• What can your business do for its customers, partners, and

employees in an overloaded knowledge economy?• In any relationship & expertise-driven business, the edge is in

augmenting the entire team’s breadth, depth, and speed.

KnowNow © 2007KnowNow Confidential. 2007.

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KnowNow’s Approach to KnowNow’s Approach to SynOASynOA

Databases

Intranets / Extranets

Email

Portals

Enterprise Search

Web Servers

Apps: eg, ERP, CRM

[ manage information ]

[ transform and deliver ]

[ automate relevancy ]

[ monitor data ]

Blogs & wikis

News, posts

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Content-based routing Alerts / Notifications Transformation

Aggregation Filtering / Matching Security

In-line editors

Collaboration Tools

Email