Enterprise Systems Integration (Best Practices In series)

Rating:
Summary: Look Smart to All Your Friends and Colleagues
Review: Have you had an experience where someone was describing some technology and you understood less than half of what they were saying? In our professional area of interest, the pace of change is truly awesome.

Everyday, I feel I know less and less about what is going on and what topics I should be staying on top of. I have recently come across a great book that is much, much more than its title suggests. Included in this text are a series of articles edited by John Wyzalek that take you through many of the issues confronting each of us everyday.

While no book can teach us everything about an area of interest, this book is a fantastic introduction to the types of challenges and questions we are asked everyday. It is exactly the "Manager's Guide" that will give you enough understanding of each issue to be able to explain it to others and incorporate it into your own experience base. Pretty soon, you'll be the one giving the technology speech that others will be pretending to understand.

I am compelled to write you and tell you about it because I know that this exactly the type of resource I look for when doing my job for customers or trying to improve my awareness of issues. I encourage you all to find, purchase, and read this great book. It will be time well spent.

Rating:
Summary: Look Smart to All Your Friends and Colleagues
Review: Have you had an experience where someone was describing some technology and you understood less than half of what they were saying? In our professional area of interest, the pace of change is truly awesome.

Everyday, I feel I know less and less about what is going on and what topics I should be staying on top of. I have recently come across a great book that is much, much more than its title suggests. Included in this text are a series of articles edited by John Wyzalek that take you through many of the issues confronting each of us everyday.

While no book can teach us everything about an area of interest, this book is a fantastic introduction to the types of challenges and questions we are asked everyday. It is exactly the "Manager's Guide" that will give you enough understanding of each issue to be able to explain it to others and incorporate it into your own experience base. Pretty soon, you'll be the one giving the technology speech that others will be pretending to understand.

I am compelled to write you and tell you about it because I know that this exactly the type of resource I look for when doing my job for customers or trying to improve my awareness of issues. I encourage you all to find, purchase, and read this great book. It will be time well spent.

Rating:
Summary: Valuable source of info on a wide range of topics
Review: This book is a collection of essays that describe best practices in each of the major topics of enterprise systems integration. The key strength is that each essay is well written and provides some deep insights into the topics covered. A minor weakness is lack of a unifying structure if you are seeking a book that neatly ties everything together and adds a framework to the complex array of the parts and processes of enterprise systems integration. However, that is not a major shortcoming if you use this book as an encyclopedia or source book for best practices. Also, finding a key technology or technical approach is made easy because topics are grouped.

I could write a mini-book about all of the things I like and the many times this book has helped me in my job. I'll spare you that agony and just hit the high points from my perspective.

"Aligning strategies, processes and information technology" is a case study from which I gained a lot of good ideas and insights when I was engaged in a project to align IS services to business requirements. While the case study's organization and the organization for which I was doing this were vastly different, I found some great ideas that I was able to apply.

The entire section on integrated architectures and the following section on enabling technologies were a major influence on my approach to defining a strategic architecture for a client. Our team's first review deliverable required extensive modifications at the client's request, and these two sections gave us some valuable pointers that resulted in a cleaner approach that was standards-based as opposed to product- and technology-based.

I liked every article in the data warehouse section and particularly liked the interesting article titled "Distributed Integration: An Alternative to Data Warehousing". Although I do not fully buy into the approach, it certainly was intriguing and triggered some ideas that I am mentally filing away for that inevitable time when they will be useful.

Project and Systems Management had excellent, thought-provoking articles and provided tips and practices that I have incorporated into my own bag of tricks and techniques. One of the most valuable articles in this collection is "Symptoms of the Terminally Ill Systems Integration Project". Great reading and some clear examples of what to *not* do. If you are an anti-pattern fan and a project manager this one article is worth the price of the book. I also found the information and guidance given in "Contracting for Systems Integration" especially well thought out.

This book is a valuable resource to a system architect, consultant or integrator. I have gained (and am still gaining) a lot of insights, information and best practices from this book. It is one of the few books to which I refer all of the time.

Rating:
Summary: Valuable source of info on a wide range of topics
Review: This book is a collection of essays that describe best practices in each of the major topics of enterprise systems integration. The key strength is that each essay is well written and provides some deep insights into the topics covered. A minor weakness is lack of a unifying structure if you are seeking a book that neatly ties everything together and adds a framework to the complex array of the parts and processes of enterprise systems integration. However, that is not a major shortcoming if you use this book as an encyclopedia or source book for best practices. Also, finding a key technology or technical approach is made easy because topics are grouped.

I could write a mini-book about all of the things I like and the many times this book has helped me in my job. I'll spare you that agony and just hit the high points from my perspective.

"Aligning strategies, processes and information technology" is a case study from which I gained a lot of good ideas and insights when I was engaged in a project to align IS services to business requirements. While the case study's organization and the organization for which I was doing this were vastly different, I found some great ideas that I was able to apply.

The entire section on integrated architectures and the following section on enabling technologies were a major influence on my approach to defining a strategic architecture for a client. Our team's first review deliverable required extensive modifications at the client's request, and these two sections gave us some valuable pointers that resulted in a cleaner approach that was standards-based as opposed to product- and technology-based.

I liked every article in the data warehouse section and particularly liked the interesting article titled "Distributed Integration: An Alternative to Data Warehousing". Although I do not fully buy into the approach, it certainly was intriguing and triggered some ideas that I am mentally filing away for that inevitable time when they will be useful.

Project and Systems Management had excellent, thought-provoking articles and provided tips and practices that I have incorporated into my own bag of tricks and techniques. One of the most valuable articles in this collection is "Symptoms of the Terminally Ill Systems Integration Project". Great reading and some clear examples of what to *not* do. If you are an anti-pattern fan and a project manager this one article is worth the price of the book. I also found the information and guidance given in "Contracting for Systems Integration" especially well thought out.

This book is a valuable resource to a system architect, consultant or integrator. I have gained (and am still gaining) a lot of insights, information and best practices from this book. It is one of the few books to which I refer all of the time.