SOA not producing returns

Only 37% of companies using service-oriented architecture (SOA) technology have seen it result in a positive return on investment (ROI), according to a report released by Nucleus Research, reports ComputerWorld.

David O'Connell, an analyst at the Massachusetts-based Nucleus, said while corporate SOA projects could provide strong ROI for companies, most efforts today "seem to get stranded in little local pockets" of organisations.

The report noted that fewer than four in 10 corporate developers use SOA tools and technologies despite their promise of cutting application development costs. The report found that SOA impacts only 27% of an average company's IT projects.

Wells Fargo's 160 000 employees are using blogs and group-written Web pages called wikis to spread the word about the bank's products, marketing materials, the latest company news and reports.

"It used to be people had to talk one-on-one to have actual communication," said Danny Peltz, executive VP of wholesale Internet solutions at Wells Fargo WFC. "Things like wikis, things like blogs, are just another form of communication - from one to many or many to many."

The trend is pushing tech companies such as IBM, Microsoft and BEA Systems to step up efforts to sell Enterprise 2.0 products and services. "We see an opportunity to bring a next-generation suite of productivity tools [to the market]," said Ajay Gandhi, BEA of enterprise social computing.

Virtualisation technology, which allows multiple operating systems to run different applications on a single computer, has caught the attention of IT managers for its promise to let them better manage and utilise corporate IT resources, reports ComputerWorld.

However, some IT managers and security researchers warn that the emerging technology also makes corporate systems far more vulnerable to hackers.

George Gerchow, technology strategist at security vendor Configuresoft's Centre for Policy & Compliance, says each virtualised server separately faces the same threats as a traditional single server. "If a host is vulnerable, all associated guest virtual machines and the business applications on those virtual machines are also at risk."