Please plan to join CIO members and guests at the January 18 meeting of the Mid-Atlantic CIO Forum. The topic for this meeting is "SOA: Service Oriented Architecture".

Service Oriented Architecture is already showing benefits where it has been implemented by early adapters. This new approach is demonstrating flexibility, integration capability, reusability and adaptability but, as with all enterprise initiatives, it is also establishing a compendium of challenges, risks and obstacles being encountered in SOA implementations which raise skepticism. At the January meeting, we will delve into a better understanding of the strategic level of SOA and some of the many frameworks and technologies embraced in this movement. Early reports are that SOA is working well. In the second part of the meeting we will look into a real example of an SOA implementation. An IT executive from a leading adopter company will share a current SOA implementation.

First, Tom Woteki, Customer Solutions Director in the SONA Program Office, Cisco Inc., will review concepts and technologies associated with SOA, providing a foundational understanding at a strategic level of SOA. Mr. Woteki draws upon his current research and experience as well as his extensive background as a CIO, prior to joining Cisco, to present this overview focused to the CIO angles of interest. Mr. Woteki will explore the adoption of two complementary strategies that can enable successful SOA implementation. First, he will discuss a strategy for breaking monolithic applications into small, reusable components. Then Mr. Woteki will look at a second strategy that consists of deploying a service oriented infrastructure and explore the middleware infrastructure required to support configurable infrastructure components. He will discuss how application aware networking and virtualization can support an enterprise SOA strategy.

Jeff Johnson, Vice President, Corporate Applications-Information Technology, Constellation Energy will present an overview of the experience gained from implementing a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) at Constellation Energy. Mr. Johnson will provide an overview of the business and IT drivers that led to the decision to implement this type of architecture. He will review the current architecture strategy and design. Mr. Johnson will discuss the overall application architecture including key business processes and web services developed to support the business processes. He will discuss lessons learned to date and examine risks, benefits and costs experienced. Then he will address future strategic alternatives and challenges.

Please join our members at the meeting! The meeting starts at 8:00 AM and ends by 1PM. Brunch and lunch are provided. Pre-registration is required. Meeting logistics including agenda, directions to the meeting place and parking information will be emailed to you after you register. For registration for this meeting, please contact: Catherine Swift at cswift@towson.edu or 410-704-4252.

To make inquiries about this meeting or about membership in the Mid-Atlantic CIO Forum, please contact: