Smart SOA™ Approach Can Help in a Tough Economic Climate

Sandy Carter, VP, SOA, BPM & WebSphere, IBM, spoke on the importance of taking a Smart SOA™ approach in a Tough Economic Climate, at the March 2009 meeting of the SOA Consortium in Washington DC.

Carter began by sharing that customers are asking about, and employing, service-orientation and business process management not only to survive the economic crisis, but also to thrive and become more successful when the economic crisis ends. To this point, CEOs are equally concerned with cost optimization and agility. Carter was careful to distinguish cost optimization – re-using services, optimizing processes – from non-sustainable cost cutting.

In addition to the economic climate, Carter spoke of marketplace changes based on technology location and proliferation. There are one billion transistors for each person on earth. One trillion things connected to the Internet. And, by 2010, there will be 30 billion RFID tags embedded into our world. This pervasive connectivity and instrumentation provides innumerable opportunities to smarten our companies, countries and environment.

Interestingly, in each of the Smarter Planet examples Carter cited, such as StatOil’s RFID tagging of blue mussels to quickly identify and stop leaks during oil drilling, the solutions all had SOA at the core. When an attendee called out this theme, Carter shared that SOA has become control point of competitive advantage for companies. If you haven’t deployed yet, now is the time. If you have, now is the time to take your SOA to the next level.

About the Speaker:

Sandy Carter, Vice President, SOA, BPM & WebSphere for IBM Corporation, is the leader of a global marketing organization with over 20 marketing awards, and author of the successful SOA technology book called, "The New Language of Business: SOA & Web 2.0."

Sandy is responsible for IBM's cross-company, worldwide SOA marketing initiatives and is in charge of one of IBM's premiere brands -- IBM WebSphere. Under her leadership, IBM WebSphere has realized 15 consecutive quarters of growth at constant currency. Sandy runs IBM's marketing board for SOA which encompasses all software, services and product units as well as supporting units of finance, support and enablement. She also works closely with acquired organizations to ensure their successful integration into the IBM SOA portfolio. In addition, she directs SOA messaging and content, leading a global team in driving customer demand for IBM and IBM Business Partner SOA solutions. As the worldwide leader for Channels, Sandy has grown the SOA Business Partner ecosystem to over 5,000 companies.

Sandy is a frequent speaker at industry events sponsored by InfoWorld magazine, Forrester, Gartner Group, IDC and Women In Technology (WITI). She is an active member of WITI and a member of the WITI Executive Advisory Council, the Marketing Focus Advisory Council (where she was named winner of the Best Speaker Award); the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Inner Circle, and the American Management Association (AMA). She also serves as a Board Member of the Grace Hopper Industry Advisory Committee and is the Co-Lead IBM Partnership Executive at Duke University. Sandy also serves as a Board Member of the Forrester Research CMO Board. Sandy is listed in Madison's Who's Who, and is a founding member of the Women in Technology Global Executive Network (GEN) program for senior executive women. Sandy has twice won the AIT Global most valuable member of the year award for the United Nations ICT for Sustainable Development.

Sandy has also published more than 32 industry perspectives and bylines focused on SOA in news media outlets such as ZDNet, CIO, Search SOA, DM Review, SOA World, developer.com, Enterprise Systems, and the news report of the Technology Council of Southern California. Sandy has written a second book, to be released on November 4, called "The New Language of Marketing 2.0: How to Use ANGELS to Energize Your Market." In it, Sandy shares her perspective on next generation marketing techniques, such as blogs, twitter, social media, widgets, viral marketing, and more, that address the complexities of today's business world. Coupled with over 54 customer case studies and her own success stories, Sandy shows how to drive results in a more cost effective way.

Sandy holds a Bachelor of Science degree in math and computer science from Duke University and an MBA from Harvard, and is fluent in eight programming languages.

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