Minutes
ITANA Conference Call
May 15, 2008

*Attendees*
Jim Phelps, University of Wisconsin (chair)
Hebert Diaz-Flores, University of California-Berkeley
Jeremiah Adams, University of Colorado
Casey Boettcher, University of Arizona
Gary Windom, University of Arizona
Marina Arseniev, University of California-Irvine
Chas DiFatta, Carnegie-Mellon University
Steve Mullins, University of Alaska
Steve Olshansky, Internet2

*Agenda*

(0) Roll Call. Agenda Bash.
1. Accept minutes of last call
2. Chas DiFatta - Carnegie Mellon University, Mellon ESB Initiative

3. Face2Face Planning Committee Check-In (Committee)
4. ECAR Bulletin - Centralization/Decentralization

Future Agendas:

* May 29 - Joint call with University of Alaska - launching an EA initiative

* June 12 - Scott Converse - 6 Sigma in Higher Ed

* June 27 - Post Face 2 Face report out.

Items on the shelf:

1. Architecture Tool discussion (All)

1. UC Irvine's open source tool - Protégé

2. Chicago's I.T. Ecosystem Tool (Tom B)

2. Paul's piece on Standards for Arch Documents -  standards for architectural documentation (Paul H)

3. UC-Berkeley Roadmap document (Hebert)

4. Mellon ESB Assessment - goal? is there date on this? (Mark P)

5. Mellon New Initiative: Framework for scholarly studies tools (Keith H)

6. Web CMS RFPs (Jim P)

(99) Next steps, next call

*Mellon ESB Initiative*

Chas DiFatta from Carnegie Mellon University provided an overview of an initiative to assess the need for ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) solutions throughout the education community and, if possible, recommend a solution that will act as a catalyst to enable the rapid deployment of new cost effective applications for the arts, humanities, the sciences as well as other academic and administrative domains. The study was sponsored and supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The presentation Chas used for the phone call is here:
http://tid.ithaka.org/enterprise-service-bus-project/mellon-esb-final-pres-v17.pdf

The study group, which was drawn from eight universities, had a goal of identifying possible open-source and commercial providers of ESB products that meet the requirements of the Mellon-supported service-oriented architecture efforts and projects.

The study group went through a process broadly defined by this outline:

  • Introduction and Objectives
  • Definitions of ESB and State of the Practice
  • Requirements Gathering Process
  • Vendor Selection and Analysis
  • Recommendations and Next Steps
  • Reflections

The study took place between February 1 and July 31, 2007, and defined the baseline for existing ESB solutions. The group developed a general profile of an ideal academic ESB:

• Open source
• Large, active community
• Rich, maturing functionality
• Low barriers to entry
• Small operational footprint
• Based on open standards - no vendor lock-in
• Compatible with common infrastructure
• Facilitates inter-institutional sharing of solutions
• Compatible with continuing/future higher ed efforts on common infrastructure (Sakai, Kuali)

The study included the development of a number of use cases. Criteria for the use cases included:

• the cases would be driven from higher ed
• the cases would cover a wide variety of applications and scenarios
• use case requirements would be generated from the perspective of both an application developer and a technical manager.

A number of participating universities did a number of use cases.
Use cases described a "day in the life" without an ESB, then a day in the life after - how you would process with an ideal ESB. How would you like this to work.

The use cases helped to define business (licensing and support) and technical requirements (architecture, development platform, operational specifics) for an ESB.

The study eventually Identified three candidates (all open source) for ESBs consistent with the SOA projects with which Mellon is associated: ServiceMix, Mule, JBoss.

The guidelines for choosing these ESB providers, as well as lessons learned from the study, are available in a slide deck, a detailed narrative and a podcast. All are available from the Ithaka site: http://tid.ithaka.org/enterprise-service-bus-project

Jim Phelps mentioned that the complexity of ESBs has led Wisconsin efforts to assign one group to become experts in ESBs and drive the configuration and addition of applications.

*Agendas for Future Meetings*

May 29 - Joint call with University of Alaska - launching an EA initiative
June 12 - Scott Converse - 6 Sigma in Higher Ed
June 27 - Post Face 2 Face report out Face2Face and CAMP

*Next Call, Thursday, May 29, 2008, 2:00 p.m. EDT*

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