Here's another in our series of interviews with vendors offering SOA "solutions". This time we spoke to Miko Matsumura, head of product marketing for SOA at webMethods.
In this 25'34" conversation we ask the usual four questions - and also chat about the importance of webMethods' SOA Link program, the role of the Infravio Governance Rules Engine, and SOA as an enabler of federated/cross enterprise business processes.

Here's the fourth in our series of interviews with vendors offering SOA related products and services. This time it's the turn of Kris Horrocks, who's a Technical Product Manager in the Connected Systems Division of Microsoft. (The Connected Systems Division was formed in 2005 as part of the Server and Tools business, and it brings together work on .NET, BizTalk, CardSpace and other related things).

As usual we talk through our standard four questions. In the resulting conversation we explore:

• how Microsoft deals with customers' questions about scalability and interoperability
• the importance of "high fidelity handoffs" between IT practices in quality service delivery
• how the SOA offering fits with Microsoft's Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) and support for "design for operations", and what this means for managing service lifecycles.

The podcast episode lasts 34'41".

Here's the third in our series of interviews with SOA vendors. This week it's the turn of Roman Stanek - one of the founders of Systinet, which was bought by Mercury (which was then in turn bought by HP a few months back).

The 31'17" interview has some great stuff in it. As we ask our usual four questions about HP and Systinet SOA offerings, we swing past:

• scenarios where the standardisation and interoperability that SOA introduces are particularly important
• how SOA is about outcomes, not protocols (with reference to the SOAP vs REST debate)
• how SOA wil disappear from the IT industry's lexicon in the coming years, because it will become a standard feature of the IT landscape
• the effect that SOA has on the software development lifecycle, and how the loose coupling that it introduces into development organisations and processes brings requirements for strong management of service lifecycles and service quality.

Our second SOA vendor interview was with BEA's Martin Percival yesterday. Again we followed our standard format - and in the resulting 34'30" podcast we get into discussing:

• BEA's experience of delivering "information as a service" projects within SOA initiatives
• How SOA is about more than just WS-* technology
• BEA's transition from a pure Java implementation focus to a broader focus, re-embracing its "legacy" middleware platform Tuxedo, the Microsoft expertise of its Plumtree acquisition, and also pointing to the SCA/SDO effort that it's a member of
• Why it bought Flashline (a software development repository vendor) and didn't buy a SOA registry vendor (it partners with Systinet/Mercury/HP)
• How its SOA 360 initiative will impact on the admin & management of the BEA platform.