[Oslc-steeringcommittee] First contact as StC Microsoft focal point

[Mik Kersten]

Rainer,

To be blunt, I find your statement of "I guess you would like this Mik – don’t you" to be wrong and misplaced.  As evidence, please consider how much effort Tasktop, a 50 person organization, has put into OSLC.  Tasktop Sync builds on OSLC.  In terms of resources involved in implementation, I'd bet that we're in the top 2 or 3 of resources invested in OSLC implementation. 

Defensiveness of our efforts aside, I want to be clear on my views on the role of OSLC vs. Tasktop Sync that you are implying.  There is no "vs".  Tasktop Sync builds on OSLC.  It's not OSLC linking vs. syncing that the market needs, it's both.  Lifecycle Management systems of recorded need to be connected to each other with robust links and query mechanisms, and the combination of OSLC and Linked Data is great for that.  Then there's a question of how systems of how data gets to the various systems of engagement in the lifecycle, eg, a developer's, testers, or BA's web browser.  If you have an OSLC-capable system of engagement that supports embedding external data, such as the Rich Hovers mechanism in the CLM tools, OSLC is enough for many cases.  If you don't, rather than flowing that cross-repository data into a modern tools' UI, you need to flow that data into the actual system of record, and that should be done over an OSLC based link just as the rich hover data flowed over that link.  It's just a question of how the data flows, which is a function of the business need of the organization and the nature of the toolchain.  Sometimes OSLC linking is enough, sometimes synchronization is needed.

Yes, in some ideal world everything would be linked and there would be no duplicate data.  While with our role on the OSLC StC we should be working hard on driving towards that world.  But even if every vendor eventually gets there, there will still be a need for both linking and syncing.  Consider contacts and CRM.  Moments ago I edited a contact on my iPhone, it got synced via Exchange to a Google Apps Server, and then to our Salesforce instance, and those three copies of the contact are now an important part of those three systems of record, each of which are tailored to a particular business need.  Yes, in a technologically ideal world there would only be one system of record for contact data, but healthy competition among vendors tends to lean away from that world.   The "worse is better" nature of syncing also has concrete benefits such as low latencies and disconnected use.  As such I don't see much point in being religiously against synchronization, and instead prefer focusing on making OSLC an Linked Data efforts define the definitive graph of the lifecycle, while leaving the semantics for what gets shipped where and whether it shows up in a tooltip or a database up to the applications.

Mik

--
Dr. Mik Kersten
Tasktop CEO, Mylyn Lead, http://twitter.com/mik_kersten
Assistant: zoe.jong at tasktop.com, +1-778-588-6896, Skype: zoe.e.jong


On 2012-11-28, at 8:11 AM, "Ersch, Rainer" <rainer.ersch at siemens.com> wrote:

> resend because the original mail is being held back for approval, because the attachment was too big.
> Another mail with the attachment is coming.
>  
> From: Ersch, Rainer 
> Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 4:57 PM
> To: oslc-steeringcommittee at open-services.net
> Cc: Sean Kennedy/Toronto/IBM (seanpk at ca.ibm.com); Steve K Speicher (sspeiche at us.ibm.com)
> Subject: First contact as StC Microsoft focal point
>  
> Dear StC colleagues,
>  
> today, I had my first contact with Sam Guckenheimer in my new role as StC focal point for Microsoft.
> I used the attached presentation to walk him through the governance updates and the future plans, regarding SDO’s and such. In addition, I also added some suggestions for possible engagements (depending on StC approval).
>  
> I think, we made a good step forward, although he still has some concerns. We talked for more than one hour. Technically and from a user point of view he (meanwhile) totally agrees to the OSLC concepts. His concerns were more on the business side. What does it mean for our “competitive” situation with other vendors. “Will we start a war with others”?
> 
> As a next step he promised to check with other MS stakeholders regarding a meeting in Redmond during the ALM Summit in January (29th-31st). One possible setup could be having a StC F2F with MS as guests and a Birds-of-Feather session with StC members in a panel.
> Details still need to be worked out and we should discuss this in our next StC meeting.
>  
> One of the first question Sam ask me was “what does the announcement mean that IBM has now Tasktop Sync as OEM product”[1]. Does this mean, IBM has given up the idea of OSLC and Taskop Sync is the new interoperability strategy? I guess you would like this Mik – don’t you. John, there is some work for you. I did refer to you (two) for more details.
>  
> So far my first report – more during the next StC meeting.
>  
> Bye and have a nice day
> Rainer
>  
> [1] http://tasktop.com/blog/tasktop/tasktop-sync-ibm-oem-rtc
>  
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