Intelligent Enterprise

Long Live .Net Remoting!

Rajeev Kasturi misled readers regarding the demise of .Net Remoting ("SAP Fishes for .Net Portal Developers," Dashboard, March 2005). According to Rich Turner, program manager in the Distributed Systems Group at Microsoft, .Net Remoting "is not going to be removed from the .Net frameworks when Indigo ships" (see blogs.msdn.com/richardt/archive/2004/03/05/84771.aspx).

Name Withheld by Request

Rajeev Kasturi responds: Microsoft is moving to a Web services and service-oriented architecture with Longhorn and Indigo. It has published presentations on Indigo where its product manager and architects clearly indicate in their "Prescriptive Guidance and Caveats" (to migrate to Indigo) to avoid use of .Net Remoting because some aspects of it aren't portable to Indigo. In fact, Microsoft presentations give examples of changes to client, host and server object code while migrating from .Net Remoting to Indigo. I correctly stated that "with Indigo looming, Microsoft discourages use of .Net Remoting."

It's impossible to know how long .Net Remoting will exist. Consider an analogy: Some customers still use Windows NT and Windows 2000 server. There's nothing wrong with that, but do these platforms support the features, functionality and agility/interoperability of, say, Windows 2003, XP and the forthcoming Longhorn? No. And even if they do, it's only through patchwork.

Bang on the Drum All Day

Joshua Greenbaum ("Defining Success and Failure, IT Style," February 2005) is banging on the same drum I've been pounding on for some time. Without a clear view of your starting point and processes, no migration or implementation can succeed. No matter what you achieve, it's impossible to measure.

Major industry analysis groups show the vast majority of large implementations deliver negative ROI, but still nothing has changed. If, as Greenbaum states, we were ever able to stop arguing with "managers, executives, shareholders and customers about whether an implementation was a success or not," I think there would be heck of a lot of IT managers, CIOs and consultants out of work or flipping burgers for a living....

Nic Harvard
Senior Business Engineer/ Analyst/Globe Data Expert
Nestle Waters Powwow
Cowley, Oxford

Where Has Innovation Gone?

In "Agile to the Bone" (February 2005), Bruce Silver stated that business process management (BPM) isn't new conceptually; it existed well before there were computers. But this process knowledge is going to waste when it comes to representing the enterprise and its functionality in an automated way.

In the business world, we'd rather buy a turn-key package than apply learned experience or academic knowledge to projects that for the most part fail or are flawed (just think about Microsoft's usual software release process).

BPM in action is a beautiful thing conceptually, but it has never been given its rightful place or attention. Separation of functionality and process from automation is imperative, however. Don't acquire the tools at the beginning when you don't know which ones you're going to use. BPM must be software and hardware independent.

Samuel Ramos
Enterprise Data Management/Architect
Oregon Department of Transportation
Sublimity, Ore.
samuel.ramos@odot.state.or.us