Liz Warren
IT is often accused of being misaligned with business
objectives. One of the biggest problems is that managements see IT
as slow to adapt to ever-changing business conditions. A sound
middleware strategy can give IT an agile platform to support where
the business wants to go. A well-defined middleware strategy should
separate presentation - what the user sees - from business logic.
It should also embrace code reuse, which, ultimately, will help IT
to deliver applications quickly.
Staffing a team for a middleware project can be tricky, and the
key role to fill is that of the architect, says Dave Murphy, a
vice-president at middleware vendor
Tibco who heads the company's professional services division.
The architect's task is to define not only the initial
configuration of the middleware technology, but also the deployment
strategy for rolling it out, and the monitoring processes for the
live system.
Gurvant Pattni, a middleware project specialist at IT
consultancy Quantix, says
a middleware development project will also need a network
specialist, an expert in the operating system on which the project
is being deployed, a database administrator, and application
specialists who understand the systems being integrated. Also,
Murphy says, organisations should involve their operations and
system management teams in the project as early as possible. "One
of the keys to successful deployment is to involve them at a stage
when they can influence the design," he argues.
Although these roles do require some initial understanding of
middleware, staff filling them should pick up most of what they
need to know during the course of the project. The overall project
manager also doesn't need to be greatly familiar with middleware,
says Murphy, but does need experience in managing enterprise-level
projects that affect multiple systems and departments.
Whether you choose to fill these roles by training existing
staff, hiring new permanent staff, bringing in contractors or
outsourcing to an IT consultancy will largely depend on the
complexity of the processes you are trying implement, how critical
they are to the business, and the number of elements you are trying
to integrate, says Murphy. "If you're dealing with core functions
where you need to own the architecture, for instance, you'll want
to upskill your own staff."
Peter Carter-Greenan, a lead instructor with
Firebrand Training, which delivers accelerated learning courses
for various kinds of middleware, agrees, "By upskilling, you are
investing in staff who have an existing knowledge of your
infrastructure and have already proved themselves," he says.
"Hiring new permanent staff means you have none of those
advantages, and the chances are that you will have to pay them a
higher ongoing salary. On the plus side, you don't need to invest
in initial training, and can keep existing staff in roles where you
know they perform well."
Contractors may be a good option if this is your first
middleware project because they will enable you to deliver the
first implementation more quickly and you can use them to transfer
knowledge to in-house staff, who can then handle further
developments. The downside, says Pattni, is that they won't be as
familiar with the business and the systems being integrated, which
could delay the project.
Hiring contractors is likely to be more expensive than hiring or
upskilling permanent staff. Figures from IT Jobs Watch suggest
contract rates for Java developers average about £430 a day, while
rates for
.net developers are a little lower at about £370 a day.
Salaries for permanent Java roles start at £45,000 a year, while
those for .net developers are again lower, about £37,000.
The final option is outsourcing a project or bringing in an IT
services company. Pattni says this approach will give you easy
access to a pool of middleware experience, and the contract can be
written to ensure delivery on time. But Carter-Greenan warns,
"While outsourcing can have the obvious advantage of bringing in
all the required skills through a single contract, the main
disadvantage I've experienced is that it can be harder to enforce
service-level agreements and deadlines without the direct reporting
and responsibility you get from an in-house team."
A good compromise, Pattni suggests, may be to use an in-house
team but to supplement it with spot skills from contractors or
consultants who really understand the technology and who have
experience of multiple implementations, when it comes to tasks such
as setting up monitoring and management processes. You are likely
to source this consultancy through third parties: although most
middleware suppliers provide consultancy services, they tend to
work only with the largest organisations.
If you want to upskill your existing staff, you can turn to
suppliers and independent training companies for middleware
courses. Staff attending these courses will need a grounding in
most areas of IT, including a basic understanding of operating
systems - because middleware components are now integrated into
most operating systems - as well as application software, database
management and service-oriented architectures. Trainees attending
Firebrand's .net courses, for instance, are expected to have used
either VB.net or C# for at least a couple of months, and most have
about six months of hands-on experience.
Typical full-time middleware courses last between one and two
weeks and may cost up to £1,600 per trainee, but staff should be
able to move immediately into a developer or lead developer role on
a middleware project.
IT managers need to ensure the team they deploy on a middleware
project is not only technically adept, but can also demonstrate
experience in change management, which can make or break a
project.