"SOA is one of the bigger challenges that we're working with customers on now," said Roger Oberg, vice president of marketing and strategy for IBM Rational, who will lead the keynotes at the conference, which is expected to draw up to 2,500 attendees.
"What services-oriented architectures are doing is waking people up to the idea that software delivery is a supply chain," Oberg said in a preview interview prior to today's conference opening. "To manage a supply chain effectively, you need to have people's roles and responsibilities defined and tools to help them do that. Whatever their role and responsibility is. You need methodology, you need to agree on how things are going to be done, processes. You need to have measurements, the ability to track measurements and to provide some visibility into that supply chain."