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Andrew Astor

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This column may require a little patience on your part, but I think it will be worth it in the end. Let's start with a simple premise: within a year, nearly everyone reading these words will be deeply impacted by Sarbanes-Oxley, yet many have never heard of it. The purpose of this note is to offer you a preview of what's to come. In other words, a wake-up call. First of all, who or what is Sarbanes-Oxley? Simply put, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOA) is the federal law that was put in place last year in response to the scandals at Enron, MCI, and other large public corporations. The la... (more)

Sarbanes-Oxley and Web Services

This article makes the case that Web services provide a significant benefit to Sarbanes-Oxley compliance projects, and that they will therefore be used extensively on these projects. We begin with a very brief primer on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, then describe the connection between SOX and Web services, including an outline of how most Sarbanes-Oxley projects are conducted, and where Web s... (more)

Top Five Mistakes to Avoid in Migrating to Open Source

This session will detail a best-practices approach to enterprise adoption of open source software, focusing on five common migration mistakes and recommendations for successfully avoiding them. We will cover the characteristics of open source offerings that make them especially suitable for enterprise adoption, including licensing structure, feature equivalency with commercial counterpar... (more)

The WS* Standards - A Primer

Over the past couple of years, several technology vendors have defined a comprehensive set of specifications that, when complete, will provide an infrastructure for enterprise-class Web services interoperability. The names of these specifications generally begin with "WS-", so the group of them is sometimes referred to as WS* (pronounced "WS Splat"). This article identifies the important ... (more)