This is the 4th SOA Executive Forum I've spoke at. It always amazes me how quickly these guys can pull together this event, and still get the attendees. This event is packed, and has some new and interesting content. The highlight of this morning was Pfizer's Martin Brodbeck, who talked about "Laying the SOA Foundation." He was very data focused, which I think took the audience back. I mean, why talk about data This is the 4th SOA Executive Forum I’ve spoke at. It always amazes me how quickly these guys can pull together this event, and still get the attendees. This event is packed, and has some new and interesting content. The highlight of this morning was Pfizer’s Martin Brodbeck, who talked about “Laying the SOA Foundation.” He was very data focused, which I think took the audience back. I mean, why talk about data when you can talk about services? The truth is data becomes services, thus the starting point of data, in Pfizer’s case a “Master Data Architecture” is a great place to begin. You work up from there to services, data and transactional. Martin’s presentation was great validation for me that indeed SOA can’t exist without a clear understanding of the data. Also covered was the importance of SOA governance, inclusive of the ability to track the enterprise IT assets. All of this leads to SOA success. My panel is at 2:30, and my keynote at 4:00. Looking forward to mixing it up a bit. Lunch is served…it’s a buffet. Software Development