Evant Group produces news for B2B technology providers
Comments from Editors, Clients, and Readers
“Thanks again for writing for us in general, and this story in particular. It's great having you as a contributor.” AW Senior Editor
“Bob Gast is a very professional and seasoned writer. He has handled our content and PR requirements for over seven years. When I hand a project off to Bob I know that it will receive expert treatment.” EF Director of Marketing
“Bob, Thank you for turning this first Case Study around in only five days. This story is exactly what we were looking for. You obviously understand high availability very well, and it seems like you have made Vision your top priority!” DL
Marketing and Communications Manager
"Thank you for whipping up the great coverage we received on our recent launch of S4i WebView!" SS
“I really like what you’ve done for IBM in the Greenfield Software story! I’m so glad that we found someone like you!” DB President
“This article was reviewed by our CEO, President, Vice President, and Marketing Director and they all thought it was great. Thanks for the good words and efforts.” LG IT Manager
“When I first saw the draft on our security consulting data sheet I said, Go Bob!” TH Vice President of Marketing
“Over the past couple years, we have been very delighted with the skills, professionalism and creativity of Bob Gast and The Evant Group. Mr. Gast with his years of experience in the iSeries marketplace, and deftness with the written word has articulated press releases, case studies, and really become a part of our team to help win the iSeries Network APEX Award for the number one Document Management solution for the iSeries marketplace in 2004. We couldn’t have been more satisfied with his efforts and consultative presence to our marketing department, and we intend to maintain this relationship indefinitely.” DF CEO
“Thanks for cranking out the CMS case study so quickly. I can’t tell you how good it is to get something on time or even before deadline. Let me just say it’s much appreciated and always noted.” DB Executive Managing Editor
“You have produced some great work for Kisco. Thank you Bob!” JL Marketing Director
”I enjoyed reading the article on Apria and Aldon. It was very well written. Thanks!” MS
"The contortionist ad that you created over a year ago for our human resources software campaign is still drawing a great response for us, Bob. I've never seen a print ad that had as much longevity as this one!" RD President
Jon Reed, Senior Editor of the SAP Tips Quarterly Review writes- We've been looking for a brief technical explanation of web services and SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) that can be grasped by someone without a PhD. This handy piece from the IBM eServer folks is as good as any we've seen. If you can look beyond the IBM iSeries plugs, what you have is a very useful definition of key SOA terms and how they can be applied to a simple business case.
As Robert Gast explains, the key to web services is pulling data from one company and sharing it seamlessly with outside partners and customers. The data you pull can live on any kind of server, from "big iron" to PCs. And what exactly is the benefit of SOA? Obviously, it's cheaper to share information via universally-acknowledged XML protocols then it would be to build special one-to-one interfaces using proprietary code. The beef behind the SOA buzz is simple: SOA is a "generic transport mechanism" that makes possible the exchange of data among heterogeneous platforms. Since HTTP protocols are universally available and behave the same on all web servers, you can take the mystery out of integration efforts, while gaining a huge amount of re-usability on any interfaces you do construct.
As for the relationship between web services and SOA? Gast has an explanation for this also: "Since the web is emerging as the most commonly used way to execute this type of architecture, web services are emerging as the most commonly used means to accommodate SOA." If you don't trust Robert and want to head directly to the source, he lists the web site of the World Wide Web Consortium that creates and monitors web and SOA standards: http:www.w3.org. Gast wraps up this overview with a couple basic examples of web services in action.