The original goal of the service-oriented architecture (SOA) concept was to build flexible, loosely coupled systems. That meant removing or lessening the runtime dependencies between components or endpoints. One of the best, if overused, examples of loosely coupled systems is the way the Web works today. Routing, DNS, cookies, SSL handshakes, authentication, redirection, etc., are all handled by the infrastructure at runtime. Only a URL is typically required. In order to achieve this in the SOA world, contracts, requirements, and capabilities need to be defined and automated through a declarative and manageable mechanism. WSDL is far from being adequate as a complete contract language for SOA. The required level of abstraction for SOA sits at the policy level. Policies contain assertions about the operational interfaces for components in an SOA. These include credential preferences, authentication and authorization mechanisms, signature and encryption preferences, identity sources, routing, transformations, versioning, reliable messaging, and others. This talk will introduce the concept of Policy-Driven SOA and discuss Policy and the WS-Policy specification as the new contract abstraction for SOA.

Toufic Boubez is the co-founder and CTO of Layer 7 Technologies. Prior to co-founding Layer 7 Technologies, he was the chief Web services architect for IBM's Software Group and drove their early XML and Web services strategies. Toufic co-authored the original UDDI API specification. He’s the co-editor of the W3C WS-Policy specification, and is a co-author of the WS-Trust, WS-SecureConversation, and WS-Federation specifications. Toufic is a sought-after presenter and has chaired XML and Web services conferences. In 2002, InfoWorld named Toufic to its “Ones to Watch” list. An author of many publications, one of his most recent books is "Building Web Services with Java: Making Sense of XML, SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI."

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Third International "Virtualization Conference & Expo" Call for Papers Now Open
Virtualization, the hottest subject in all IT right now, will be center stage in New York City - 23-24 June, 2008, at the next conference and expo in the SYS-CON Events' third international Virtualization Conference & Expo.

Key opinion-formers in the field of infrastructure and pioneers of virtualization technologies of all types have already begun submitting speaking proposals to Virtualization Conference & Expo 2008 East, being held in New York City, 23-24 June, 2008. Topics covered will range from Application Virtualization, Desktop Virtualization, Network Virtualization, Server Virtualization, and Storage Virtualization, to Virtual Machine Automation, Physical to Virtual (P2V) Migration, Management Applications, Tools and Utilities, and Virtualization Scripts and Procedures.

Submissions on these and dozens of other topics have already begun streaming in. The Call for Papers is as always a 100% online process, found here.

IDC has stated that the virtualization services market alone is going to reach $11.7 billion by 2011 and in general this technology, which has been around for a good number of years, seems suddenly to be on everyone's mind.

In short, Virtualization is fast becoming a key requirement for every server in the data center, enabling increased workloads in server consolidation projects, efficient software development and testing, resource management for dynamic data centers, application re-hosting and compatibility, and high-availability partitions.

Help with that transformation: submit your speaking proposal today.

Topics will include:

• Server Virtualization
  
• Desktop Virtualization
  
• File Virtualization
  
• The Future of the Virtual Enterprise
  
• Hosted Virtualization
  
• Para-virtualization
  
• Virtualization Hardware Support
  
• Hardware-level Virtualization
  
• Storage Virtualization
  
• Virtualization for Server Consolidation and Containment
  
• Windows Virtualization
  
• Utility Computing
  
• State of the Virtualization Services Market