James J. Odell is a consultant, writer, and educator in the areas of object-oriented and agent-based systems, methodology, business modeling, ontology, and service-oriented architecture (SOA). Working with the OMG and other standards organizations, he continues to innovate and improve modeling methods and techniques. He has been the chair of the OMG’s Analysis and Design Task Force for ten years and has participated in the development of the UML 1.0 and UML 2.0. He is the also acting chair of the OMG's Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Task Force, The Open Group’s Adaptive Business Solutions group, and the IEEE FIPA standards committee.

He has co-authored books with James Martin entitled Object-Oriented Analysis and Design (1992), Object-Oriented Methods: Pragmatic Considerations (1996), and Object-Oriented Methods: A Foundation, UML Edition (1998) published by Prentice-Hall. He was the editor of three books on agent-oriented software engineering. He conducts international seminars and workshops and provides consulting to major companies worldwide.

Presentation
Adaptive and Collaborative SOA: Some case studies
Speakers: James Odell (Consultant), Mihaï Moldovan (Product Manager, OSLO Software), Andy Mulholland (Global CTO, Capgemini)

Achieving business value at the enterprise level requires that every organization architect its own Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)—to some extent. Since no standard off-the-shelf SOA exists covering all business needs, organizations rely on value-added technologies to leverage the benefits of their particular SOA.

Among these is agent technology. Agents can be thought of as active objects—i.e., objects having their own thread of control. They are distributed-processing entities that can be reactive, proactive, autonomous, collaborative, and adaptive. As such, agents work well with other approaches (such as objects, relations, components, and so on), as well as support and extend SOA and the Web.

Agent technology enables IT departments to deliver business value effectively, because each agent acts on behalf of its organization. Agents—like humans—can play designated roles and embody specific business goals in a dynamic and collaborative manner. In a fairly static and stable SOA, agents do not have much use; objects and components are adequate. However, when an SOA involves many service consumers and providers that can change quickly, conventional SOA approaches no longer scale or respond in a timely manner. Here, agents can interact, adapt, and organize in a way that reflects the business needs of the enterprise.

Through case studies we will illustrate how agent technologies provided real value to major accounts in several industrial sectors.

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