What others are saying

Quotes about Interactive Objects

"Interactive Objects is definitely among the most competent European consulting firms in the area of IT architecture. In addition to its contribution to the standardization of MDA, Interactive Objects excels with its broad practical experience in this field."

Richard Soley, OMG Chairman and CEO

"Interactive Objects' services and tools make the company an excellent outsourcing partner. Their approach to Model Driven Architecture is by no means just a hype or an academic exercise, but plain common sense. The way they practice application development introduces a completely new quality into optimizing outsourced projects."

Marco Argentieri, Corporate IT Controller at Danzas

"We were not really looking for Model Driven Architecture. We wanted superior system quality, fast development, a secure outsourcing approach and a quick return on investment. Then we learned that Interactive Objects' approach ensures that MDA and these benefits are synonymous."

Stephan Rohrer, Corporate IT Controller at Danzas

"In a world that has so much bad software, it is a positive pleasure to research and write about people who are dedicated to creating good, reliable, well-architected software."

Tom Welsh, Senior Consultant with Cutter Consortium, and editor of its Web Services Strategies (WSS) newsletter

"They [Interactive Objects] are actually doing what others are talking about."

Bob Timpson, General Manager IBM, about Interactive Objects

"Interactive Objects was already moving in the same direction as the OMG when MDA was announced..."

Paul Harmon, IT Industry Analyst

"Interactive Objects is a reliable partner for forward-looking software development, due to its orientation towards the MDA concepts."

Uwe Lehr, Managing Director for Central and Eastern Europe, IONA Technologies

Quotes about ArcStyler

"The code quality produced by the ArcStyler's model-based generation is consistent and clean, reducing the number of programmers and test engineers required to develop and maintain the test environments by approx. 45% compared to a conventional development approach."

Dr. Andreas Blaszczyk, Senior Scientist at ABB

"Immediate savings in the development process due to MDA-compliant approach and the usage of ArcStyler amounted to approx. 35% compared to the estimated figures for development without using this approach and IDE."

Österreichische Bundesbahnen

"With ArcStyler, we were up and running very quickly. The bottom line is that ArcStyler offers unparalleled and totally flexible support of an incremental development, deployment and test cycle for a great number of runtime environments while at the same time preserving future-safe model independence from the particular runtime infrastructure. ArcStyler will be our platform for the upcoming projects."

Österreichische Bundesbahnen

"The business payoff of using MDA for systems development is not esoteric but real with big numbers attached. At our annual OMG Information Day in London 2002, Deutsche Bank Bauspar won our application award - a project delivered by Interactive Objects using its ArcStyler IDE - with the Bank saving some 40% in development costscompared to non-MDA approaches. In the tough commercial climate that all organisations face today, you can't afford not to consider MDA - the benefits are there."

Dr. Richard Soley, Chairman and CEO of the OMG

"The best IT Architectural Tool"

Open Systems Associates Inc., Crossroads A-List

"Model Driven Architecture goes beyond middleware to provide a comprehensive, structured solution for future-safe and interoperable application development. ArcStyler provides an excellent example of the OMG's MDA approach."

Dr. Richard Soley, Chairman and CEO of the OMG

"I have a great deal of respect for the engineering that has gone into the ArcStyler. The highlight of my workday is using the ArcStyler to successively make our systems more convergent and our development process more effective."

Lead designer and project manager at a large European Bank (name withheld by bank policy)

"Alone in the pilot project cost savings of approx. US$ 16,000 per seat could be realized which will increase when used on a broader basis. The code quality produced by the ArcStyler's model based generation is consistent and clean."

Andreas Blaszczyk, Research Scientist, ABB AG

"I'd be nuts not to require my developers to use the ArcStyler. One single line in the UML diagram can produce hundreds of lines of high-quality code including the Internet and Web Service code and the test harnesses. At the same time, I have a high-level MDA model conforming to our architectural style and high-quality documentation at several levels of abstraction, each converging into the other. And when we want to change something, or upgrade our platform, it's as simple as changing the model or swapping the MDA Cartridge. I don't see how anybody can ignore these major advantages."

Dr. Jan Vester, Director, Simulacrum GmbH

"We can use the ArcStyler to deliver the advantages of MDA into any IT environment including existing systems, CORBA or C++ infrastructures, not just new developments with Java and J2EE. This is ArcStyler's key to success, we use ArcStyler to rapidly migrate to the newest Java and Web technologies and to leverage the advantages of MDA for our existing infrastructure."

Ekkehard Gentz, Development Manager, ff-eCommerce, Frankfurt

"ArcStyler's Model Driven approach saved my entire project schedule and budget by allowing us to automatically migrate to a completely new infrastructure just by swapping the ArcStyler cartridge. We were up and running again with our ERP/ASP solution on completely new infrastructure within days! Thanks to the power of ArcStyler, we are independent and in control -- the best decision we've made."

Ekkehard Gentz, Development Manager, ff-eCommerce, Frankfurt

Analyst Quotes

"I really welcome the professionalism and rigor that Interactive Objects is introducing to the system development and maintenance task, and expect to see much more of them in the future."

Martin Butler, Founder and Research Chair, Butler Group

"Order yourself a copy of Richard Hubert's book called "Convergent Architecture". Anyone concerned with the problems of delivering quality systems efficiently should read it - it is a very good read."

Martin Butler, Founder and Research Chair, Butler Group

"There is no doubt that ArcStyler can boost productivity, both in terms of development itself, and in reducing maintenance costs by ensuring that developments take place within an appropriate architectural and business context."

Philip Howard, Bloor Research, www.it-director.com

"In our view MDA will have a major influence on anybody concerned with software architecture. Interactive Objects is well placed to take advantage of any such momentum and ArcStyler should be one of the first ports of call for anybody interested in developing software within such an environment."

Philip Howard, Bloor Research, www.it-director.com

Quotes about Convergent Architecture

"Schon fast ein Klassiker zu diesem Thema. Der Autor, Richard Hubert, gilt in der Fachwelt als Koryphäe zu MDA und OO."

www.openmda.de/mdalinks.htm

"I just finished reading the book "Convergent Architecture" that the OMG published. It is one of the best IT books I have read in a long time. You guys deserve some credit for put this out."

Paul Grantham, CTO, AutomationOne

"Architectural Styles and the Convergent Architecture are about systematic reuse and progressive refinement of collective software design wisdom. Anyone involved in complex software projects should read this book cover to cover."

Barry Morris, CEO, IONA Technologies

"A Real Treat!
I started this book with no anticipation of the treat in store. Having read it, I have to say that if you're interested in significantly improving software development efficiency, and you read only one book this year, then this is it! It's a "must read" for any software engineer, architect, or manager involved in boosting "time to market", "responsiveness", or "timeliness".
There is a slowly-growing body of experience in proven approaches to high-efficiency software development. This book shows Richard Hubert to be clearly among the front-runners in the field.
A foundation observation in this field is that, across many projects, there is often much commonality. "Silo" or "stovepipe" developments ignore this commonality. A core goal is to capture commonality and apply it as widely as possible. This is feasible because the technical content of many projects is similar: one web service app is broadly much like another, as are most mainframe batch apps, or stand-alone GUI apps. However, capturing commonality alone is not sufficient. Other key factors are architecture, process, tools, and organization. They must all be brought together into a cohesive whole.
Most industries (other than IT) have known for many years that meeting their "time to market" goals requires this kind of cohesive approach, which Hubert calls "Architectural Style", and fully describes at the start of the book. Thus designing an building a range of products that are similar (such as a range of cars, or a range of houses, or a range of hairpins) can benefit from having the same architectural style, which is understood across the industry, is taught in schools, which evolves over time, and which implies a given set of structural concepts, processes and organization, tools, and technology outlook. Hubert explains how these are the four major elements of an architectural style.

The particular architectural style presented in the body of the book is the "Convergent Architecture" of the title, and addresses distributed applications such as web services. This style has as its metaphor not the mass-production of Chaplin's "Modern Times", but rather a machine shop with highly skilled engineers, each doing what they're best at. Hubert presents the Convergent Architecture in terms of its major elements - base enabling concepts (which he calls the metamodel), component architecture, the IT organization model, development process, and tools. Along the way, project design and management is covered. Also, the process of taking components from the business model straight through to implementation shows how one of the major promises of OO can be delivered. And the way it's done-this is what MDA really means!
It might be thought that Hubert's approach requires a revolution, but this is not so. Like other practitioners in the field, he proposes an evolution, and includes process support for its management. For example, he shows in some detail how RUP is tailored for the Convergent Architecture, so building on currently-available products. He also touches on some of the low-down and difficult challenges, such as how much technical glue to write to make life simpler for application developers - the more you write, the further from standards you get.

Last, but not least, there is a worked example, using Hubert's company's Convergent Architecture IDE, "ArcStyler", from business model right through to EJBs. Now it might be thought that spending over 40 pages on a proprietary product is mere publicity-seeking. But it's not. It's proof that the tool market is now starting to address one of the great challenges facing our industry: how to move away from the cottage industries of stovepipe development into seriously productive development. And if it also advertises the product, well, if it does the job, what's wrong with that?
Finally, this book is well-written, well-structured, and at 250 pages, a comfortable read. If you've read any of the few other books in this field (such as Peter Herzum and my "Business Component Factory", or "Software Product Lines" from the SEI), then this book is an essential companion, bringing valuable new insights. If you haven't, then this book is not only a first-rate introduction to the field, but also a major contributor to it."

Oliver Sims from Mortimer West End, Berkshire, United Kingdom

"This is critical for companies that wish to meet the specific challenges of today's e-business world-flexibility and adaptability, time-to-market, and quality of software solutions."

Dr. Juergen Henn, Principal and Practice Leader, e-business Architecture Consulting, IBM Business Innovation Services

"... a comprehensive approach has been lacking until now. This book gives a lucid account of a full life-cycle approach to designing large-scale, Internet-oriented business systems where Model Driven Architecture, combined with mature architectural style, is the key. Readers - whether managers, designers or programmers - will profit from this and incorporate architecture-centric design in their own practice."

Dr. David Basin, Professor for Software Engineering, University of Freiburg, Germany

"A compelling vision for application architecture, combined with precise instructions for implementing that vision. It is certain to raise the bar for the application development community."

Dr. David Taylor, Author of Business Engineering with Object Technology

"For information technology strategists, chief architects, project managers and software developers, Hubert explains the role of information technology architecture in overall strategy, how to achieve the advantages of solid architecture across multiple teams and globally distributed organizations, how existing organizations can evolve to new levels of architectural quality, and how a big picture can simplify diverse constellations."

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