Followup on WOA SOA…
Since Dave was nice enough to give me another shout out in his podcast this week, I thought I’d follow up in my blog. I thought he did a much better job in discussing my post when he said that these new breeds of applications and services that are available on demand are (my words) another tool in the toolbox of the enterprise architect. There’s no doubt that there are potential cost benefits to these platforms, and a review of them should be something you consider as your architecture evolves. Just remember, however, that they don’t define your architecture any more than any product installed on site defines your architecture. They only define your architecture if you let them, and that’s a bad situation. Rather, define your architecture, and choose the solutions that best fit your needs, whether it is building it in house, buying an off the shelf product to install on site, or going with a web-based provider. Don’t focus on functionality alone. Make sure that it aligns with your management needs and your information needs as best you know their future direction. You need to be in control, not at the control of your vendors.
2 Responses to “Followup on WOA SOA…”
Leave a Reply
I wrote a rant on my blog on this topic a few days ago. I agree that WOA is another tool in the toolbox. The media types are over hyping this to an extreme. In my world, our software ultimately produces our revenue. Many of the features we build are proprietary to our business. WOA is nice, but there will be very few consumable Web 2.0 services that will meet our needs. Yes, we can leverage Google Maps and some other fancy eye candy mashups but WOA is far away from being a difference maker in my world.
Todd,
Is it just me or is the amount of hype about SOA getting silly, even by IT standards? Never mind the business, how many IT people are confused by the proliferation of marketing initiatives, acronyms, conferences etc.?
I’ve made an attempt to go back to basics and explain simply how SOA works, how it can be used and, with the use of a real-world example, describe why a properly planned and implemented Service Oriented Architecture can create a flexible way of aligning business and IT, here:
http://www.keystonesandrivets.com/kar/2008/04/understanding-s.html
You might also be interested in my post about Cloud Computing, which has been another “victim” of too much hype lately, where I try to put it in historical context:
http://www.keystonesandrivets.com/kar/2008/02/cloud-computing.html