SOA - The Sleeping Giant
Colleague James Maguire is someone whose posts on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) I follow closely. Like many people, James is digging into SOA to find the real places it fits and what's really going on underneath all the chatter.
SOA is a buzzword being tossed about pretty liiberally lately. And if
it isn't SOA, it's SaaS for Software as a Service. And while there are
some distinctions between the two, they're often being used
interchangeably of late.
SOA: A Frankenstein in the Enterprise?There's a really compelling statement in James' post that I want to touch on -
October 25, 2006
By James Maguire
Over the last couple years, businesses have enthusiastically embraced Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). The Aberdeen Group reports that 90% of large enterprises have adopted or will move to adopt SOA by the end of 2006.
The attraction is obvious. SOA enables a remarkable degree of flexibility, and of integration of applications. This new enterprise architecture technology – almost like magic – allows IT departments to combine the services from many disparate software.
SOA is the exact opposite of a “set it and leave it” technology. Like a garden that constantly grows and changes, a SOA-enabled architecture needs carefully tending to prevent it from growing into a riot of unplanned consequences.SOA is much like security. It's a process, not a product. When you awaken the sleeping giant of convergence between software, services and the network, you embrace a constant, dynamic environment of change. You embrace constant change. It isn't a static solution that you can deploy and then walk away from and just let it run. That's a guaranteed disaster.
Nice article James. And I encourage readers to follow James' writing on the subject, especially those who are looking toward SOA/SaaS in the future.
Technorati Tags: Service Oriented Architecture, SOA, Software as a Service, SaaS, unified communications
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