Conference Marks SOA's Advance into the Enterprise

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November 01, 2007

Conference Marks SOA's Advance into the Enterprise

It was just a couple of years ago that talk of "service-oriented architecture" raised many skeptical eyebrows. As the old wise saying goes, 'If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.' In many respects, SOA -- with its promises of almost universal integration, agility, and IT-business alignment -- seemed too good to be true.

However, as we've seen over the past week at the ebizQ online "SOA in Action" conference -- speaker after speaker talked about the success that that is being seen with SOA, the multiple ways organizations of all sizes and types can realize the benefits of SOA, and new thinking being applied to nagging enterprise problems.

Over the coming weeks and days, I will be providing highlights on the various sessions that took place at ebizQ's event -- there's far too much for a single blog post.

Feel free to check out all nine sessions, which are archived for on-demand listening, here.

In the meantime, Krissi Danielsson has published a great overview of my panel discussion with industry luminaries Phil Wainewright and Dana Gardner on "SOA and Web 2.0: Mashups, SaaS, and Collaboration: Putting the Pieces Together."

Dana and Phil agreed to disagree on the speed of the Web 2.0 and SOA convergence -- Dana sees the two paradigms as "complementary," and noted that many of the Web 2.0 techniques around rapid front-end application development can be considered a form of "Guerrilla SOA."

Phil, however, cautions that Web 2.0 may be too uncontrolled and ungovernable to blend in with more deliberate and planned SOA methodologies. "I think it'll be a few years before Web 2.0 and SOA really coexist," Wainewright said. "Web 2.0 is so ill defined and people are still using it to experiment rather than with a definitive purpose."

Both Phil and Dana agree that the combined forces of SOA and Web 2.0 will be tremendous market disruptors.

Posted by joemckendrick in SOA Events | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us