Let the Great Mashup Begin -- SOA Will Be the Better for It

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May 23, 2008

Let the Great Mashup Begin -- SOA Will Be the Better for It

In a new post here at ebizQ, Tony Baer has weighed in on the mashup phenomenon that has been gaining ground within the enterprise world.

Tony and I are in agreement that mashups -- the whole idea of lightweight front-end apps that can be assembled by business users -- add a new, more palatable dimension to SOA.

Some observers have been saying that mashups are too consumerish and funtime for more serious SOA efforts. However, there's also an opposing stream of thinking -- some Web 2.0 proponents don't think SOA should be brought into the mashup world -- it will ruin all the fun. David Linthicum says that he even has heard from people "who did not want the term 'mashups' sullied with the term 'SOA.'" As he noted, "the core message is that they view SOA as something that's "enterprisy," and mashups as much more innovative and not really enterprise related."

Here's what Dave had to say about that:

"Not sure I agree with that. While indeed mashups are an innovative way of building very cool applications from many available resources, visual and non-visual, they are still composite applications. While I'm seeing mashups that are completely Web-hosted, I'm seeing more and more that are a mix of Web and enterprise resources, as well as mashups that are true "'enterprise mashups.'"

Indeed, mashups are gaining ground. Dion Hinchcliffe, for one reports fast-breaking progress in mashup adoption across the industry. He noted that there were at least nine different announcements around Web-based mashups coming out of the recent Web 2.0 conference. Dion also cites the latest market overview from Forrester, which estimates that this space is expected to grow into a $700 million a year industry sector by 2013, or about 1% of the entire software industry.

Mashups do not present an alternative or competition to the composite apps that have been part of the SOA world. As Tony puts it, "the approach is not a black and white SOA vs. mashups choice for enterprise integration, but rather, use of mashups for the last mile of integration that may, in many cases, utilize data services, feeds, or other sources that more often than not are exposed as Web or RESTful Services."

And, may I add, the ease and lightweightness of mashups make it easier to sell the concept of SOA to the business. Because now they can see and feel and touch service orientation. They can (gasp) actually create services on their own. (Here's a case where good governance has to come in -- can't you just see business users, having had a taste of their own service creation, going wild?)

However, as Dion notes, we're not quite there yet with easy-for-business-users-to-use tools. Dion observed that "the tools that empower users to weave together existing Web parts and open APIs into the exact solutions they need are just now becoming easy enough and robust enough to readily enable these scenarios."

This is in line with research I have been involved with (Evans Data), which, in a recent survey of 380 enterprises, found that the greatest obstacle to user application creation, cited by 22% of respondents from a list, is the lack of availability of easy-to-use assembly tools.

Tony agrees, and sees the progression of tools and methodologies as such:

"I believe that this represents stage 2 of 3 -- the first was emergence of primitive Ajax tooling, the second is more formal delineations that in many ways reflect existing silos within enterprise software architecture. That is, you have database tools, coding tools (also known as IDEs), and then you have your Web design. Ultimately, in stage 3, these approaches themselves will mash up as simply multiple technology-driven paths to the same summit. As long as IT vets it, you shouldn't need different tooling to combine a structured data service with an unstructured content feed, a piece of business logic, with some rich expressive user interface design artifacts."

If mashups can be brought into the same governance space as SOA services -- that is, automated and non-intrusive vetting of services deployed, and accessible directories of what is already out there -- we will be entering an era when business professionals take responsibility for their own domains and applications. That will free up IT to spend more time with the strategic aspects of the business.

IT will better understand the business and the business will better understand IT -- that sounds like the best mashup of all.

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Posted by joemckendrick in Enterprise 2.0 • SOA Vendors | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us