SOA in Action

We've talked quite a bit here and throughout the ebizQ-sphere about the convergence between SOA and enterprise data management, and how services can be employed to source and leverage data for various analytics.

In a new interview with Michael Meehan, Kirstan Vandersluis, founder and chief scientist for XAware Inc., directs the discussion to a new type of service emerging -- the "data service mashup." As the name suggests, he is talking about employing lightweight Web 2.0 methodologies to build front-end apps that pull needed data into a dynamic presentation for the business end user.

But it's a lot more than the on-the-fly Google Maps-style mashups we've been seeing in recent times. As Vandersluis describes it, a data services mashup is "a mashup in terms of pulling data from multiple sources into a logical unit. So it's a mashup in terms of data. It's not a visual mashup. That's a whole different ballgame. We're pulling data from virtually anywhere into a logical unit. We're trying to take a bunch of back-end data systems, which are typically very complex, and make it look like something much more rationalized in terms of an XML Schema that somebody put some thought into designing."

The model Vandersluis is proposing is built around an XML schema. He notes that "the applications are relying on the contract, which is defined by the XML schema."

Data services mashups may work in conjunction with, or even serve as an alternative to data warehouses and data marts in some situations, Vandersluis also said. "It's just a different way to do things and there are trade offs.... The one benefit to our approach is it's all real-time. We're sending the sub-queries out in real-time to whatever systems you want."

So if initially you pointed all your data services at your data warehouse, and you find out later that's not real-time enough, you can change the data sets that are being mashed up, so one of them hits an operational data source.

Vandersluis and other data service mashup proponents have their work cut out for them. Understanding and adoption at the business level has been "spotty" to date, Vandersluis observes. "I think it's more a matter of how well they understand service-oriented architecture, which is the typical use case of a data services layer."

Organizations that are embracing SOA are more likely to be early adopters of data services mashups, he says. In addition, there is impetus at sites developing rich Internet applications. Such Web 2.0-ish are more likely to see a large volume of services, versus the more centralized and business-focused services that will be part of SOA.

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Posted by joemckendrick in Data Management • Enterprise 2.0 • SOA  |  Permalink  | Comments (2)  | TrackBacks (0)

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  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

There's been quote a bit of discussion raging across the blogosphere as of late around the emerging concept of WOA, or Web Oriented Architecture, that may represent the the next phase of evolution of service oriented architecture.

Essentially, WOA is another way of describing the application of the Web 2.0-style technologies and methodologies, such as Ajax, REST, and Software as a Service, to enterprise requirements. Put another way, it's running an enterprise from the Cloud, versus onsite servers, hardware, and software.

Many observers are groaning at the introduction of yet another Three Letter Acronym to our already TLA-burdened lexicon. (See Mike Meehan's post here, and Dana Gardner's post here.) Apparently, many IT architects and practitioners are also rolling their eyes at this one.

However, the WOA phenomenon is something to pause and think about in terms of its long-term (and short-term, for that matter) implications for SOA.

Dion Hinchcliffe, the leading thinker in all things WOA, says that there's no reason why much of the internal enterprise functionality we look to in SOA can't be shifted to the Cloud. In fact, WOA leverages the World Wide Web, which Dion describes as “the largest SOA presently in existence.” The services that are built for WOA are built from lightweight Web 2.0 standards and methodologies, especially REST and enterprise mashups. He also describes enterprise-based SOA as “local networks.”

Dion notes that “both approaches leverage HTTP, self-describing data formats such as XML, are concerned about the use of open standards, and can be used to build systems of arbitrary complexity.” However, while SOAs “tend to have a small and well-defined set of endpoints through which many types of data and data instances can pass, WOAs tend to have a very large and open-ended number of endpoints; one for each individual resource. Not an endpoint for each type of resource, but a URI-identified endpoint for each and every resource instance.”

He also observes that while “SOA was designed from the top-down by vendors to be tool friendly, WOA was emerged form the bottom up from the Web naturally, and has the best support in simple procedural code and an XML parser.” Plus, very importantly, while “traditional SOA is fairly cumbersome to consume in the browser and in mashups, WOA is extremely easy to consume just about anywhere.”

In a recent email exchange with a group of us analysts who have been debating the merits of creating another TLA, Dion defended the WOA designation, noting that it needs to be set apart from standard SOA approaches:

"WOA simply reflects the set of emergent network and application architectures that are working today on a large scale on the Web, getting results for a great many organizations by using slightly different techniques and a fairly different mindset than we've used in SOA. This has become increasingly evident in the many WOA success stories over the last half decade that are producing pretty darn dramatic ROI numbers for many businesses large and small (happy to share these)."

SOA as we've known it has just been too cumbersome and complicated, Dion said. "I spent five years building SOAs from 2001-2006 and have been appalled at the cost/benefit ratio."

He notes that the simpler, more rapidly deployable model that WOA offers an incomparable value proposition to slowa-SOA. "Global SOA on the Internet is producing impressive results today with WOA techniques and a quick survey of Programmable Web's hundreds of WOA-style APIs or WidgetBox/Google Gadgets can demonstrate it has already greatly surpassed our traditional SOA models in terms of industry adoption, at least on the biggest network there is. It's the local SOAs in our enterprises that are the ones having the problems."

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Posted by joemckendrick in Enterprise 2.0 • SOA • Software as a Service  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

Beth Gold-Bernstein, my colleague here at ebizQ, recently hosted an extremely compelling online panel discussion on the growing convergence between SOA and Web 2.0. Beth was joined by luminaries including Dion Hinchcliffe, whom I would consider the leading analyst in the Web 2.0 realm, ZapThink's Ron Schmelzer, and Doug Wilson, CTO of portals and collaboration products at IBM. (A full transcript is posted here.)

The discussion was refreshingly straightforward. Doug Wilson even came out and said that SOA can be pretty "boring," as in "SOA is kind of a boring thing if the end user can't interact in some way with the service oriented architecture. If they can't avail themselves of the capabilities, and they can't drive the compositional nature of that."

As explored in this blogsite, SOA has been delivering plenty of success stories. But how often is your latest SOA project the subject of chats at weekend parties? Conversely, there's been a stampede to Web 2.0. And, Web 2.0 probably is a subject brought up at parties. And people's eyes don't even glaze over.

The question is, how can we capture just a piece of this enthusiasm and apply it to SOA? The fact of the matter is, as expressed by the panelists, Web 2.0 may ultimately be SOA's savior. Some experts say that the lightweight, user-friendly techniques seen in the Web 2.0 experience can serve as SOA's best selling tool. Some even say that eventually, the two worlds may even blend to the point where they are indistinguishable.

Doug Wilson pointed out that "it's not always obvious for people to see the connection" between SOA and Web 2.0. However, at the end of the day, aspects of Web 2.0, such as mashups, "are the juxtaposition or combination of information from multiple back end services. In fact, mashups are a compositional mechanism by which an end user or programmer can bring multiple sources of information or transactions to bear on one problem. This goes right to the heart of SOA and SOA composition." Doug also stated that enabling users to easily compose services that make calls to back-end systems will go a long way to helping businesses see the value in SOA.

Dion provided a good working definition of what Web 2.0 is all about:

"Defining Web 2.0 can be a challenge because it represents a number of significant but very interrelated trends. The simple nontechnical definition is that it's 'Networked applications that leverage network effects.' What we're really talking about is software and communities that get smarter the more people participate in them."

Dion also provided this example of how Web 2.0 sweeps through the enterprise:

"AOL rolled out...a very heavyweight content management platform. But users gravitated to a new media wiki platform, the same platform that powers Wikipedia. Within a couple of months, because the tool was so much easier to use, and had been proven on a very large scale, with all the adoption kinks worked out of it in that very large laboratory called the Web... it was successful to the point where 95% of their content management now occurs in those platforms."

For some, SOA may meld into Web 2.0, and the result will be a global SOA, with various islands comprised of enterprise SOAs. Dion Hinchcliffe put it this way: "Look at the Web as it is today -- it has now become the world's largest service oriented architecture. Over 600 companies have opened their business up as Web services."

However, currently, the tools and protocols being used for Web 2.0 engagements are "not what we're using in the enterprise," Dion observed. "We're seeing this rise to Web oriented architecture that's happening outside our organization -- they're using REST instead of SOAP."

Will Web 2.0-style approaches eventually permeate through enterprise walls? It's inevitable, Dion continued. Web 2.0 is "leading to a realignment in the way we look at SOA. When I talk to many SOA architects, they're trying to figure out where this fits in. We are seeing some differences and some changes to the way we might want to do things on the infrastructure side."

Ron Schmelzer pointed out that it this point, they are separate efforts -- "companies are still trying to understand SOA and Web 2.0 on their own. However, he added, both business and IT are recognizing that enterprise systems, applications, and data need to be less stodgy. "When we go home and we're away from out offices, and we use the Net, and we use the latest experiences -- Google, YouTube, blogs -- we're experiencing the broad movement to Web 2.0 as part of our general computer using experience. And then we go back to our office... where we're faced mostly with technology that's still in the 90s."

"There's a lot of desire, especially among the folks in IT, to Bridge the gap," he said. "The vector, the movement... is toward this more holistic, architectural loosely coupled user-empowered style of IT -- and away from a central architecture trying to fit everything into a set of homogeneous set of systems that are tough to integrate with."

However, Ron pointed out that Web services and SOA are two very different things, meant to serve different purposes:

"The concept of SOA actually predates Web services by at least five or six years. The main proponents of service oriented architecture at that time created architecture around CORBA. The use of Web services technology is only appropriate for certain circumstances; it's not appropriate for all uses of service oriented architecture. For example, I wouldn't want a mobile device sitting on a network consuming heavy Web service and protocols."

Web 2.0 and SOA also have different philosophies, Ron added. "SOA is about empowering the enterprise, and Web 2.0 is about empowering the individual," he said. "The ideas of Web 20 and SOA are definitively different. They espouse different ideas. SOA is primarily architectural, which means it's an approach a methodology a style and a design. Web 2.0 is a broad-based movement that covers a variety of topics."

In combination, however, Web 2.0 and SOA are a power to be reckoned with. "We want the user to become increasingly more familiar with in the broad Internet, and bring that experience into the enterprise," Ron said. "At the same time, allowing the enterprise to free up its assets, and empower the business user."

The complete panel Webcast can be found here. A full transcript is posted Posted by joemckendrick in Enterprise 2.0 • SOA • SOA Events • Software as a Service  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

For years, the disciplines of enterprise integration -- followed by SOA -- have always been perceived as "hard and techie." This has made discussions with the business process management (BPM) side of the house difficult.

Now, thanks to the introduction of new lightweight approaches via Web 2.0, SOA, BPM, and integration are now becoming more flexible, user-driven methodologies.

David Linthicum recently spoke with Dr. Dale Skeen, founder of Vitria, a well-established integration vendor, about this shift. (The podcast is here, and a transcript of Dave's discussion with Dale Skeen is available for viewing here.)

This is part of SOA moving into its next generation -- "the next great leap going together is really leveraging three very important technologies in the enterprise -- SOA, BPM and Web 2.0," Dale said. While these three areas are seen as separate technologies or methodologies, Dales sees their inevitable convergence into what he calls an "enterprise platform."

First of all, Dale said, SOA and BPM have always been a natural pairing. "SOA is an enabler that allows you to access business functions, and services, and data universally. BPM is a higher level that orchestrates these business services and human interactions in ways that allow you to meet a business objective. So hence, I've always considered these to be the perfect complementary technologies to work together."

Now, Web 2.0 is bringing SOA-BPM closer to the end user, Dale said. "SOA brings this universal access to services and data through the SOA enablement tools. It does in a secure, manageable, and governed fashion. Now, Web 2.0 brings rich internet interfaces, rich user experiences based on technology such as AJAX and Flex, which are universally available in your Web browser."

"Application integration is hard, and very techie. Web 2.0 allows this notion of mashups where you let users sort of integrate in a flexible, lightweight, easy-to-do fashion."

These are all new trends that are shifting IT empowerment to the business end user, Dale added. "Simple things like mashups, we're talking visual layering of information, we're talking about collaboration technologies such as instant messaging. All of these have a role in enterprise software. And actually, the introduction of that can be very exciting for both the IT and the business side."

IT professionals need not fret over this shift, however, Dale said. "It means that IT will be able to do faster technology upgrades because of that, they have more control over the server aspect of it, and the client side they don't have to worry about. They're going to be able to lower the support costs and it also brings fundamentally new deployment models such as Software-as-a-service, which we think, is going to be a fundamental part of business IT going forward."

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Posted by joemckendrick in Business Process Management • Data Management • Enterprise 2.0 • Management • SOA • SOA Podcasts • SOA Vendors  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

At this week's Open Group Enterprise Architecture conference conference, I had the opportunity to join a vigorous panel discussion in which we performed a "reality check" on the state of SOA. We were joined by moderator Eric Knorr of InfoWorld, along with Tony Baer (onStrategies), David Linthicum, Tom Morgan (AutoDesk) and Chris Harding (Open Group).

Members of the panel examined the matter of SOA efforts getting stuck, or whether a "trough of disillusionment" had set in. Our panel also explored SOA's uncertain relationship with other disciplines. It was agreed, for example, that business process management is a key element of SOA and visa-versa. However, we also agreed that there is still a wide chasm between the two. Tom Morgan observed that while his organization, AutoDesk, has had a far-reaching SOA effort underway for a number of years now, they "punted" on applying BPM to the effort.

The panel also discussed the issues that linger around governance, especially in the areas of registry and repository. Tony Baer observed that there were still too many issues at the metadata level, and vendors keep pushing registry/repository as a panacea for governance.

Mashups and Web 2.0 are another area colliding with SOA. Dave Linthicum stated that mashups are, indeed, a viable part of SOA taking place within organizations. However, Eric Knorr said he has heard many organizations are not keen on letting data in or out of the corporate firewall.

SOA can work hand in hand with data management, and Tom pointed out that AutoDesk has been very effectively employing SOA-based services to pull, rationalize, and cleanse customer support data from across the enterprise.

Prior to the panel, David Linthicum delivered the keynote for the Open Group event, issuing a warning that all too often, we're still engaging in SOA for SOA's sake. SOA proponents need to redouble efforts to emphasize the business case, and de-emphasize the technology aspect, he said. "It all boils down to architecture." Still, he said, the reuse inherent in SOA can be made to work, and projects where CEOs can see demonstrable value -- such as a real-time analytics dashboard -- can achieve quick success.

Posted by joemckendrick in Business Process Management • Data Management • Enterprise 2.0 • Management • SOA • SOA Events  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

What lessons have we learned from SOA that can be applied to Web 2.0? Plenty. But perhaps the most important is the role of governance, so organizations can get the most out of the services that are created under their roofs.

ebizQ colleague Gian Trotta recently spoke with Kelly Emo, SOA product marketing manager with HP Software, who worries that end users may be running away with Web 2.0-based services as end-runs around busy IT departments. (Listen to the complete podcast here, or see the transcript here.)

She notes that IT departments are dealing with "meaty back office problems" but end users are sometimes too impatient to wait for IT departments and their planning processes. So they take their needs into their own hands with new approaches like mash-ups and Web collaboration.

IT is caught up in issues such as "'how do I leverage the legacy infrastructure structure,' 'how to do I change my point-to-point integration into more flexible, loose coupling, more dynamic.' 'how do I break up my application silos'? They’re using serious architectural disciplines such as identifying their key reusable components and exposing those as standard space services."

What is happening on the user end is that "creative end users don’t have the time or the patience to wait for this plan to meticulous processes," Emo explains. "So they’re taking their needs into their own hands and using approaches, kind of Wild West approaches like mash-ups and Web collaboration."

But don't worry -- it's all good, Emo says. "These mash-ups in many cases are resulting in big productivity gains," she says. And these productivity gains "are getting the attention of the VPs of the business domains -- the folks with the money," she points out. "And they’re coming back to IT and saying 'make it so' -- support this application."

So the ball eventually ends up in IT's court anyway. The key is that IT will embrace the new "Wild West of Web 2," but pay attention to governance, Emo says. "They can embrace this capability. And they can make it work using the same level of robustness, the same level of service, quality of service. Or they can put up roadblocks and say, 'no, I am not going to let this rogue capability into IT.'

The best bet for managing Web 2.0 approaches, Emo says, is to "combine it with the productivity and architectural best practices of SOA. Effectively, what IT is doing is combining innovation and discipline. And the concept behind this is what HP is calling 'implicit governance.'"

The good part about implicit governance is that Web 2 consumers are "not even aware that they’re participating in an IT governance process, but in essence they are," Emo relates. "They’re assured of getting the service that they just basically have grown up to expect -- the always-on capability."

Emo will be speaking on this issue in a presentation called "Enterprise Mash-Ups for Wall Street: Leveraging SOA Web 2.0" at the Web Services/SOA on Wall Street show set for February 11.

Posted by joemckendrick in Enterprise 2.0 • Management • SOA • SOA Events • SOA Podcasts • SOA Vendors  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

Increasingly, industry analysts and practitioners are connecting the dots between three emerging megatrends -- SOA, Web 2.0, and Business Intelligence. It's becoming increasingly clear that the combination of SOA and Web 2.0 technologies is changing the face of business intelligence.

These were the topics raised at a recent ebizQ Webinar -- which I had the opportunity to moderate -- with noted author Don Tapscott, Katrina Coyle, BI manager with Molson Canada, and SAP's Lothar Schubert. (Audio replay available here.)

Don Tapscott, who broke new ground in 1996 with his book, The Digital Economy: The Promise and Peril of Network Intelligence, and recently co-authored Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, said BI is on the verge of a revolutionary transition, thanks to SOA and Web 2.0 approaches to technology innovation.

"Web 2.0 and service oriented architecture are really becoming a new mode of production," he says. "They’re changing the ways that we innovate, the ways theat we make decisions, the ways that we collaborate, and the ways that companies engage with the rest of the world."

This has very profound implications for business intelligence, which is evolving into "collaborative intelligence." Don continued. "Prior to the introduction of Web 2.0 methodologies, he explained, internal data had "been accessible in various limited ways through traditional ERP reporting systems, MIS and business intelligence."

"The marriage of this new accessible data with the firm’s traditional internal data creates an unprecedented challenge, as well as an opportunity to gain insight into the behavior of the company’s most important stakeholders, and to translate that knowledge into success in the marketplace."

The speed of Web 2.0 processes is also changing what end-users expect from BI approaches as well. "Think about if you do a Google search, you get the results back instantly. If the results took half a minute, or five minutes, or 10 minutes, you’d probably stop using Google so much. Traditional BI was kind of like that -- which is part of why we didn’t use it so much Because you’re calling out to a disk, basically." In-memory technologies are also making new generation BI technologies lightning fast as well.

Molson's Katrina Coyle also credits SOA with reshaping her company's ability to compete in a fast-changing and often fickle market. "One of the terrific things that we’ve had in the last year is service oriented architecture," she explained. "We can now deliver information to our business in any way they want…. we can drive information through emails, text, BlackBerries, and widgets. If we have issues anywhere in the supply chain, we can get that information out in real time to supply chain managers."

As with many SOA endeavors, corporate culture presents some barriers and challenges. "We’ve been brewing beer for a very long time," Katrina noted, stating that "when you’ve been doing something as long as we have, you get a lot of habits that are pretty well ingrained. Trying to shaking the business out of those habits is a challenge."

Molson's strategy to transform its organization includes reaching out to a new generation of younger adults through Web 2.0-based marketing strategies, and leveraging service-oriented architecture and data warehouse approaches to build its brands across the globe.

An important emphasis is real-time analytics, Katrina said. "We are constantly having to shift and change and shift and adjust very quickly to changes in the marketplace, " she explained. "We all have to be extremely agile. You can’t spend a week trying to figure out whether the promotion is successful. You have to be able to react within hours."

It used to be that companies didn't know if a promotion was successful until then end of a quarter, if then. Real-time analytics can look at patterns and trends and provide insights if something is working or not, enabling a quick change in direction.

For example, one trend that Molson was able to jump on fairly rapidly was a sudden craze for cold beer in UK pubs -- long bastions of warm beer. Katrina explained that each of its global sites have their own go-to-market models, but all this information needs to be rapidly assimilated. "We have a data warehouse, with lots of information coming in different ways," she said. "It's not necessarily all coming from a centralized ERP system. We also have data coming in from AC Nielsen, for example. "We’ve got to bring that data in, and make sure that it has a harmonized look, so our business can actually make tactical decisions on it."

By adopting in-memory technology available through SAP's BI Accelerator, Katrina reports that Molson has been able to move data quickly through its data warehouse. "We’re able to process data now in real time in our warehouse -- we’re not tied to a load once a day or once a week."

Audio replay of the ebizQ Webcast, "The New Paradigm for Business Intelligence - Collaborative, User Centric, Process Embedded," is available here.

Posted by joemckendrick in Data Management • Enterprise 2.0 • SOA • SOA Podcasts  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

Two colleagues here at ebizQ have weighed in on the most vexing issue in the SOA world these days: how does SOA mesh with mashups, SaaS, and all the other aspects of the Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 wave.

Krissi Danielsson talks about the disconnect between SOA and SaaS, noting that many commentators get the two concepts confused.

Keith Harrison-Broninski talks about the intersection between SOA and Web 2.0, which can called to as "Enterprise Web 2.0." In the midst of this intersection is enterprise mashups, which will eventually point the way to business process-driven architectures.

The growing convergence between Enterprise 2.0 (which includes SaaS) is the SOA story of 2007, and likely the story of 2008 as well. SaaS presents an interesting opportunity for SOA proponents as well. Business decision makers who may be flummoxed about the meaning of SOA typically get "SaaS" pretty quickly. SaaS providers that build their services on SOA-based standards will find their solutions best interlock with customers. Plus, a good analogy for SOA is that it's SaaS, delivered internally.

Posted by joemckendrick in Enterprise 2.0 • SOA • Software as a Service  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)