In reading the always plentiful end-of-year stories in the IT media, I came across an article in SD Times called "Eleven Trends from 2007." The article listed several themes from 2007 in the IT world, including the security risks of Web 2.0, the rise of dynamic languages, and other interesting trends.
One trend in the article was the disconnect between SaaS and SOA and mashups. Writer Alan Zeichek points out that many organizations don't recognize the differences among the technologies. Zeichek pointed out that vendors see SOA as a strategy but enterprises view it as a "tactical integration methodology." He then points out that analysts are building up SaaS as a new world paradigm whereas enterprises view it as a "tactical, case-by-case decision." And then no one really even knows what mashups are.
I thought this was an interesting claim. I've often seen SOA and SaaS written of together in the same articles, but they don't seem to be much related except that they both have an S that stands for Service. And mashups do seem to be related to SOA, but not so much to SaaS unless a SaaS application were to offer that functionality.
What do you think? Are organizations confused about the differences among these technologies? (Remember that in ebizQ's most recent SOA in Action virtual conference that analysts Joe McKendrick, Phil Wainewright, and Dana Gardner held a discussion about this very subject.)
I doubt that any organization "knows" much about SOA or SaaS (even if we're talking about the people within it!).
My own experience is that SOA is often mistaken for a technology or set of technologies rather than the strategic concept it really is. SOA as a strategy for producing, consuming, and managing software (and perhaps technical appliances that provide services) can be implemented within organizations in varying degrees and with varying results. The requirements for SOA success include a lot a factors having to do with people: mindshare, costs, old habits, financial & political entrenchment, etc.
SaaS on the other hand is a pattern within the spectrum of SOA solution designs. Services delivered via SaaS can range anywhere from complete functional suites (Salesforce.com) down to some level of granularity more akin to a widget obtained via subscription (or license) and incorporated into a composite application.
Mashups? Again, this is another way to re-use software services or functional suites that already exist and incorporate them into a browser session to create value that exceeds the sum of the parts. Of course, this is a very basic tenet of web design (links and components included in a page by reference) and has been right from the start in 1993 or so. Mashups take this practice to a new level of complexity and functionality.
I have not been coding for some years now. The concepts have not changed much, but the scalability and implementation styles have changed a lot.
No, people aren't confused; SOA advocates are. SaaS is real. You can sign up for SaaS, everyone knows what it is. You can buy it. No mystery.
And SOA? Well SOA is like string theory, a lot of supposedly smart people smugly tell you that it's clearly the way forward but they can't define it to save their lives.
Here is some advice: Ignore SOA, buy SaaS and go to the beach.
No. Maybe by the time we get to Web 3.0