Business Ecology Initiative & Service-Oriented Solution

Myths and ferry tails about SOA are all around us, it isn't a secret. However, one respectful Analyst, who is very well known in the SOA community for ebizQ, told us a story that deserves a title of a Strategic Programme on SOA for Programmers unless it is not just an advanced populist shout aimed to lead programmers (to get popularity) against an IT and enterprise management. Well, every programmer knows better than CEO/CTO how to manage IT - it is a bearded story but with modern technology buzz it shines differently. I can tell you another story about the same mindset: from the history we know that once, in one country (thanks Lord), the least successful people raised a slogan: "Each housewife should be able to manage the country" (probably, they concluded that if a housewife could manage her own household, she could manage a group of households known as a country). As a result, we had a Soviet nightmare for the decades...

OK, it is the time to tell you the story and to take a look into its possible consequences. Here it is: "These days, as demonstrated through the power of social networking, employees and professionals have the impetus for organizational change. They are closest to the customers, they know what's needed to do their jobs better. The creation and proliferation of services via SOA needs to be a bottom-up movement. CEOs, CFOs and CIOs need to set the tone and vision, then get out of the way."

I'm going to offer you my analysis of this story having in my IT background many years in such roles as a tester, programmer, researcher, Tech Lead, Architect, Enterprise Architect and a Head of Architecture. For now, let me ask you a question, which I'll answer at the end of this article: What is the most important thing in any IT?

The words used in the story are tricky and the author can always say that I have misunderstood him. Yes, I take this risk and continue because if could misunderstand, other can do the same, which is not god for SOA at all. For example, what is meant by 'the impetus for organizational change'? Is this an intention to change (it is an old news) or it is a force, power to change? In the latter case, if this statement justifiable or, again, a desire is taken as a reality?

Let's assume for a moment that the extract "as demonstrated through the power of social networking, employees and professionals have the impetus for organizational change. They are closest to the customers, they know what's needed to do their jobs better" is true (i.e., isn't a bold proclamation). We'll play a quick scenario based on it and challenge it with simple questions to see if it can sustain an elementary critic.

The scenario: in a mid-to-large size company, which can afford internal IT department as well as Marketing, Sales and other regular enterprise divisions, a programmer approaches CIO and says: "I participate in a social network with some of our potential consumers (he or she thinks - they are the 'potential consumers') and I've found what they need now. I can run a project and deliver this thing; please, sign the budget request for $100K now (and "then get out of the way")". My wild guess is that this would be the last chance for that programmer to approach the CIO... Would you agree?

The questions: what does mean "They are closest to the customers"? Who and how verified this? How reliable this information is? Who, at the end, checked that this information is not a marketing crap pushed by the competitor to turn the company's attention with the help of such' socially networked' employee? Oh, the programmer did not think about such possibility... For my years in IT I learnt that it is better not doing things at all if you cannot or may not do them professionally.

Moreover, the statement "they know what's needed to do their jobs better" does not justify or defend the conclusion "The creation and proliferation of services via SOA needs to be a bottom-up movement" to any degree. (I cannot resist admitting that I love the expression "proliferation of services via SOA"!) The problem with the aforementioned conclusion is in that is has been set out of the context. Yes, there are industries like media, education, research and alike where "a bottom-up movement" can provide more benefits than risks to the business. However, there are other industries like healthcare, banking, telecommunication, finance, gas/electricity, defense and similar where one of the major requirements is the end-to-end integrity over the activities in the business domain, where the risks must be mitigated right away and where immediate consumer needs not necessary sit in line with the trends and strategic movements. Thus, I can say that, in general, the given conclusion is wrong until it proofs right for healthcare, banking, telecommunication, finance, gas/electricity, defense at least.

Recently, I had an 'opportunity' to learn the lesson from the "SOA ... bottom-up movement". Well, to be honest, I do not really know was it SOA design or not but it looked very much like the SOA one. In the spring of this year, the Royal Opera House (ROH) was selling tickets for the series of performance from the Russian Ballet. You can imagine the agiotage in London around such event. In anticipation of a high demand, the ROH offered a Web Site to sell the tickets. The Web Site demonstrated the use of modern technologies and a lot of features that made me to believe into the services behind the Web pages. In addition to the information about the performances and option to choose your 'future' seats, the Site offered you to get into a queue to the booking-office page. The queue ran relatively fast and it took me about 40 min. to pass from the number 700+ to 10. Everything was fine up to me moment I got an invitation to buy the tickets. When I hit the button, the Web Site became frozen. In a while (enough long to make me nervous), I was invited to try again (well, I did not expect the system throughput in the ROH similar to Yahoo! and I was pleased to re-submit my request.)

I was thrown to the back of the queue and my new number was 1600+. With almost lost hope, I rushed to the real booking office and found a relatively short queue there. To my surprise, almost everybody in that queue talked about the situation I just experienced with the ROH Web Site. Some people were patient enough to be turned around twice. If we disregard the version that the resetting into the on-line queue was done deliberately, I can say with high probability that it was a problem of bottom-up design of the Web Site. Why? Because in only bottom-up approach one function does not care about another function, that in only bottom-up approach there is nobody, not even a component, responsible for the integral cohesiveness of the capabilities tied into the functional solution (in the top-down approach this integrity is the start, the middle and the end points of each design step because the designers are responsible for the final result rather than for each individual feature implementation. The latter may be thrown away and replaced by the analogous one - this is the SOA 'law' regardless the developers' like or dislike, and this 'law' is guarded by the Architects and Managers).

Described case is very typical for the bottom-up SOA implementation. In bottom-up approach, the program is the key. All attention is put onto the program functionality and its testing. The integration is limited to the interactions via pre-defined interfaces. In the top-down approach, the keys are the application and its context, i.e. the surrounding programs with their constraints. They are tested together: if a Queue Service should handle 1000 concurrent requests while the Buying Service can work with only 100 simultaneous processes, the Buying Service will be automatically tested against the 1000 requests (in conjunction with the Queue Service) and the throughput bugs will be caught in testing, not in production in front of thousands of customers.

Finally, I think that instead of calling for an organisational "revolution" in technology on the basis of social networking, the respectful Analyst would better examine if such socialites can handle the results of the re-organisation, what they know about the business, production, accounting, law, finance and other mandatory restraints of providing services at the enterprise level. SOA was 'born' in Technology, nobody argues about this. However, in several years, the 'baby' grew and moved off the nest into the business world. Good parents understand this and become proud of the child; not that good parents continue claiming and enforcing their 'ownership' on the child and, usually, fail.

The IT departments exist not to please programmers (and to provide them with the pay-checks) but to satisfy the corporate Business. This primitive truth leads to the answer to my question asked at the beginning of the article. The answer to this question is - the Money. This is the pragmatism of the world we live in, and individual enthusiasm and creativity never won the competition against money at the end of the game (so far). I do not have objections to the social networking but I cannot accept when it is applied to everything reasonless; this creates nothing but a mess and confusion. No social networking is able to compete with the top-down architecture, including the service-oriented architecture, until this networking can 'show the money' to the business and to protect the consumers from trivial mistakes I described in the real life 'ticket selling' example.