There's been a lot of heated discussion lately within the industry on whether reuse can drive the value of service-oriented architecture, or whether the concept has flopped.
I recently had the opportunity to join fellow ebizQ bloggers Elizabeth Book, Ronan Bradley, Dave Linthicum, and Neil Ward-Dutton in an effort to shed more light on the value of reuse in service-oriented architectures. (The podcast is available below.)
The vote was, apparently, five to nothing in support of reuse. However, the theme running through the discussion was that reuse is an important mechanism for the success of SOA, but is not the primary benefit in and of itself.
Neil observed that the success of service reuse boils down to supply and demand. While SOA services are relatively easy to create from a technical perspective, the supply may be far outstripping the demand. The reuse paradigm "is really about is supply versus demand," he said. "You can't create a market from just creating and throwing stuff out there, when there's no demand. And the only way to really understand demand is to tie into the strategy of the organization with an enterprise architecture approach, really understand where the business wants to go, then look at what actually needs to be built."
Dave agreed that reuse was not the endgame of SOA, but rather a means to take "architectures are completely unworkable messes for the most part" and "turn them into something that's better aligned with business, that's changeable as the business needs change, and something that's workable and cost effective in the organization. ...Reuse is going to be a side benefit of that."
Ronan also said reuse was a critical component to SOA, agreeing that it was the means to an end: "We're seeing more people moving away seeing from reuse itself as the primary benefit, and starting to move towards terms like improved infrastructure, improved agility and even better alignment to business. All these to my mind are consequences of being successful with reuse. In order to develop and deliver on a successful business plan for SOA, I think it's important we stay the course, and continue to look at how we drive up reuse."
Leave a comment