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.
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