The economy may have been making headlines the past couple of weeks due to its turbulence, but inside many businesses, uncertainty and change are just daily challenges that will continue, even after the economy starts picking up again.
But what a time for SOA to come of age. Some larger, well-established businesses are disappearing overnight, while a whole new generation of companies stakes it claims to the emerging cloud.
SOA can play a vital role in these new changes. I just had the honor of keynoting the SOA Symposium going on this week in Amsterdam, which has brought together more than 500 attendees representing the cream of organizations from across western Europe. The purpose of my keynote was to help launch Thomas Erl's latest work, SOA Design Patterns, which documents design patterns for 85 essential services that make up most SOA efforts.
Thomas, who also was the organizer of the symposium, is one of the most prolific SOA authors on the planet. His book represents a coming of age for SOA, which he and many others say has now matured to a point in which it underpins much, if not most, enterprise architecture planning. As Thomas said in his keynote commencing the conference, the establishment of proven practices "are a true sign of SOA maturity."
"We now know what it takes to build individual services," he said. "We need to be empowered to build service-oriented solutions in the right way." There's no question that SOA is part of most enterprises, he said, urging vendors to stick with standards to avoid derailing the progress that has been made. At enterprises, SOA has "set the basis for unlimited innovation... it never ceases to surprise me how much they innovate."
And what a time for SOA to mature. The current turmoil in the economy provided a backdrop for the urgency to service-orient and do it right, Thomas, as well as other speakers, emphasized. "I cannot think of a better time for SOA to have matured than now," Thomas Erl pointed out. "The one thing that threatens the survival of business is change... its a matter of survival that they see stability and the ability to adapt. It all comes down to how your build your services -- you have an opportunity to do it right." SOA provides the flexibility to make positive change possible as businesses forge through a messy economy.
However, the challenge remains bringing the business and technology organization together for a common purpose -- which doesn't happen overnight, reported Anne Thomas Manes, who also presented at the conference. As part of her presentation, she presented an "SOA Report Card," based on deep research into 20 organizations at various stages of SOA deployments.
Anne reported a great deal of enthusiasm for SOA in the early stages in the organizations she studied, but observed that "most SOA initiatives stall out after 18 months." However, the good news, she added, was that the SOA projects that were succeeding were delivering value within as little as two months. In the companies where this was achieved, SOA proponents built a solid business case for SOA. "The SOA champion has to be able to speak business, and appeal to the people who actually have the money," he said.
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