For many attendees at the recent SOA Summit held in Scottsdale, Arizona, service oriented architecture was not some arcane, theoretical approach for which they needed technical reprogramming. Rather, it was an initiative that they were working with, on the ground, every day. The technology available to service-orient mission-critical systems is available. What is in demand now is the leadership qualities necessary to deliver SOA to the business.
Listen to or download the 13:25 podcast below:
Read the full transcript of our discussion here.
SOA leadership for the enterprise was the theme struck at this year's summit, and I recently had the opportunity to sit down with the summit's organizer and emcee, Software AG's Chief Strategist, Miko Matsumura, to explore his observations.
Miko pointed out that we're clearly entering a new phase of SOA, moving from technically oriented projects to business transformation. "From my vantage point, what I was hearing at the conference is that a lot of what's behind the second wave of seen here it's really -- its not a new architecture, it's not this kind of goofy SOA 2.0 type of thing that people are rightfully dismissive of. It's the same old SOA," he explains. "The thing that I think charging this kind of new wave of adoption is that people understand the problems better. They really starting to hit it with the 'G' word, governance, and they're starting to understand the requirements around getting adoption. And adoption is a human term."
Miko picked up on a theme covered in his book, SOA Adoption for Dummies, noting that SOA should be so well baked into the organization that it's everywhere, yet hidden from view. "The question becomes whose view should it be hidden from," he says. "I think it is appropriate to a major extent to hide SOA from the view of business people and people who are involved in sort of funding and things like that. Think of is as something like skiing. Skiing involves a lot of skill and grace and really ultimately what you would like to be able to do is to go down the hill in a way that sort of effortless and yet extremely fast. And that's what agility is. Agility is kind of responding to what's actually in front of you and doing it in a way that's elegant, graceful and dynamic."
Such is the gracefulness exhibited by Kevin Flowers, IT executive from Coca-Cola Enterprises and a keynoter at SOA Summit. Flowers mobilized the company's merchandising workforce, saving millions of dollars and lost productivity in the process. "The take-home from Kevin's sort of narrative is really kind of how powerful sort of leadership is," Miko says. "Because what his style of leadership it's very kind of exciting and dynamic. I would almost characterize it as marketing, which is that IT -- he's an IT practitioner and in some sense he's really marketing SOA. He's kind of showing off what it can do."
It wasn't "SOA" that caught the attention of executives from across Coca-Cola, Miko adds. "What the business is seeing is they're seeing like how the heck did you get all that financial information, and real time sales, and distribution information onto this map, and how can you kind of real time see the mobile workforce deploying and delivering Coca-Cola products -- that's astonishing. We're on-board and we're going to fund whatever it is that you're doing over there."
Listen to or download the 13:25 podcast below:
Read the full transcript of our discussion here.
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