"SOA is dead" was the catch-phrase of 2009. Will "SOA is inevitable" be the rallying cry of 2010?
As organizations kick back into growth mode, they will find that service orientation is the only way to effectively manage their growth. And to make service orientation work, especially within large complex organizations, good governance is essential.
We've heard of organizations "too big to fail," but is it possible to be too big for SOA? Not likely, say experts participating in a roundtable at the recent SOA in Action conference.
At the roundtable, I had the opportunity to join Miko Matsumura, vice president and deputy chief technology officer for Software AG, and John Favazza, vice president of research and development for WebLayers, Inc., in an in-depth discussion about the growing role of SOA governance in the coming economic upswing, as many organizations will shift back into expansion mode. (Listen to the audio Webcast here, or read the full transcript here.)
Miko cited the work of Gartner analyst Paolo Malinverno, who wrote a paper called not SOA is dead, but Let's Face It, SOA is Inevitable.
"All of these negative consequences of size scale and longevity that
come with even the word enterprise, all these negative consequences
have to be mitigated in order to take advantage of being big," Miko explained.
There are tremendous benefits to being a large organization, such as global extended reach, and mass buying power. However, with that bigness comes a lot of complexity, especially across departmental lines. "Unless you can really coordinate align multiple tribes and silos, you're going to be a failure competitively," Miko warned. "As we move into the growth stage, the fragmentation of your market will be difficult to address, because you will have single point solutions. For every single niche market, and it will lead to this completely unattainable mass."
There's no such thing as too big for SOA. From my view SOA is a response to being big, and how to manage IT in a climate where things are growing, and where you're a little bit too big to do the same old tricks as you used to.
John Favazzo agreed that "SOA is inevitable" -- even though many organizations are not calling it "SOA" yet. "What we've seen is that some of the customers we talk to weren't even planning to start their SOA initiative yet," he stated. "And what they found out as they looked around within their organization, people were already building services. Even though it wasn't full SOA, the service enablement was happening organically. So it was happening, even though they weren't ready for it."
However, with this organic service growth comes problems, John explained. "Those are the people that were having the most problems they didn't plan up front, and they decided to take these services and the things that had grown organically and try to retrofit them into a SOA. And because of that, it was doomed to fail. A lot of times what they would they do is they would try to get very aggressive, and their plans would get very aggressive. A company can be too big for SOA, but they have to plan their schedule, and make it something they can achieve. The old saying, 'you don't want to boil the ocean,' and that's exactly what some people try to do -- start small, and build upon your successes."
(Listen to the audio Webcast here, or read the full transcript here.)
Leave a comment