Business Transformation in Action

Over at the latest issue of SOA Magazine, I provide a summary of the happenings at the recent 2nd International SOA Symposium, held in Rotterdam last October.

I was half-tempted to open the article with the phrase "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." That's because we were emerging from a difficult economic downturn, and, at the same time, many were questioning SOA's ability to deliver business value. But, at the same time, there were many examples, discussed at the conference, of companies that achieved some measures of agility and flexibility to cope with adverse conditions.

Some tidbits:

• Thomas Erl's keynote address, titled "Defining Next Generation SOA," described how the industry is shifting toward a new plateau defined by the convergence of established practices and principles together with service technology innovation, including Cloud-based platforms.
• Anne Thomas Manes, who set off one of the most intense SOA debates ever when she declared in blog post at the beginning of 2009 that "SOA" - at least as we knew it - was "dead," spelled out what needed to be done to realize the benefits of service orientation.
  "We should be service orienting everything we do," she contended. What's getting in the way is the feeling that an "SOA program" needs to be launched to get there.
• SOA was "resurrected" in a session, led by Erl and Manes, in which actors (in full costume and makeup as "good" and "evil" incarnations of SOA) and special effects were employed to convey a simple message: The confusion and ambiguity surrounding SOA had been identified as the "evil" SOA and that the concrete definition of SOA and service orientation principles and patterns represented the "good" SOA.
  
• Co-located with the 2nd International SOA Symposium, the 1st International Cloud Symposium addressed the ever-widening convergence between SOA and Cloud-based services in a number of sessions and panel discussions.

Overall, the mood at the conference was upbeat. As seen in the tone of the sessions and discussion through the Symposium, it was clear that SOA was no longer a far-off vision, but had become a working reality for organizations seeking greater agility and responsiveness in today's competitive environment. Service-oriented principles and practices were being actively applied directly to real-life business problems and opportunities.

The conference also produced a formal manifesto declaration for the entire SOA community, featured a dramatic battle of good versus evil, and showcased the top SOA and cloud experts from around the world. All of the presentation files from this event are published on the conference site and can be freely downloaded at www.soasymposium.com.