It's been a busy week here at the ebizQ ecosphere with plenty of discussion back and forth on IT's latest promises and perils, especially when it comes to service orientation.
Peter Schooff opened a recent ebizQ readers' forum with the question: "Are Users Now Capable of Doing Their Own Front-End SOA Development?" Todd Biske says while there are plenty of savvy end-users capable of building lightweight, front-end apps, user-created appdev is not a major trend. "I don't think most data is available in a mashup-friendly location or format. Most IT departments I've seen don't allow direct access to databases by individual users."
Thomas Culpepper, on the other hand, sees this trend gaining steam, "with the right tools and the right attitude." He adds that he is "seeing an influx of, for lack of a better title, 'business architects' who understand the business and are technically savvy enough to actually "code" without even knowing they are doing it." SOA can help this process, he says.
Part and parcel to end-user appdev is end-user collaboration, which is one of the great promises of cloud and Web computing. Adobe Workspaces makes inroads into this space. However, there's work to be done, and Phil Wainewright invoked memories of the Beatles' final top-10 hit single (while still a group) when he described the path to collaboration as "a long and winding road."
SOAs form the foundation of private clouds, but some people consider private clouds to be "hogwash." Dave Linthicum takes this argument to task, noting that "the fact of the matter is that private clouds are a useful architecture patterns, and they are really an SOA that use some virtualization and multi-tenancy at the end of the day."
Jessica Mola spoke with with Ariba's Tim Minahan, who provided his view on how the current economy and "the New Normal" is changing the way companies operate, thoughts on collaboration, and what organizations should be doing now to prepare for what lies ahead.
James Korhonen shed light on IT governance practices, urging a "federal" approach that mixes the efficiency of centralized governance with the effectiveness of decentralized governance. This requires a good working relationship between IT and the business. "The federal model of IT governance requires relational capabilities as well -- to reach effective IT governance, two-way communication and a good collaboration relationship between business and IT are needed."