Business Transformation in Action

JackBe's Deepak Alur took note of my recent description of SOA an an "app store for the enterprise," and provides his own perspective on the analogy.

For the record, JackBe -- along with Dion Hinchcliffe -- provided the inspiration for the thinking that SOA is, in many ways, the underpinning for the "app store."  JackBe, an enterprise mashup software vendor, recently productized the concept in the latest version of its enterprise mashup platform, Presto.

But are things really that simple? Peter Kretzman, for example, said that the analogy may be a bit off, as SOA represents the "plumbing" underneath services, not the "faucets." In addition, no matter how service-oriented applications get, they "still require planning, architecting, design, build, test, and deployment."

This is certainly the case, but as Deepak observes, when it comes to application development and deployment, "you don't always have the luxury of weeks or months anymore. Business often needs answers in hours and days. Apps are a perfect solution for releasing bite-sized features that work cohesively to provide a small set of integrated experience for the user."