My colleague Dave Linthicum picked up on a new proclamation out of Burton Group, signifying that the concept of service oriented architecture is rising from the ashes. It was Anne Thomas Manes of Burton Group that issued the proclamation at the beginning of 2009 that "SOA is Dead; Long Live Services."
It's not that SOA ever really "died." Dave observes (and I agree) that many people simply looked at the preamble headline of Anne's post ("SOA is Dead: Long Live Services"), and didn't look deeper into the essence of what she was trying to say. That is, service orientation should be part of everything we do, but don't get hung up trying to build an "SOA program." Dave also chides the "junk technology being hyped as 'SOA'" -- at least $2 billion worth of hype -- which didn't do much to service-orient anything. Focus on SOA fundamentals, and you won't go wrong with enterprise architecture or cloud computing, he says.
Burton Group VP Chris Howard, as quoted by Network World's Maxwell Cooter, says there has indeed been a growing business focus to SOA efforts -- and the rise of cloud computing has also injected new life into SOA efforts. As we've said here at this blogsite, effective cloud computing requires SOA underneath. (Howard's report is titled The Lazarus Effect: SOA returns, but you need to be a Burton client to access it.)
Echoing what Dave has been saying all along, "the emergence of cloud computing is set to lead to a new boost for SOA," Howard says. 'To achieve the goals of a hybrid data center with processes spanning the internal/external boundary, service orientation is a prerequisite.'"
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