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I am struck by the difference between discussions around SOA and Web2.0 – don’t panic I am not going to get involved in the REST versus SOAP debate or the debate about which is more hyped or a vaguer term!

What has struck me is the way the big software players are talking up the concept of a SOA platform in a very traditional way: as a stack of vertically integrated software all of which is required to solve the SOA problem, and recently covered on ebizq.net here and here . Bizarrely RedBoss, the new boy in town which should surely be rooted in the new world rather than the old, is taking it even further back in time by suggesting an Operating System is also needed in the stack!

At the same time as all of this, the analyses of what have already happened on the Web and what is accelerating with Web2.0 shows that the very concept of a platform is changing. This is best summarized by Tim O’Reilly’s much referenced article on “What is Web2.0”. The point of relevance here is that the Web 2.0 battle is not between a platform and an application or even between competing but broadly similar platforms – it is between radically different platforms with radically different business models.

So why is this not happening in the enterprise? The old claim that integrating the stack removes the need to integrate multiple vendors’ products and hence reduces cost and risk must be much less true than it was. Open Source in particular has demonstrated that it is possible and relatively easy to stick together multiple products/projects.

Obviously there are many different business dynamics at play in the enterprise than across the consumer focused web. One dynamic is the need in the enterprise to limit the number of vendors (‘one throat to choke’) and incumbency is also important both from a skills and relationship point of view. However, this can’t justify the view that a single integrated stack is the right way to go, unless the stack is at least a good-enough solution. Furthermore, integration in particular is clearly not about tightly coupling homogeneous single-vendor supplied software: Its essence is spanning across platforms, applications and organizations.

The question is therefore will the changes coming from consumer-centric Web-world change the way the enterprise-centric SOA-world to the same extent?

We are already seeing the use of technologies related to Web2.0 (RSS, AJAX etc) growing in the enterprise. However, these are towards the edges of what SOA is attempting to do as they are about user interaction rather than system to system integration: This is important but not yet core.

What I do not believe we have yet seen is the appearance of a google equivalent (which could be an open source project) for SOA – a company which solves the problems in a radically different and much better way and hence dislodges the good enough solutions. Until that happens the big vendors will continue to push enterprise software the same way they have pushed it for 10 years and more.

Posted by rbradley in SOA Predictions • Web2.0 |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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