Dateline: June 12, 2009 Tyson's Corner, Virginia
Yesterday David Linthicum led a discussion at the breakfast club sponsored by
SolutionsDevelopers. The topic: Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Essentially, SOA is a design of an information system that takes into account varying demands for types, kinds, and volumes of services. In the last ten years the term has become popularized and now is castigated by organizations like
Gartner. David’s background helps put this current debate in perspective.
He has written over thirteen books on a wide variety of technical subjects and is well known for his podcasts at InfoWorld. Moving from internet addresses to addressing the ball, in golf there is a popular adage, “drives are for show & putts are for dough.” One could summarize David Linthicum’s presentation with this, admittedly strained, parallel, “cloud computing is for show and SOA is for dough. “
Instead of reading all of Amazon’s 2,415 books on Service Oriented Architecture, David gave a thumbnail history of SOA. He surveyed its roots, gave guidance for successful deployment, and even commented that SOA was not the solution for all IT concerns. Rather than having a pitched battle over technology, David suggested that the first consideration should be defining the business problem and confirming a Return on Investment (ROI) before the project is begun. During the project, defining incremental successes will assist in completion of the project.
The amicable face of cloud computing can be viewed as web access for many differing services. Today even the president of the United States is talking about using social networking and the Web 2.0 to increase government services to citizens. Unfortunately one can’t take a complex system and use the magic “cloud” wand and it is instantly secure and scalable. It starts with using an architecture that will allow for cloud-based activities.
Architecture is easy; the challenge is dealing with humans. David would certainly agree with The CIO of the GSA, Casey Coleman. She was just quoted in The
Washington Post as saying, “building relationships with stakeholders is much more important than the technology.”
SOA must start with people providing the business drivers and the core business processes. In spite of being a well-known pundit, David Linthicum suggests one shouldn’t focus on advice from periodicals, his “managing by magazine.” SOA’s value is measured in decades, not quarters. One key take-away was that SOA is a process, not a magic elixir. Loosely coupled enterprise architecture can be defined as Software as a Service, SOA, or a wide variety of terms. When making enterprise-level decisions one must become acquainted with the terms of enterprise architecture in order to put into perspective varying methodologies.
