Anne Thomas Manes has started the new year of with a bang by declaring: SOA is Dead; Long Live Services.
While I agree with many of the sentiments behind Anne’s declarations that “SOA is dead”, I disagree with her way forward: “long live services”.
It is services thinking, as conventionally understood, that led to the mess in which we find ourselves: fragmentation caused by entity-specific (service) interfaces. I’d say instead, “long live the web.” I’m shocked that Anne’s blog post does not even mention the web!
I agree when Anne says, “it requires redesign of the application portfolio. And it requires a massive shift in the way IT operates.” But the disruptive redesign required is to make IT more Web-like — both in the architecture of software and in the way the ITO operates.
The most “spectacular gains” we have are those of Google, Amazon, and even Salesforce. What they have in common is an embrace of the Web, including web architecture, web community, and web business models. To paraphrase Anne’s blog post:
“Web-orientation is a prerequisite for rapid integration of data and business processes; it enables situational development models, such as mashups; and it’s the foundational architecture for SaaS and cloud computing.”
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