Maybe I have been around too long but I am suddenly sensing that we are entering a familiar pattern – vendors and customers focused on an emerging technology approach without being prepared for the right action for success. Everywhere there is talk about Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). No self respecting CIO leaves the SOA out of their management presentations. Likewise, no software vendor on the planet can offer a new product implementation without a salute to SOA. This has the feeling of the days of the Client/Server movement. The justification for Client/Server and SOA are the same: Customers want a flexible infrastructure for computing that makes the process of change easier.
I recommend a little different way to look at the movement towards Service Oriented Architecture. In essence, SOA is the natural evolution of software – it is the industrialization of software. To achieve this goal requires IT management to stop focusing only on the plumbing but to look at the components of their business in a pragmatic, nonpolitical, and systematic fashion.
This will be a hard transition for many corporations. But with any major change in approach to computing there are complexities, risks, and directions that must be addressed.
