The revolution promised by service-oriented architectures (SOAs) is being bruited about with great abandon. But however broad the promise of new composite applications, point-and-click integration, and a closer fit between business requirements and technology, one of the biggest impacts the inevitable wholesale adoption of SOAs will have is on the office of the CIO. Heading the list of revolutionary changes will be the creation of what SAP board member Shai Agassi calls the "chief process innovation officer." But that's only the beginning of Agassi's SOA vision. Agassi sees a whole list of new job titles coming out of the SOA revolution, such as "repository keepers," "composers," and "disruptive innovators."
Agassi is definitely onto something. The marriage of IT and business in the process-driven world of service architectures and model-based development will require a lot more than just programmers, systems analysts, and software engineers. The good news is that there will still be a definitive need for a chief information officer. The bad news is that as SOAs proliferate, CIOs who remain merely CIOs will see their significance diminish significantly over time.
