In my last posting, I put out a thought that SOA is the foundation to the success of Web 2.0 and SaaS. Let’s talk more about that.
SOA provides for the loose coupling of business functionality and access to this functionality over the wire. Actually the real value behind SOA is how Web 2.0 / SaaS services are simple, easy to “mash” ,ease to use and consume. The concept is that of Service Composition where composite applications are built using tens and hundreds of smallers services to deliver business value. This is well served by the technologies and products in the Web 2.0 and SaaS spaces.
Thus the fundamental principles behind SOA, combined with the innovations around Web 2.0 and SaaS offerings, lead to a SOA approach that targets the millions of internet consumers. Web 2.0 allows the thousands of internet services to be orchestrated together to form new services for the internet consumer.
In Enterprise SOA initiatives, or rather in an Enterprise, you end up needing a tighter wiring of the Services and typically have fewer of these Services, which then begs you to question the value of SOA in that environment. Additionaly E-SOA is typically behind the company’s firewall – and each Service has 1-5 consumers. This agains begs you to ask the question, do you really need a “Service” or some other form of integration between that data or business functions.
As someone said, SOA is dead in 2009. If you start agreeing with this line of reasoning, you will probably say something like “SOA will be re-born in 2009, 2010″.
