Schrödinger's SOA
I've spent a couple of days wavering over whether to jump into an ongoing blogosphere debate over the "Death of SOA". For those who haven't yet read any of the debate online, here's the catalyst:
SOA is Dead; Long Live Services - a fictional obituary of SOA by Anne Thomas Manes of the Burton Group. On one hand I wanted to avoid adding another voice to a growing crescendo of opinion and counter-opinion and the risk of not really shedding any extra light: but on the other hand I thought that some people might expect MWD to have something to say! Particularly given past blog posts like
SOA 2.0? Stop the madness,
Little SOA vs Big SOA,
More big vs small thinking: SOA vs BPM,
The pointless search for SOA ROI, and
On SOA governance: for SOA, read CPOA?.
In the end, I couldn't help myself. Call it New Year exuberance. So what's our take? Is SOA
dead or alive? Should anyone care?
I think there are a couple of key points to consider. First, what's wrong with SOA today? And second, what should we do about it? I agree with Anne on the first; but I think I really disagree on the second.
When I look at Anne's post in detail I believe she's making 4 basic points:
- The majority of SOA projects have failed to deliver what they promised.
- Business people are disillusioned with SOA.
- "SOA projects" will be killed by today's difficult economic conditions.
- Despite all this, the requirement for SOA is greater than ever.
I'll happily back two of those points up - the first (
UPDATE: to a degree - I have anecdotal evidence that suggests many organisations struggle with SOA, but that's not quite the same)and the fourth. There's one section towards the end of Anne's post I'm particularly in agreement with:
SOA is not simply a matter of deploying new technology and building service interfaces to existing applications...it requires a massive shift in the way IT operates. ... The latest shiny new technology will not make things better. Incremental integration projects will not lead to significantly reduced costs and increased agility. If you want spectacular gains, then you need to make a spectacular commitment to change.
This is pretty much what we've been saying about SOA for some time (see
Little SOA vs Big SOA from April 2007). In short: SOA won't succeed if you take an overly technical, product-based view of it (and indeed we're far from alone in this -
ZapThink bangs this drum a lot, too, for example).
So we agree that not all is well in the State of SOA: but where I diverge with Anne's post is in the prognosis for SOA and the treatment for the illness.
Anne's prognosis/suggested treatment is that SOA (or at least the term) is (or will soon be) dead. Her view appears to be that because its death is inevitable, we should accept it and move on - stopping talking about SOA and starting talking about other things instead. This appears to be bound up with her observations that "business people are disillusioned with SOA" and "SOA projects will be killed by the economic downturn".
Before I move on - I don't know about you, but I think that if any IT group has been trying to sell SOA directly to business people, they deserve everything they get. Regardless of economic conditions. No, no, no! You don't sell methodologies and architectural patterns: you sell outcomes. Argh! And here's a hint: if you work for an IT group that used to try to sell SOA to business people, and is thinking about now trying to sell "mashups", "cloud computing", or similar things - don't bother, you'll get the same result. Sell the outcome and the benefits, not the mechanism or the technology. Double Argh!
There's another risk with changing the way we speak about what
Miko Matsumura jokingly now calls
"The Artist Formerly Known as SOA": by doing so, we continue to spread the perception that the IT industry is a fashion industry unable to kick its habit of (re)inventing terms to reinvigorate markets when earlier promises go unfulfilled. Whether she knew it or not when she wrote the post, by referring to a change in terminology (away from SOA and towards "services", "mashups", "cloud computing", etc) as an active and influential commentator, Anne is contributing to the fall from grace of the term.
Well, as I said
here when I railed against SOA 2.0,
I sincerely believe that analysts should be good stewards of the influence they have - educating, clarifying, abstracting, comparing, acting independently, being measured, etc. It's about filtering out hype and trying to provide practical, independent advice and insight.
Just because SOA is difficult to do, we shouldn't start calling it something else in the hope that we can start over without anyone noticing. And it's no surprise that SOA is tough to sell to business people - I don't believe that was ever up for debate, and it shouldn't be seen as any kind of broader indicator.
Let's acknowledge that we all have more work and education to do - but let's not
jump the shark on this. "SOA is Dead" is a headline that no-one needs.
Labels: architecture, hype, SOA
