December 4th, 2008
Market player machinations may warp, but not 'kill', SOA
Dave Linthicum recently offered a somewhat dour assessment of the SOA market, determining that there at least five things killing SOA as we know it these days:
- Venture capitalists (by micromanaging SOA vendors);
- Sarbanes-Oxley (by scaring away SOA vendors);
- Big consulting firms (by mismanaging SOA projects);
- SOA skill shortages; and
- Vendors that still promote “SOA in a box.”
I agree that these are issues that are warping the market for SOA-enabling offerings (except Sarbanes-Oxley, which potentially boosts demand for SOA).
Let me add that there is the obstacle of IT departments themselves, not because they disagree with the SOA concept, but that they are simply overstretched and underbudgeted to take on an effort as transformative as SOA. As Forbes’ Dan Woods warned a few weeks back, perhaps there’s even a risk of SOA shifting a lot of the work of packaged software vendors back to IT departments.
And, there is a lot of movement within SOA toward the Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0/cloud sphere of influence. It seems a lot of vendors with SOA offerings also talk a lot about Web 2.0 and cloud approaches (REST, mashups, etc.) as well. It could also be argued that the end result of Web 2.0/cloud initiatives is a form of service oriented architecture.
But I don’t know to what extent external players could line up to “kill” SOA at this point, since SOA itself is a philosophy or methodology that shapes the way enterprises address problems through IT. You can kill the associated technologies and products, but not the ideas and practices. It would be like having market players “killing” business process management, data integration, re-engineering, or zero-based budgeting. Vendors and market players simply reflect — and when necessary, bend, twist, exploit, and adapt to — the reality taking place within organizations.
Joe McKendrick is an author and consultant with deep knowledge and insights regarding trends and developments in the technology industry. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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