With all the debate in the Blogosphere about WOA (like Tony Baer’s post), it’s important to answer two questions: Why are we doing SOA and How far does SOA go?

Why are we doing SOA?

I have been looking at a lot of SOA projects worldwide, and I have come to the conclusion that there is a very specific disease of Enterprise IT that SOA cures. It cures chronic ESSD, or Enterprise Software Stupidity Disease.

Diagnosing Enterprise Software Stupidity

Patient is a decades-old multi-business unit enterprise. Patient medical history includes chronic use of project-funded IT. Blood tests indicate high cholesterol and athlerosclerotic vascular system including brittle point-to-point integration and tightly coupled IT systems. Patient was recently admitted for a myocardial infarction which brought down mission critical systems and was put on a Software as a Service bypass. Business users are experiencing abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting. IT projects appear to be constipated, possibly due to a bowel obstruction. Patent is currently on WOA to reduce fever and swelling and improve short term business results.

Patient has a 15 year history of “waxy buildup” of complexity in IT that comes from layers upon layers of historical computing infrastructure and silos within silos of politically generated redundancies as well as a mish-mash of architectural styles and heterogenaety. Prognosis is that the patient requires emergency medical intervention and will be in and out of hospital care for the rest of of their lives unless put on an Architectural treatment program with regular Governance.

The Cure

SOA can certainly help with this problem, but without certain kinds of awareness, you wont get too far. Firstly it’s important to understand why you’re here in the first place. Silos dont go away, and neither to legacy systems. Because of this, you need deliberate mechanisms for dealing with both of these complexity elements.