Driving SOA through a lousy economy

Dave Linthicum and Loraine Lawson have been having an interesting blogosphere discussion on the role of SOA in a down economy. Dave says lousy times will spur SOA; Loraine says SOA may see the budget axe.

In his own informal survey, Dave found that 75 percent of his readers feel that SOA initiatives would increase during an economic slowdown, versus 25 percent who foresaw a pulling back on SOA projects. Implemented properly, SOA provides a means to bring agility to IT.

Loraine Lawson strikes a somewhat less optimistic tone, noting that companies have had enough trouble figuring out where the ROI may be in SOA, so therefore would be less inclined to support it when the budget ax comes out. As Loraine puts it: "many IT divisions still aren’t really sure how to implement SOA. Call me crazy, but I can’t imagine this is the time your CIO will sign off on SOA by trial and error. You could, of course, hire a consultant, which would be advisable, but SOA consultants aren’t cheap. And neither is supporting technology."

In a follow-up post, Dave agreed with Loraine on this point, but says the reason companies are fumbling their way through SOA is because they don't have enough individuals that can bridge the divide between business and technology.

Let me add another point to the discussion.

The force that will propel SOA forward as a catalyst for streamlining and efficiency -- especially if things tighten up -- may come from another direction: the convergence of SOA and Enterprise 2.0. Business users will be looking for applications and functionality they can quickly access and leverage. They are seeing this adaptability and flexibility in mashups -- the key composite applications that will be the core of SOA. REST-based services are lighter and faster to build.

Companies may have an alternative to developing apps from scratch or buying packaged applications -- they could reach across the firewall for SOA-based services from the cloud. SOA by itself may be a tough sell, but the path is clear for Enterprise 2.0.