Leading consultant takes a swipe at Oracle's Big Bang approach

There can be no overnight wonders from software -- even from one of the world's largest software companies.

In a new blog post at her consultancy's site, Judith Hurwitz talks about the "Oracle Syndrome," which is equivalent to Big Bang SOA. "The reality is that Oracle is not about innovation," she said. "It is about leveraging a captive installed base. It is about stitching together packaged applications with business process connectors so that one package can send an piece of data to another application."

Despite what vendors may wish, some software hangs around forever, and major packages may take years to migrate. So, therefore, don't look to Fusion middleware to stitch it all together and deliver an integrated environment -- and, by extension, SOA -- anytime soon, Judith said. "Rather than a big bang common platform under all of Oracle’s packaged applications, [Fusion] is a slow methodical revamping of small components of Oracle’s applications. It will take decades before Oracle could claim to have a common infrastructure under its applications."

Judith then goes on to make this statement about software innovation, noting that integration is and will remain a work in progress:

"I think that this is the future of software. No big bangs. Incremental business focused innovation will be the rule — not the exception. Does this mean that there will be no unexpected innovations? Of course not. There will be innovations that come out of nowhere and transform the world of software. However, they will not be overnight wonders — the most important innovations take years even decades before they mature and change the world overnight."