Leapin' Linthicum!

Anyone who has seen Dave Linthicum in action at IT conferences knows this guy is one ball of fire. He entertains, cajoles, incites, and educates on the perils and possibilities of SOA and integration.

Dave is also my SOA blogging counterpart over at InfoWorld, and a seasoned CTO and CEO of technology startups.

Now Dave, who had merged his consulting firm with ZapThink only a few months back, has taken another leap of leadership in the SOA space, as CEO of StrikeIron.

I've talked about the StrikeIron value proposition quite a bit in this blogsite for the past few years. I also wrote about the company a couple of years back (in an analysis for Webservices.org) as an embodiment of the entrepreneurial vision of SOA, versus the more bureaucratic discussion that seems to surround SOA these days: governance, control, top-down, centralized management, etc.

StrikeIron's message has been that SOA, Web services and Web 2.0 make it realistic for companies of all sizes to rent and sell services and leverage data in a global, enterprise-to-enterprise context. StrikeIron represents the realization of the Global SOA.

That's why Dave now gets to occupy one of the more interesting perches in the industry -- at the convergence of the currents of SOA, Web 2.0, and the mashup economy.

My colleague Dana Gardner also ponders Dave's latest leap, noting Dave will still serve in an advisory capacity to ZapThink.

Congratulations, Dave!