Vendors promote an oxymoron -- 'SOA suites'

"Jumbo shrimp" and "government organization" are classic examples of oxymorons, but is the idea of an "SOA suite" also just as much a contradiction of terms? After all, SOA is not supposed to be about suites, bundles, integration packages, or anything else that smacks of vendor lock-in.

I had the opportunity to join one of Dana Gardner's latest podcasts, in which Dana, Tony Baer, Steve Garone, Jim Kobelius, Niel Macehiter and I hashed out what it means to offer a suite of products that are supposed to be the antithesis of suite-wrapping. (A link to the podcast is here.)

"The big guys -- SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, webMethods, lots of software vendors -- are saying, 'Hey, we provide a bigger, badder SOA suite than the next guy,'" Jim Kobelius pointed out. "That raises an alarm bell in my mind, or it’s an anomaly or oxymoron, because when you think of SOA, you think of loose coupling and virtualization of application functionality across a heterogeneous environment. Isn’t this notion of a SOA suite from a single vendor getting us back into the monolithic days of yore?"

Dana pointed out that its no surprise that vendors are moving in the direction of offering suites. "Pragmatically, these vendors are also looking at their future and they’re saying, 'We have an installed base. We have certain shops where we’re predominant. We want to be able to give them a clear path as to how to attain SOA values from their investment in our legacy. Therefore, we need to follow through with add-ons that smack of a integrated-stack approach.' So, it is almost incumbent on vendors to try to produce this 'whole greater than the sum of the parts' -- if not to build out more SOA business, then just to hold on to their previous business."

Steve Garone said that he doesn't like the word "suite" in the context of SOA, as "it reeks more of marketing than functionality." Nevertheless, he said, he senses that, "despite the fact that everybody wants an open environment where they can pick and choose and not be tied to one vendor, what overrides all this is a desire to get things done quickly, efficiently. They want a way in which they don’t have to be concerned about integrating a lot of products and what that entails, and having potentially an unreliable environment. What that points to is working toward one vendor. End users will do that even in the short term by choosing someone that they know they can grow with in the future."

Neil Macehiter agreed that "that organizations increasingly are looking to rationalize their supply strategy. So, they’re increasingly looking to deal with a smaller number of vendors and suppliers, which is, in part, driving the move toward larger vendors attempting to offer a suite or portfolio of product capabilities that can help organizations manage the lifecycle of an SOA initiative."

However, Neil says that the challenge is for these vendors to start extending their suite-based offerings beyond development and integration, and into the runtime realm. "There is a tendency, certainly among the larger vendors, to focus on SOA from a development and integration proposition, rather than thinking more broadly about the capabilities you need to support service-oriented initiatives throughout the lifecycle -- into things like security and identity, which have to be incorporated into an overall SOA offering. Management and monitoring, usage management, audit logging are in the broad range of capabilities that you need."

Can one single vendor offer such a range of capabilities to support an SOA initiative? That's the question, Neil says.