What the business doesn't know about SOA won't hurt it

Does SOA matter?  To IT and enterprise architects, yes, of course it does, big time.

To the business, well... maybe not so much.

Jeff Schneider just riffed on my recent post in which I quote Jean-Jacques Dubray stating that many SOA concerns are "pure IT problems," and aren't necessarily meant to be exposed to the business.

Of course, the mantra for some time has been to bring SOA to the business as much as possible. I wondered if this being an era of online collaborative organizations, in which we rely on technology for every aspect of our business, are there really any “pure IT” problems?

Jeff says yes, there are problems that remain, and should remain, pure IT problems.

"Sure, I.T. problems, like HR or garbage collection, may bubble their way up to become a business problem, but at the end of the day I.T. has to figure out how to do their job and go do it. When the janitor picks up the trash in my office they do it in the most efficient way they know how. They don't ask 'the business' if they should do it efficiently - they just do it. When did I.T. become such wussies?"

Jeff added there are things the business needs to take a leadership role in -- such as inventory visibility, customer loyalty, and new product introductions.

There's an Enterprise 2.0 angle here as well -- in situations where the business does seem more engaged with SOA, it's usually because SOA proponents are interacting with the business with solutions involving "visual deliverables" such as Rich Composite Applications -- mashups and other edge-of-the-enterprise development capabilities. "They engage with the business about business problems and then use mashups and other techniques to quickly demo/prototype/build solutions that their users can relate to."

In other words, offer up solutions that address business problems, but don't offer up "SOA" as a solution in and of itself. SOA is an architecture that will lay the groundwork for many solutions, but you aren't going to see many businesspeople begging for "SOA" anytime soon.