Service technology -- from SOA to cloud to IT service management -- promises many "-ilities": greater agility, flexibility, and reusability. Joe McKendrick explores the challenges and opportunities with service orientation, and how to capitalize on these emerging computing philosophies.
Joe McKendrick is an author, consultant and speaker specializing in trends and developments shaping the technology industry.
Software and computing cyles are moving onparallel tracks toward a destination we call "service-oriented IT."We tend to refer to many service-focused, software advancements as "Web services," while many are now referring to on-demand, data processing services as "grid computing.
As Britton observes, Oracle's $10 billion absorption of PeopleSoft will mean more acceleration of integration efforts between various potential "killer apps" (sorry, Britton, couldn't resist) within the budding Web services and SOA space. The acquisition is also is proof of an immutable law of business: when two or more vendors begin to offer identical products or services, consolidation becomes inevitable.
PeopleSoft's agreement to be acquired by Oracle for $10.3 billion may add a bit more momentum to theservice-oriented business application arena.
In the late 1930s, economist Ronald Coase (later to win the Nobel prize) wrote an influential paper examining why firms tend to keep some activities in-house, yet rely on an open market of suppliers and partners for other things. Coase learned that "transaction costs" -- the costs associated with coordinating and collaborating with outside firms -- often were just too high.
Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems has been talking about the concept of the "big freaking Webtone switch" for years now. (Check out this 2001 interview.
Starwood Hotels-- which operates the Westin, Sheraton and W hotel brands -- is intent on leveraging the power and potential of service-oriented architecture. It is now in the midst of an architecturaltransition that will make datanow stored in its legacy mainframe reservationsystem accessible in dynamic, Web services applications.
There's lots of SOA going around SFO these days.With OracleWorld going on at San Francisco's Moscone Center, there has been a slew of announcements around Oracle's 10g family of products and from Oracle's reseller/partner network.
Analysts fear the door has been opened to potential litigation against smaller companies building Web services interfaces. Read about the best and worst-case scenarios here.
Can we just start talking like grown-ups? At this point in the evolution of the tech industry, it's really disheartening to hearWeb services and Service-Oriented Architecture spoken of as the "next killer app.
Well, they let them slip away. Thirty-nine patents, many of which describe Web services methods, were sold off to a "mystery" bidder at the federal bankruptcy court in San Francisco yesterday on December 6.