Top 10 SOA posts for 2009
If there's any way to describe the year just past, it was a battle for the soul of service-oriented architecture. You had all kinds of interest groups -- cloud, business process management, Enterprise 2.0, not to mention the vendors -- debating the role SOA should play in their endeavors.
Indeed, the past year has been a contemptuous one for SOA proponents and critics alike. The economy was rocky, and many wondered if SOA programs would survive the budget axe. There were many arguments about the ROI of SOA efforts. At the same time, it was a year when many people started rolling up their sleeves to make it all work, and start delivering value to the business.
Here are some of the posts that got the most attention over the past year:
1) Goodbye, SOX? While not directly part of the SOA discourse, Sarbanes-Oxley caused organizations to take a hard look at the way information flowed across their enterprises -- and SOA offered a methodology to address this. Now, a pending US Supreme Court case challenges the constitutionality of oversight of the act. It is reported that Congress may also take other measures to weaken the act
2) 'SOA' dead as of January 1st, analyst says: The year 2009 began with a proclamation by respected analyst Anne Thomas Manes, who declared on January 5th that "SOA is Dead: Long Live Services." Of course, the preamble of her statement got all the attention, whereas the second part, "Long Live Services," was the meat of Anne's argument. The year ended on a more positive note, however, with the unveiling of the SOA Manifesto, a collective effort intended to finally define what it means to be service oriented. (Anne was one of the guiding forces behind the creation of the Manifesto, by the way.)
3) Ten examples of SOA at work, right now: This post, believe it or not, appeared back in 2006 -- but still has some great examples, including NASA, Harvard Medical School, and Owens & Minor.
4) The Oracle-buys-Sun thing - 'Snorkel' - what's the deal with that?: Perspectives on the impending Sun acquisition, and what it means to the SOA world.
5) Ten examples of SOA at work, circa 2008: Last year's shining example use stories, including Allstate Insurance, Lufthansa, Con-way, and CERN.
6) Survey: cloud interest grows triple-fold; cost may not be main factor: Cloud adoption not being driven by economic belt-tightening.
7) 10 data center paradoxes -- out of complexity comes simplicity: Centralization increases decentralization, recession drives green, complexity increases simplicity.
8) BPM and SOA need each other: This quote says it all: "BPM and SOA are natural allies, not enemies…. True, BPM people and SOA people are concerned about mostly different things, but they are hardly opposing armies facing off with guns blazing."
9) Why IT can't seem to deliver measurable productivity: Time for new ways to measure the impact?
10) Five reasons why people mistrust SOA: Approaching SOA as merely “another messaging technology for connecting applications" -- and other things that hold SOA back.