SOA 'not just for software anymore': here's why

If you want to test the true value of service oriented architecture, design an SOA-enabled process without technology, which can be inserted in later.

Ultimately, that's what SOA is supposed to be about -- as a philosophy, a way of doing business, regardless of whatever the underlying technology may be. The question is: can the business be persuaded to adopt a service-oriented approach?

Kara Harris, China Widener and Newton Wong say business is becoming service oriented, observing that SOA "is not just for software anymore." They say the same concept is starting to get applied to all measures of business processes, helping organizations "to gain efficiencies, decrease costs, and increase flexibility," they observe.

"SOA has grown to become part of something much larger, something that encompasses both technology and business. This new overarching concept is services thinking (ST), which is a framework for solving business problems by focusing on the capabilities of each part of the organization; cutting across business processes, organizational charts, and technology solutions. Similar to applications being comprised of multiple components, business processes can be comprised of multiple finer-grained services."

Deloitte has been talking about the Services Thinking concept for a couple of years now, and this is something to really ponder. Could it be that the work that's been going on in IT departments over the past decade is finally starting to resonate with the business at large?