August 28th, 2007
Innovation-Infrastructure Design: SOA
Any discussion of the problems with business ecosystems leads directly into the durability of Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). In the late 1990s, high-priced consultants started to propose the concept of shared services. The pitch goes something like this; smart companies in the future will not need to invest in software applications. These companies will simply consume SaaS (software as a service). Service providers will spring up from the resulting business ecosystem to satisfy any relevant strategic concerns.
Unfortunately for SOA advocates, decision makers have to deal with 21st century realities. One of these realities is that SOA has become the latest way to sell mainframes and other enterprise level applications. Shared services aren’t industrial strength and the preoccupation with them may cost the United States its competitive standing in software development. Entrepreneurs from other countries develop the underlying innovation-infrastructure assets and Americans are left with the privilege of consuming their leftovers.
From the same ecosystem-based belief system that brought us global outsourcing and the subprime lending crisis, executives are assured that innovation-infrastructure designs based SOA are the wave of the future. It is like there is a global SOA conspiracy that is dedicated to destroying the software development capabilities of the United States. When asked about the job losses and lack of opportunity, technology incumbents pontificate about the benefits of consumerism.
SOA has the same problems as any ecosystem-based innovation-infrastructure design. There is no inherent failover capability and service providers are more preoccupied with resource allocation than ensuring business continuity. In short, SOA can be thought of as the software equivalent of a financial derivative. They look good on paper because you can’t see the underlying assets and when they fail, there is no way of knowing in advance what will collapse.
The IT Investment Architect®
Concepts: 21st-century, business-continuity, design, ecosystem, Innovation-Infrastructure, Invest in America, realities, SOA, technology-incumbent