Services are the building blocks of SOA, and like building blocks of a house or a building, the quality will define the value of the finished product. In this case, the SOA itself. Thus, spending...

Clearly, SOA and SaaS are converging. The movement and direction are clear. Take, for instance, the rapid rise of SaaS.  Based upon current trends, IDC predicts a compound growth rate of 20% per annum for SaaS, set against the overall software market, which is only growing at around 6% per annum.  This leaves IDC in no doubt that there is a fundamental shift toward SaaS as a delivery mechanism, and its use within the notion of Web 2.0, and the convergence of SOA, Web 2.0, and SaaS.

What’s causing this shift?  There are 5 primary drivers:

1. Purchasers believe that the current cost of traditional enterprise software is disproportionate to the value that it creates.

2. In these budget-conscious times, there is intense pressure to reduce the cost of acquisition and maintenance of software solutions (the on-going support and maintenance of solutions can often be four times the original capital cost).

3. Organizations are striving to reduce risk, and want a far more tangible relationship between software’s benefit and its cost.

4. The drive for reduced risk demands a much greater predictability of the running costs of the organization’s software solutions. 

5. The value of solutions is no longer determined by the functionality available (in fact, most organizations are only using a small subset of the functions available in their software products), but by the feelings and experience of the users in the way that they use and interact with the solution.

At the same, time enterprises are turning to SOAs to provide a platform for the use of SaaS-delivered services, and links to the emerging Web, even through the ad-hoc notion of mash-ups.  The movement toward SOA is well documented, like SaaS, and is being driven faster by the emerging service-oriented resources on the Web.

“According to Evans Data Corp's latest Web Services Development Survey, this year the percentage of functioning Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) has almost doubled. Web Services are now also experiencing more comprehensive implementation with 30% of respondents using more than 20 services in the next year, a 58% increase from today.”

Evans Data Corp.

Moreover, there is a movement to leverage these pervasive services within the enterprise, through mash-ups, providing on-demand access to business processes and information, as needed, and at bargain rates.

“Mash-ups portend big changes for software companies, Web sites, and everyone online. No longer just a collection of pages, the Web is morphing into a sort of global operating system …People are seizing far more control of what they do online. In the process, those efforts are putting skin on the bones of Web services, the long-delayed promise of software and services that can be tapped on demand.”

Business Week

What's important to remember is that there is a huge resource being created on the Web. Take advantage of this resource, or it will devastate your enterprise, much like those who ignored the rise of the Web in the early 90s soon found themselves playing catch-up. This is a similar mega-trend, and the time is now to prepare your business to fit into this new paradigm, which is actually much more complex, but provides 10 times the ROI of the tradition Web.

Will you be Ready?

Truth be told, nobody can be completely ready for something like this.  Indeed, larger more cumbersome organizations won’t be able to change until it’s just too painful not to.  Such was the case with the rise of the first generation Web in the early 90s…most were pushing back on it, not reacting to its potential.  That is, until their customers did, and many organizations today are still behind and suffering for it.

We are moving into a world where the lines are blurring, where our enterprise systems end, and the Internet begins.  In just a few years you could find yourself driving user interfaces, services, and information for critical business systems from thousands of sources, most not within the firewall, using your internal infrastructure as he final controller and blinder to align the outside services with the correct business processes.

This will allow you to select best-of-breed, on-demand, and at a fraction of the cost of internal systems development and packaged appliances. The relative value of computing will skyrocket, and so will yours, if you’re ready.

David S. Linthicum (Dave) is a managing partner with Zapthink, LLC a consulting and advisory organization dedicated to excellence in SOA planning, implementation, training, mentoring, and strategy. Dave is an internationally known application integration and SOA expert. In his career Dave has assisted in the formation of many of the ideas behind modern distributed computing including Enterprise Application Integration, B2B Application Integration, and SOA, approaches and technologies in wide use today. Dave keynotes at most major SOA and Enterprise Architecture conferences, maintains one of the most read SOA blogs, is the host of the weekly SOA Report Podcast, and is the author of 10 books, 3 on integration and SOA topics. You can reach Dave at david@zapthink.com.

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