2008 CIO Wishlists — SOA or Web 2.0?

by Matthew Hodgson

May 29, 2008 at 2:14 am · Filed under Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0

A recent Rust Report details the wishlists of CIOs, with service-oriented architecture, not Enterprise 2.0 toys like wikis and blogs, dominating the shopping lists [1]. This focus is seen as an important enabler for improving internal business and technology processes, business reporting and information management, infrastructure, and communicating with partners, suppliers and customers. But does this focus mean Web 2.0 is loosing the game?

Some, like John Hagel, might suggest that there’s a cultural divide between SOA and Web 2.0, that may be at work.

“The evangelists for SOA tend to dismiss Web 2.0 technologies as light-weight ‘toys’ not suitable for the ‘real’ work of enterprises. The champions of Web 2.0 technologies, on the other hand, make fun of the ‘bloated’ standards and architectural drawings generated by enterprise architects, skeptically asking whether SOAs will ever do real work.”

I think Dion Hinchcliffe’s article on mashups, though, puts the CIO wishlist into perspective:

“the continued proliferation of high quality Web parts and open APIs, especially in the last couple of years, has offered compelling sourcing options for enterprise mashups is the making the expanding Global SOA compelling as local IT resources for building and improving business solutions.”

Hinchcliffe’s diagram suggests a world in which the SOA serves to support the interaction of components for a variety of users and purposes, of which social computing tools play a specific role — visualisation of deep-content from disparate systems, repurposing data, and knowledge entry points for further repurposing.

I guess you can have your cake and eat it too!M

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1. Rust e-Research (2008). The Rust Report, March 2.

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1 Comment »

I’ve seen that cultural divide between SOA and Enterprise 2.0 firsthand. Its not too surprising and has little to do with the technologies itself. It goes back to control and how an IT department perceives its role. We’ve all grown up in worlds where the IT department saw its role as the protector - keeping the technology systems safe from malicious hacking or careless end users. Enterprise 2.0 flies in the face of that thinking and SOA with its trendiness is a way to fight it.

The irony is that Enterprise 2.0 and SOA aren’t at two ends of the spectrum. They often go hand in hand.

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