Next Generation SOA

Yesterday, while waiting for a plane I managed to catch the audio portion of Dion Hinchcliffe's Webinar on "The Future of SOA: How Web-Oriented Architecture Makes SOA Work." This was a content packed Webinar. Dion made a couple of really compelling points: 

• Enterprise Architecture can't keep up with the demand for new applications.
• SOA takes too long

Enterprises need something more flexible to service the long tail of enterprise application demand. This is exactly where products like JackBe's Presto come in to play. We are moving to a world where disposable solutions are developed from diverse web parts, mashed together using drag and drop interfaces by end users or semi-technical staff.

Another reason why enterprises need mashup platforms as a supplement to their SOA toolset is that in many traditional industries many of the vendors do not really understand Web Services and SOA. This means that re-purposing partner data can't always be done using web services and SOA constructs. Instead mashup tools that allow web clipping, screen scraping or html/xml page consumption need to be utilized to harness and re-purpose partner data.

This approach leaves the enterprise Architects to focus on the mission critical, high volume interfaces that will underpin the data and services that are critical to an enterprise's success.

The Underwhelming Success of SOA

Sitting at the Gartner Conference I read the ZDNet article on "The best way to sell SOA? Try Web 2.0 techniques."

My comment on that post is reproduced below.

SOA and Web 2.0 - Convergence of the Enterprise Mashup

SOA has been an underwhelming success for many organizations, as the rough numbers demonstrate in my blog post on Portals and Mashups (http://ekive.blogspot.com/2008/03/portals-and-mashups-putting-powr-of-soa.html) from the Gartner Portals and Collaboration Conference. Web 2.0 in the shape of the Enterprise Mashup tool has the potential to transform the success of SOA by allowing end users and technical analysts in the enterprise to self-serve their needs themselves by creating lightweight composite applications that amalgamate disparate information feeds to create new value added information streams. We may need heavyweight back-end services that are at the heart of many SOA initiatives but the increasing trend towards disposable applications says there is a valuable role for Enterprise Mashups that can be created quickly and easily and then jettisoned when no longer necessary.

Portals and Mashups - Putting the Powr of SOA in our hands

Ray Valdes presented a session on Portals and Mashups at the Gartner conference in Baltimore.

Portals bring the personalization in the presentation of information. Mashups enable information feeds to be filtered and adapted to meet emerging needs.

Heavyweight Portal Deployments bring complexity and this leads to an "Agility Gap." If we are to create agile organizations we need the ability to adapt to business needs quickly.

Portal technology is a massively layered solution requiring extensive skills to support and leverage. However, portals are still an essential tool to enable personalization, manage access and control the delivery of information.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) enables composite applications but these are typically heavyweight designs using complex, over-engineered protocols. 

 

Web 2.0 Mashups are lightweight and often use simpler technologies, such as REST. The emerging Enterprise Mashup market, led by tools such as JackBe's Presto offer an opportunity to combine the best of SOA and Web 2.0 and deliver the results via the portal infrastructure.

The challenge is to enable mashups without unleashing anarchy. IT organizations need to apply some governance around the use of SOA to ensure consistent use of feeds that implement codified business processes.

Interestingly in this large audience over 50% are using portals and SOA. More interestingly only about 10% of those feel their SOA initiative has been a success. The usual situation is a long deployment cycle, complex environment and little benefit to be demonstrated until well in to the deployment phase - typically 2 years or more after initiating the project.

Services are autonomous, connected, contracted (typically via WSDL's), loosely coupled, independent, discoverable (via a registry such as Systinet) and built on standards.

Portals bring application modules (portlets), user and system administration, personalization, search, access control and identity management all built on an Application Integration Interface. Think of it this way. Information is delivered through a Portal, Not by a Portal.

The next evolution of portals will be to expose the portal sub-systems as services themselves. In our quest for reusability this is a good thing.

The objective of a portal should be to deliver strategic services at tactical speeds. The basic infrastructure such as access management is delivered by the portal framework.

The next evolution in the use of portals on the Internet needs to address Distributed Identity and Shared Metadata.

Web 2.0 is driving the agenda in SOA with moves in to the Open cloud, lightweight, AJAX enabled, loosely coupled and even embracing community development. 

Enterprises have had Mashups in the Enterprise for many years. It is not a new requirement. It is just that the capability was delivered using Microsoft Excel and manual cut-and-paste. Mashups provide a dramatically enhanced capability with automatic updating and the ability to merge and filter information much more easily and then deliver it wherever the user needs it.

Examples of Web 2.0 mashups included Housing Maps and Tripit. Facebook, while a social network has delivered an application platform and now has the ability to deliver applications anywhere.

A couple of great quotes:

"Organization with warped lines of communication can build systems that are fragile and don't interoperate."

"dysfunctional organizations can get stuck in constant battles with design defects, bugs and performance issues."

As we have learned with the wisdom of crowds the social architecture of the system can be as important as the technical architecture.

What did I take away from Ray's session? Portals are a delivery service. Enterprise Mashups that leverage Web 2.0 approaches and enable self-service development are a critical component in the solutions armoury if we want to build and enable an agile enterprise.