Two worlds light years away from each other: hard and soft SOA
This entry was posted on 9/4/2006 12:13 PM and is filed under Software.
In a recent article in InformationWeek, "
The Dark Side Of SOA", the author talks about a survey and statements of a couple of people considered to be relevant concerning service oriented architectures. He explains how and why it is hard to implement SOA, at least now, in its early stages.
There is a sentence that I would like to underline: "
SOA is about continuous change". This, of course, was said by a consultant, I would call this statement "The consultants' definition of SOA", or even shorter "Hard SOA". Naturally, this approach is all about massive custom development. No standard or productized components and processes, no controlled version upgrades. Just tons of body shopping. The dream of consultants. The nightmare of corporate IT managers.
The opposite approach: "The ERP vendors' definition of SOA" or "Soft SOA". Productized Business Process Platform with out-of-the-box and/or custom composite applications for vertical and company-specific processes. Yes, this means license and maintenance fees and upgrade headaches, but I've seen both approaches and believe me, the second one is much cheaper but still nice, bright, hype and shiny.
