Service Oriented Architecture - SOA

Living in the northeastern US, we saw more (way more) than our fair share of snow this winter — though it provided great opportunities for cross-country skiing.

It’s amazing that with all the snow there has been, there is no such thing as two identical snowflakes. Every one has its own unique patterns.

Such appears to be the case with SOA. A few months back, JP Morgenthal, a friend of all of us here at ebizQ and a tireless proponent of SOA done right, had a revelation: that there is no such thing as a universal “service oriented architecture” that fits all occasions. Rather, for every 100 companies out there, there are 101 different variations on SOA.

In the process, JP, concludes, it appears SOA has become more of a concept or strategy than an actual architecture.

“Each organization may …organically formulate
their own approximation of SOA that meets the needs of their business
as functional components, or services.  Moreover, each business’
approach toward SOA will most likely look completely different than any
other business’ approach, their pain points will be different and their
approach toward measuring success will be different.”

Observing that SOA is “effectively the transition plan for the organization to maximize
its resources, applying a ‘once-and-only-once’ mantra toward
development efforts and align the technology imperatives with the
business goals and functions,” JP asks:

“Is SOA really architecture, or is it simply a strategy for business transformation?”

Is it more appropriate, then, to rebrand SOA as “Service Oriented Approach”?  Hmm.