Tuesday, June 14, 2005
SOA as a magic pill... Whoever said it was going to be easy?
I am not sure if I had the 'confidence' or the 'plain guts' to say that 'key people' would experience career impacts due to their hindsight on SOA. That was a generic statement, based on the organizational implications that I see coming to light due to lack of vision in several areas in the 'Enterprise'.
But, I can now "agree" on a very specific statement by Jeff Schnieder.
CIO's Aren't Taking SOA Serious
The fact of the matter is... it is BIG. It has never been this big. This is one big opportunity after the "dot-com bubble burst" to make holistic enterprise dreams a reality.
As Jeff mentions, Most people are looking at a bunch of 50-100 trees as a forest. The forest is much larger, and at the same time it is part of an even bigger picture, that of a "Jungle".
One can apply the Hitch Hikers Guide analogy to this situation as well.
Bottom line. Don't look at SOA, as an easy answer to all existing problems. In actuality, it in involves additional pain in delivering something that must comply to a new set of rules and benchmarks to allow for extensibility in the SOA. This shall be a much more tasking effort than an ERP, Y2K and Web implementation.
This makes me think the following questions...
- Will enterprises be able to sustain themselves and their projects, until they are able to reach critical mass and realize some benefits?
- Will they drop the ball on these initiatives the same ways they have done so before due to lack of funds and the promised ROI that needs to come sooner than later?
- How can we make people, (not just the key members) aware of SOA and how does it relate to their perspectives, pain factors and resuting benefits. Training not just at the key levels but to really have an impact the ownership of the initiative must rest with every person in the organization that will touch it.
I shall leave some of my answers and thoughts pending for my next post so that I can digest them some more before I belt them out.
But, I can now "agree" on a very specific statement by Jeff Schnieder.
CIO's Aren't Taking SOA Serious
The fact of the matter is... it is BIG. It has never been this big. This is one big opportunity after the "dot-com bubble burst" to make holistic enterprise dreams a reality.
As Jeff mentions, Most people are looking at a bunch of 50-100 trees as a forest. The forest is much larger, and at the same time it is part of an even bigger picture, that of a "Jungle".
One can apply the Hitch Hikers Guide analogy to this situation as well.
Bottom line. Don't look at SOA, as an easy answer to all existing problems. In actuality, it in involves additional pain in delivering something that must comply to a new set of rules and benchmarks to allow for extensibility in the SOA. This shall be a much more tasking effort than an ERP, Y2K and Web implementation.
This makes me think the following questions...
- Will enterprises be able to sustain themselves and their projects, until they are able to reach critical mass and realize some benefits?
- Will they drop the ball on these initiatives the same ways they have done so before due to lack of funds and the promised ROI that needs to come sooner than later?
- How can we make people, (not just the key members) aware of SOA and how does it relate to their perspectives, pain factors and resuting benefits. Training not just at the key levels but to really have an impact the ownership of the initiative must rest with every person in the organization that will touch it.
I shall leave some of my answers and thoughts pending for my next post so that I can digest them some more before I belt them out.
