I recently read a CIO Magazine article called, "SOA’s True Challenge—It Ain’t Technology." This is a good SOA article (it is surprising how few there are). I would be more specific than stating "SOA: It ain't technology" but more like "SOA: It ain't about products/vendors." I think this is what they mean. The article leans heavy on architecture which is right-on but designing SOA without knowledge of technology is like designing a skyscraper without knowledge of materials. I say this because I'm afraid those building SOA will downplay knowledge of technology, fail to bring in the right skills, and then build a very poor SOA architecture because "hey, it's all about the business right, we don't need those technology people."
That said, I think it does capture the need for bigger picture business alignment (i.e., the consumer design piece) but also gives some credence, although not enough in my opinion, to the transformation of select current systems functionality into leverage-able services (i.e., the provider design piece). These need to be done in parallel with the latter delivering value in the very short term. From all I've seen in the past 8 years of doing SOA and EAI, leaders rarely have the inclination/endurance to sit through a 12 to 18 month design phase before even starting development and implementation that won't deliver value for another six months or more. I run into this issue with my current SOA projects where people are saying, "We don't have time for this fantasy [SOA] that may deliver value who knows when, we need to solve problems today."
The article states "But it also introduces new challenges for CIOs—challenges that stretch IT's abilities in areas that have been chronically underdeveloped: process and architectural planning. Their staffs will also be stretched. In short, CIOs who expect that they can do SOA the same way they've always done technology implementations risk being blindsided."
You may already be tired of me harping on the importance of the bottom-up (i.e., provider side) aspect of SOA design and development. I hope not because I'm sure there is more to come. I'm worried that the industry is placing too much emphasis on the heavy top-down design effort. Over emphasizing it is a sure way to slow down SOA adoption and create a great deal of unnecessary pain. Organizational change is always been an inhibitor to new technology and it is no different for SOA. Don't get too caught up on top-down reengineering of business and/or IT or you risk the wrath of change management beast which has killed more IT efforts than bad technology and poor business alignment combined.
I'll say it again, start small and build momentum.
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