People of a non-technical bent sometimes ask me what SOA is about. Not an easy question to answer to such an audience, particularly as no-one seems to be able to agree on a definition of the same. So here is a wee challenge to those of you who have to deal with senior non-IT, non-technical people:
Imagine you are a consultant to a sizeable corporation and you are having a chat over lunch (we will assume it is a fairly solid lunch) with a such a person, someone whose commercial position and power demand respect. She/he puts the following questions: (1) What is this SOA thing and how is it going to help the business - it seems to cost money and is disruptive. How can IT justify it to the likes of me? (2)We have invested a lot of money in TLA systems: ERP, CRM, CMS etc. I undertand that these are operationally vital to the business. However they are big applications from big vendors which have cost us a fortune. One of of my IT people said they are siloes, even though we have no grass to ferment. The same IT person said we have to reduce these (expensive) applications to services and then our business will be in a position to take advantage of new situations and opportunities - i.e. we will be able to cobble together new systems rapidly. Is this possible? The IT person could not explain in plain English how this worked or indeed if it were possible with software not designed for this. You might think the above is trivial/irrelevant, but just imagine the confusion sowed in the non-technical senior corporate mind by SOA, SaaS, Clouds, Grids etc. Gervas
