I'm not too keen on "service-orient the organization". Like other disruptive technology, SOA allows users who were not able to create enterprise architecture to gradually create one. I don't think there isn't too much difference between a hole dug by a hydraulic excavator compared to a cable-operated excavator. There isn't too much difference now between steel from large steel mills compared to mini steel mills. I think it's the enablement that the key. IMHO, an organization with a strong leader and with enough budget, time, and talent will be able to achieve success and attain flexibility without SOA.
IMHO, SOA is for the others who don't have a strong leader to quickly form consensus, don't have enough budget, time, and gather all the necessary talents. SOA when properly applied allows there organizations to better use external resources to obtain the goal. As an example, with the spread of the Internet, there are now many sites offering comparison of different services. These sites not only review the product itself but allows users to write review on the services including ease of payment, delivery and shipping, and claim handling. It it no longer a matter of being able to ship a product but to be able continuously satisfy the users to make them come back again by always being able to provide the best service available anywhere. This necessitate us to better cooperate with external entities because an organization or a person can not do everything alone. While some sees open source as just making program source available, the success of an open source project hinges on building a user/developer community. Allowing others to see the source codes is just one of the ways to attract people to form a virtual organization which is more able to offer higher level services to better compete. Just making the source code available is not enough, there must be a process to allow others to join and to contribute to offer new services and to offer higher quality services in a shorter period of time and with lower cost. Open source is one example of cooperation between external entities. Organizations and people can benefit by cooperating with each other without making something public. Payment is an example where cooperation with an external entities often offers better service. Some stores used to have their own credit cards, but this gave way to more generalized credit cards. A service such as Paypal further offers more options to customers. An organization would be able to provide better services by concentrating on providing their core business service and by combining it with currently unforeseen external supporting services. SOA is an enabling technology to make formation of such cooperative service much easier. SOA, however, is just an enabling technology allowing organizations who would not have started an initiative because of high cost, long time frame, and high risk. There is still a need to better cooperation with external entities based on a business strategy, but organizations will be able to realize the goal through better alignment of business strategy and IT. With the tight economy and with global competition getter fiercer, the question is whether if we need SOA or not but should be more of how we can strategically apply SOA to offer better services to our users to remain competitive. It seems like to some organizations this question maybe too late, but can you say that your organization is rated as offering the best service in different categories globally? If not, maybe SOA can help. :-) H.Ozawa --- In [email protected], "Udi Dahan" <thesoftwaresimpl...@...> wrote: > > So if there is clarity on the need to service-orient the organization, can > we describe at an organizational level what the key differences are between > one that is SO and one that isn't? > > > > I would suggest that such a description take into account the geographical > perspective as well - for example, the fact that there is a billing > department at each location, can we say that they all belong to the same > billing service? > > > > Steve, would you like to bring the value networks stuff to play here? > > > > Best regards, > > > > -- Udi Dahan > > > > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of > htshozawa > Sent: Saturday, June 06, 2009 11:06 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: [service-orientated-architecture] Re: Anne again on SOA's Mortality > > > > > > > > > --- In [email protected] > <mailto:service-orientated-architecture%40yahoogroups.com> , "Udi Dahan" > <thesoftwaresimplist@> wrote: > > > > Hitoshi, > > > > > > > > I wasn't being prescriptive on how we service-orient the organization > > (bottom-up, top-down, middle-out, whatever), that's a different > discussion. > > > > I just wanted to see if we could get clarity on the need. > > > Well, I think most of us on this list don't doubt the necesssary of SO. It's > just the extent (whether SOA or just SO) and how we go about it. > > H.Ozawa >
