Today's (non-XML) WTF or High stakes in the SOA sweeps

So here's Infoworld's daily nugget of wisdom, poised over the provocation: "Should you fire your enterprise architect in 2007? Take the test."

The largest and most disturbing issue ... is the fact that there seems to be a huge chasm between the traditional enterprise architecture crowd, and those looking at the value of SOA. Indeed, enterprise architecture, as a notion, has morphed from an approach for the betterment of corporate IT to a management practice, at least for some. Thus, the person that is needed to understand and implement the value of SOA is sometimes not the current enterprise architect in charge. -- David Linthicum.

So the SOA wars are heating up. More and more smart people are pointing out that the emperor has no clothes; but stakes is still crazy high. Some folks haven't yet made all their money from SOA. So how do the stakeholders respond? With cold-blooded threats.

"So your architect isn't all bought into SOA, eh? Well fire him, dammit."

And oh, isn't it delicious irony that this dude is claiming it's the experienced architects cautious on SOA who are establishing a pet management practice within IT. Oh, there's no way the SOA sellers could be guilty of that. Noooo. Never. Never. Never. Neeeever!

[Uche Ogbuji]

via Copia

1 response

Just got this.

If you read the entire post, you'll see that the issues transcend SOA. If you took my words as “us SOA or be fired” than perhaps I was not clear. SOA is a fine approach, but in many instances the issues are much more fundamental.

In many modern global 2000 companies, the enterprise architectures are badly broken and hinder the businesses ability to change. For instance, a recent survey by the Business Performance Management Institute found that only 11 percent of executives say they're able to keep up with business demand to change technology-enabled processes. 40 percent of which, according to the survey, are currently in need of IT attention. Worse, 36 percent report that their company's IT departments are having either "significant difficulties" (27 percent) or "can't keep up at all" (9 percent). This information is from CIO Magazine.

The reality is that IT has done a poor job of supporting the business when considering the amount of latency apparent when change needs to occur. CEOs pull their hair out when their IT group talks about years not months to add product lines, change markets, or merge with other companies. Indeed, in many companies, the IT shop is the single limiting factor for business success, and can kill the business if left to continue as-is.

Hope this clears things up. I did a new post about this as well.

— David Linthicum