Selling SOA Goes Beyond Software
Major players discuss implementation strategies more than products
By Geoff Koch
November 15, 2006 —
(Page 1 of 3)
The days are long gone when service-oriented architecture, or SOA, was a topic discussed strictly among geeks.
Recently IBM posted three short animated spots on YouTube describing services as Lego-like building blocks, musical notes and mix-and-match clothing. But the YouTube community wasn’t necessarily smitten by the corporate market-speak.
“I know one thing for sure—[SOA is] tougher than building a house with Legos,” commented one user with a handle of “thewwump.”
If anything is for sure, it’s that momentum may be building for SOA to move permanently beyond IT into the broader business landscape and lexicon. Yet despite the prodigious output of marketing departments, it’s still difficult to discern who has the winning SOA strategies at established vendors such as BEA Systems, IBM, Iona Technologies and Microsoft.
“This is like the early stage of the Tour de France, with lots of vendors bunched up at the beginning of the race,” said Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst at ZapThink, a consulting firm focusing on SOA. “SOA is in the same category as total quality management, or TQM, Six Sigma and ISO 9000—all of which took several years to gain widespread acceptance in the business community.”
On Oct. 3, IBM made a wide-ranging announcement of four new and 23 enhanced software products, including a new release of WebSphere Business Modeler and new software called WebSphere Registry and Repository related to SOA governance.
However, Sandy Carter, IBM vice president of WebSphere and SOA, certainly seems content with the SOA-isn’t-really-about-software message.
“Yes, we can talk about the WebSphere ESB [enterprise service bus],” said Carter, “but I think the most significant recent announcement has not been about a product or an offering, but rather the whole overarching theme that our customers are really seeing value from SOA.”
IBM, which is also screening an SOA-inspired film in select movie theaters nationwide, is not alone in ginning up SOA marketing messages to sometimes silly levels.
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