Why Internet-Delivered Services Are the Key Value for Most SOAs

By David S. Linthicum

April 1, 2008 —

We’re all aware of the Web 2.0, and most of us even know what the hell it is. I mean, is it MySpace, Facebook, blogs, Ajax or something else? Not sure I really care about emerging buzzwords, but I do know that the programmable assets out there are beginning to have some real value, both with and beyond the notion of mashups.

The issue is that once you build a SOA, and can manage, consume and produce services, now what? We can mix and match enterprise services into solutions, yet there is a diminished value there because we have to build and maintain those services, and the costs are high. However, if you learn to leverage services that you did not build, maintain or host, there is a huge upside to SOA and an opportunity for exponential ROI. What’s needed is the value of the Internet Delivered Service (IDS) mashed together with internal assets, as needed, when needed, and at a fraction of the cost if you had to build them yourself.

IDSes, and those who provide them, have had slow growth over the last several years, but they are looking to explode in 2008 and 2009 as the power of mashups becomes more commonplace within traditional enterprises and as SOA efforts continue to expand. Indeed, just as SaaS has grown rapidly over the last several years, so will the use of IDSes. The notion of leveraging core services you neither own nor host won’t be that farfetched for the traditional enterprises out there.

The concept is pretty simple, perhaps even nostalgic. As we build applications, there are obviously parts of these applications that already exist. For instance, in a tax management application, somebody has already created services for tax rate calculations. In essence, we’re looking elsewhere for pre-built component parts, in this case services, that we can reuse.

The core issue is that developers have a “not invented here” attitude, and typically don’t like to leverage local code libraries or native APIs written by people they don’t know living on servers they can’t hug. You know who you are. However, just as mashups have focused on the whole 1 + 1 = 3 thing, we’re able to take the same value notion into the enterprise as we learn to leverage IDS either from our full blown SOAs or from simple applications that can see remote services.

So, who’s got services for rent? Most major SaaS players have services they provide as well as the visual applications. Salesforce.com, for instance, provides a complete assortment of Web services that support their CRM functionality and integration. Amazon.com provides Web services for their partners and customers, as does eBay and most others.

Those of you looking for a Web services marketplace can go to guys like StrikeIron, which provides valuable on-demand services such as address validation, tax rate calculation, stock quotes, even basketball scores in real time, all available for subscription. Thus, if you need a service, you simply locate the service, make sure it’s correct for your application, define the interface (download the WSDL), bind, test and go to happy hour.

The value of IDSes is great. The ROI is one of those no-brainers, considering that similar services would cost thousands of dollars to create and even more money to maintain over the years versus sending a few dollars a month to a Web service provider who maintains the service, the data, and abstracts you from the aggravation.

As SOAs begin to appear, these remote services can become part of the service directory. This allows those who provide governance to list native and remote services in the same directory, allowing for central control and the ability to quickly provide hundreds of useful services neither having to create them nor expose them out of existing legacy systems. In fact, in a few years I think most directories will list more remotely hosted services than local services, and it matters not to those who consume the services.

The use of IDSes also goes to the value of SOA’s agility since the architecture is better adapted to a changing business. In many instances, services don’t have to be built since they may already exist. Instead, you can leverage services that have already been built and are Internet accessible. You simply need to subscribe, not build. Of course things are never that easy, but it’s much easier to leverage existing services that have been validated and tested, versus taking on those programming tasks yourself. Back in the day, I used to call this OPC, or Other People’s Code. It’s always better to allow others to do your work. In fact it could be the difference between success and failure as you move your applications and architecture forward.

David S. Linthicum is a managing partner at ZapThink. Reach him at david@zapthink.com.

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