SOA and the Cloud

SOA and “The Cloud” are all the rage at the moment. Putting your data online is old news. Now it is all about putting your business logic online. Architects are envisioning platforms where developers can interact with a business to help find synergies and better connect with customers. Ultimately, this can lead to the discovery of new markets.

For telco’s stakes are even higher. New markets would just be icing on the cake. The real motivator is to give people access to a rich, compelling platform – which can be monetized through data line rentals. Handsets have the potential to be the next great wave for computing and having a stake in controlling that platform could be very lucrative.

People new to SOA wonder what the problem is. Why is it so hard to put your business logic online? Can’t you just run your code through Apache Axis and be done with it? Well, sure – if you don’t have legacy systems. Or you have different systems serving the same function for different departments. Or you are concerned about granular data access security. Or you release new versions of your software and are concerned about compatibility with other systems. Or you want to expose your API’s in a uniform way. If these problems sound simple – then you probably haven’t given them enough thought.

Unfortunately, most of these problems are found exclusively in large organizations. A startup competitor who does everything through that slick new LAMP <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAMP_(software_bundle)> app is going to have an easier time of putting their business logic online then incumbents. Companies with complex systems need a clear strategy around how they want to share their systems with partners.

And here we have a problem.

The fact is there is nothing off-the-shelf which is going to dramatically improve your chances of success with such a complex endeavour. Sure, some vendors sell products which are helpful. But the concept of “The Cloud” is evolving at such a rapid rate that currently the only way to keep up is with a custom solution. It takes thought and hard work – no way around it.

There are some very promising solutions on the horizon. One solution to watch is Microsoft’s “Oslo <http://www.microsoft.com/soa/products/oslo.aspx> “. Olso represents a huge investment from Microsoft to create a generic solution to solve this problem. Of course there are two issues with silver bullets like this: First, they imply vendor lock-in. Second, it can take years before they are fit for production.

In the mean-time, the Cloud is coming. Without question, 5-10 years from now your partners will be creating mashups <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_(web_application_hybrid)> and programming against loosely coupled APIs supplied by a seemingly random collection of partners. If they are not using your APIs, then they will be using someone else’s. The competition is on.