SOA is dead, or is it?

When I joined Dubaiworld three years ago as a information architect, SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) was the buzzword. All major vendors, IBM, Microsoft, SUN, had ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) solutions, and SOA’s were going to save the world, but instead it was a big failure.

While the business side of IT was too busy making definitions, and spending numerous hours (and hey, budgets) wondering if one would use REST versus it’s WS- counterpart; a open community namely the Internet, provided the world with home brewed services.

Big players such as Google, Facebook, and Yahoo, provided a simple new way to interact with what they were providing all along; services. You could use a certain service in another context. Without overwhelming the corporate ignorant world with buzzwords.

I believe corporates will often follow, it takes another caliber with a more innovative way of thinking to move things forward.