SOA in a Box

by Dan Foody

Dave Linthicum wrote an interesting blog entry on where the SOA technology vendors are falling down.  It's unfair to stereotype every SOA technology vendor this way... but there are certainly some that deserve this thumping (a number of the stack vendors, especially those of the red and blue logo varieties, come to mind).

Dave's point, though, is absolutely correct.  You can't buy a SOA. To "get to SOA" you need two things:

• A SOA infrastructure plan - What infrastructure are you going to need to buy, what are you going to need to build, and when - all assessed from the perspective of "best fit for our needs" not "most checkboxes under one brand name."
• A SOA transformation plan - How are you going to change the existing culture, the development practices, the organizational alignment, etc.

And remember, just as you can't buy a SOA in a box, you can't choose vendors based on "RFI in a box" (you need to bring the products in-house and try them in your environment rather than choosing based purely on feature lists), nor can you change your development practices based on "policy in a box" (you need to change practices by carrot not by stick - and "policy in a box" solutions are sticks).

What is true, though, is that without both of these types of plans, your SOA initiative will not succeed.  Of course, even the plans themselves will need to be defined, executed, and refined incrementally.  SOA isn't a destination, it's a direction.