Customer Reviews

The New Language of Business: SOA & Web 2.0

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Is Service-Oriented Architecture primarily about technology or business? Sandy Carter, Vice President for SOA and Websphere at IBM, comes down squarely on the side of business. In The New Language of Business: SOA and Web 2.0, Carter defines Service-Oriented Architecture as "a business-driven IT architectural approach that supports integrating your business as linked, repeatable business tasks or services" (44). Her introduction to SOA is geared for CI0's who need to make a business case for designing and implementing an SOA.

Carter's strongest chapters focus on conceiving of the enterprise as sets of services and processes. Her third chapter, titled "Deconstructing Your Business: Component Business Model," provides an excellent guide for breaking down a business into a sets of discrete components, which can then be sorted out into commodity and differentiating activities. This component business model can serve as a road map for deciding which activities to outsource and where to invest in building services to increase the flexibility of key differentiating components. Her discussion of "business process management" in the seventh chapter supplements and extends this business perspective on SOA. Carter makes a compelling case that the move to a SOA cannot succeed if it is conceived simply as an I.T. project. A prerequisite for achieving an SOA is to change business practices by encouraging greater horizontal collaboration between I.T. and business leaders and by setting up strong governance committees to overcome inevitable turf wars.

The weakest chapter is on the relation between Web 2.0 and SOA. Carter briefly introduces some of the key ideas behind Web 2.0, but she does not analyze at any length the difference between the rather formal architectural approach advocated by proponents of SOA, which typically draws on all the WS-* standards, and the more freewheeling style propounded by so-called 'RESTafarians,' who regard WS-* specifications as unnecessary baggage. "Web 2.0 and SOA are both about weaving preexisting services together into useful new business applications," she writes optimistically. "The connection in the technologies is clear: both AJAX and REST are enablers for SOA" (198). Is this actually the case? Web 2.0 and SOA obviously share some aspects in common, but I wish that Carter had dwelt longer on the philosophical differences. The chapter seems like an afterthought added to capture some of the current trendiness of Web 2.0.

In the end, this is a practical book about how to make a business case for Service-Oriented Architecture. Carter offers thirty plus case studies to shed light on the benefits of SOA adoption. Despite being a little wordy and repetitive, this book successfully bridges the gap between I.T. and business. Its primary audience will be business leaders who need a comprehensible, non-technical introduction to the leading ideas behind Service-Oriented Architecture.

The complexity of the content in this book came at no surprise due to my limited background knowledge of information technology. If you are planning to read this book in hopes of gaining a broad understanding, forget it. Even the author specifically states in her forward section that a general sense of understanding is a prerequisite. However, there are numerous blogs and articles outlining this controversy that are readily available, which will help supplement the content in this book.

Being the novice that I am, I needed to find a perspective that challenged Sandy Carter's secrets for success. Conceptually, the idea of being "flex-pon-sive" appears to be more common-sense than ground-breaking. I mean if SOA and Web 2.0 can create as much value as Sandy Carter claims, why the entire business community isn't rushing to implement these technologies into its IT systems. Therefore, I decided to go to the one source that I could count on to provide an "alternate perspective." Public Enemy #1: Nicholas Carr.

As I predicted, Nicholas Carr has indeed inserted himself into the conversation, simplifying these technologies into a group he calls, "knowledge management systems."3 I could not find anything in his blog that specifically attacks SOA, but Web 2.0 was a common theme. Carr noted that implementing Web 2.0 into enterprise-wide IT systems will fail due to the lack of governance. 3 His point did not provide any shocking revelations since even Sandy Carter herself noted that the failure of effective governance would ultimately cause this concept to fail. However, Carr did manage to insert the discussion of cost effectiveness and sustained benefit, two of his most core arguments dating back to his controversial article, "Does IT Matter?" 4 He believes that once the hype generated by the "enthusiastic earlier adopters" dies down, those who lack the essential knowledge will become indifferent, leaving only those select few who actually possess the essential knowledge to optimize these technologies, but have no time to do so. 3 In the end, the system will ultimately fall into disuse and crumble under its own complexity.

As cynical as this may appear, his outlook for Web 2.0 proved to be fairly accurate in a McKinsey study that was conducted in January 2007. McKinsey & Company, a prominent consulting firm, surveyed close to 2,800 executives from around the world to determine the level of interest in companies adopting Web 2.0 technologies. The study to proved Sandy Carter's assertion to be partially correct; many executives have a strong interest in these technologies. 5 However, the study also noted that there was a disparity between the number of executives who were interested in investing in Web 2.0 technologies and those who actually invested or were planning to invest in these technologies in the near future. 5 Social networking at 37% was found to be the most popular Web 2.0 tool that executives were willing to or have already invested in. 5 This percentage certainly does not depict an enthusiastic revolution brewing in the IT world. With that being said however, it does appear that the general consensus is to employ a wait-and-see approach. Executives are indeed interested in improving the flexibility of their business models, but don't feel comfortable enough to act based on the current tools available. Therefore, unfortunately for proponents of SOA such as Sandy Carter, the next phenomenon wave has not arrived yet. But it's on the horizon and with the improvements being made each and everyday, this concept will become a reality much sooner rather than later.

Nevertheless, despite the hesitation to implement these tools into the business world, one idea was made quite clear in this book; IT still matters. With this new push towards becoming increasingly flexible and responsive, the value of IT has been rejuvenated. Although Carr believes that a botched implementation of these emerging technologies will result in significant detriment to any company, the benefits of a successful implementation is endless. 5 The sustainable competitive advantage though does not come from the technology itself, but rather will come from the flexibility that these technologies will provide. Although Carr is correct in a sense that the window of competitive advantage for any technological advancement is miniscule, the ability to maintain this competitive advantage can potentially be endless with these new technologies. 4 The additional flexibility that these technologies provide will generate unprecedented amounts of innovation as there will be seemingly no boundaries that will hinder the advancement of a company from growing to insurmountable heights. Just imagine if every company can adjust its business model on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis. The concept of sustaining a competitive advantage will not rely on the length of time, but rather the frequency in which you can change to sustain this advantage. As a result, it would appear that the best defense for companies will be a great offense. In other words, if a flexible company can continue to push the envelope and adjust its business model more frequently that the rest of its competition, it may be able to distance itself far beyond the rest of the pack and can then focus on other improvement areas while waiting for its competitors to catch up. The new, flexible business environment could potentially turn from a marathon into an all-out sprint!

This is much less than my expection. It describes too much marketing information and so far away from SOA technical stand point.
It provides many non-useful for SOA technical reader, can't give practical solution and how it is possible in the real world.

After reading and recommending Sandy's book to my customers, I realized that it has always been about the business, so Sandy has it right.

Technology has always been important but instead of buying technologies that assumes will somehow improve the business; we should examine aspects of the business that most require improvement. Sandy's book does a great job in reminding us that as we look into the future flexibility through SOA and Web 2.0 can give us what we are all looking for - shorter cycles of innovation. I congratulate Sandy for a well written book, simple to understand and most important the insight she brings from her experiences, customer engagements and thought leadership. I recommend this book to c-level execs, project managers, line-of-business leaders and new hires.

Sandy Carter definitely has the credentials to write a book on SOA & Web 2.0 as she is the VP of SOA & WebSphere: Stragegy, Channels and Marketing. I have to say I enjoyed the book since I am a Business Analyst and it is written towards the Business Person even though I thought the use of Flex-pon-sive as pretty hokey.

This book goes beyond talking about SOA and includes Web 2.0 technologies and how these technologies work together. I would recommend this book.

One area that I was disappointed in was her coverage of WebSphere DataPower products since DataPower falls under her responsibility. You would think she would have plugged these products.

Gary E. Smith
THE SOA NETWORK
www.soanetwork.net

If you're looking for code samples, topologies, software products, speeds, and feeds, this book is not for you. But if you're after real-world insights into how companies solve real problems, it should be right up your alley. For those looking for pure IT, the good news is, there are many other volumes of technology-focused guides and books about SOA and Web 2.0 available. Conversely, books about using SOA and Web 2.0 as a means of attaining real business benefits are in painfully short supply. While other writings may claim to fill this void, Sandy Carter's book actually fulfills this objective.

While this book is not for the person who is looking for a first introduction to SOA, it does a very nice job at describing how to put the concepts of SOA into practice for business benefit. In other words, the book is less about what SOA IS than it is about when and how SOA can be used and what results can be expected. There are illustrative examples drawn from IBM implementations sprinkled throughout the book that bring the concepts that the author introduces to life. I would say that the ideal audience for this book is the business-minded IT manager/executive or the line of business executive who recognizes that IT is best approached as a means of strategic advantage rather than mere overhead cost.

I'd recommend this book for personal and professional enrichment. I can imagine this book as being used as a business technology textbook although it lacks the dry academic tone of many other textbooks I've read. It is a lively read so perhaps "guidebook" would be a more appropriate term than `textbook'.

While lots of books discuss the technology of service-oriented architecture (SOA), The New Language of Business focuses on the need for business flexibility and how to achieve it with SOA, by applying SOA not only to the IT department but also to the business as a whole. Not only does IT need to align to the business, but the business needs an architecture that IT can align to; this book shows how to use SOA to make that happen.

This book introduces the reader to many important aspects of SOA and shows how to use them to achieve business flexibility: component business modeling, the SOA reference architecture, the SOA lifecycle, SOA governance, and the SOA entry points. This is great information for explaining to the business why SOA matters and what the business (not just IT) needs to do.

This is a great reference book on SOA. The author nicely takes the reader on a SOA journey from innovation to don'ts of SOA. It is information packed with rich set of customer real world case studies and plenty of information collated from years of research done at IBM labs. Chapter 3 on Component business model lays the foundation for how an enterprise can link the business and IT alignment for success. Chapter 9 on the top 10 don'ts reflects some true real world experience and the easy to make mistakes when one undertakes SOA projects. ESBs to Governance are explained in terms that both business and IT execs can understand quickly while carrying enough content for the techies to refer back. Overall it is a very well written book on SOA and an excellent reference material.

Suresh Ganesan
Chief Architect
Cognizant Technology Solutions

"The New Language of Business" is exactly right on here. Before this book, I found SOA difficult to grasp, especially as IT in business is more and more blurred by the vast amounts of emerging technology that is available today.

The business cases and examples were invaluable and help in understanding not only SOA, but how SOA can help you grow and innovate during the day to day pressures of an ever changing business (Thank You Sandy).

It has been hard for me to understand the value of SOA from a business perspective - Your book realy helped me to understand the linkage between IT and business and the value of SOA for my company.
I do recommend reading your book !!!!