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Service-Oriented Everything: Now is the Time
SOA is here now, but is it in it for the long haul?
by Daryl Plummer
Posted May 24, 2004
People are service oriented and event driven. That phrase sticks with me on days when I talk about system design. People are service oriented and event driven. Every morning (or night depending on your culture), we hop into a shower and use a water "service" to clean ourselves. If the phone rings, or your neighbor's cat somehow gets cornered by your Rottweiler, you hop out to handle the "event." If you answer the phone-ring event, you are using a phone "service"; and, I figure your neighbor (the cat lover) would consider it a "service" if you saved Fluffy from becoming Rottweiler kibble. So, people are service oriented and event driven. Systems should be service oriented and event driven too.
Increasingly, we have to deliver flexible systems that are responsive to the needs of individuals, partners, or the entire value chain. Michael Dells' "market of one" is now driving businesses to build systems that can respond in real time. Extensive partner networks are pushing us to integrate systems at breakneck speeds. The extended supply chain places us in a multi-company business process network that requires one thing above all—agility. Service orientation helps us provide these things.
The Service-Oriented Framework
In Gartner, we talk quite a bit about service oriented architecture (SOA). Today, event-driven architecture is beginning to rise up the slope of the hype cycle as well. Together, these two concepts allow us to pull together a framework that describes the key areas where service orientation is changing the way systems are designed, deployed, and used (see Figure 1). Software services are in everything, and will be everywhere.
Service-oriented architecture (SOA): The basic topology of a service-oriented system is one that has consumers, interfaces, and providers. The consumer uses an interface to request "service" from a provider. As services are deployed, they may be changed without affecting the consumer since the consumer only sees the interface. No longer is there a need to define the architecture for every application, SOA becomes the default norm.
Service-oriented development of applications (SODA): If you are building applications on an SOA, you will discover that developing using services is not quite the same as traditional development. If you have not seen this yet, just wait: Fluffy, your Rottweiler is on the way. Using services seems simple but there are many pitfalls such as needing to simulate service behavior, assembling composite services that don't break, modeling business processes to get the right behavior, and handling changes made to services you use but don't own. SODA is a concept that describes how to handle all of these (see Figure 2). SOA systems can be very agile, but without proper service-oriented development planning—without SODA—they can be very fragile as well.
Service-oriented business applications (SOBA): The latest entry into the service game may be the most critical. Packaged business applications are the new service foundry. We are seeing inflexible monolithic packages redesigned as a set of interacting services. The very nature of what is called an application is changing. More critically, the barriers between infrastructure, development, and applications are breaking down. Within five years, we will see an integration of these layers that blur the differences between them and the products that enable their use.
Event-driven architecture (EDA): From simple to complex events processes, the ability to post and to handle events is growing in importance. SOA and events are complimentary since events can invoke services. Complex event processing will become the next hurdle to overcome.
So What Makes This the Right Time?
You might say "I've heard much of this before. Why will it work this time?" Well, let me take a shot at answering this. First, Web services have catalyzed new interest in services. Seldom have we seen such a uniform acceptance of basic standards across the industry. Second, the need for agile IT systems is no longer an option—it is an imperative. The business is pushing us to perform. Third, use of the Internet (portals, distribution, Internet services) eases our cultural bias against using "other peoples' services." Last, application platform suites are integrated sets of technologies that make service-oriented everything easier and feasible for the masses.
Might it fail? Certainly. In IT we are not at a loss for technology strategies that ran aground. You can wait and see, or you can act in your own self interest.
So, get out of the shower and save the cat. Service-oriented everything is here to stay. All you have to do is to commit to planning for it instead of just letting it happen to you. Value will follow. People are service oriented and event driven. If you don't trust me, at least trust that.
About the Author
Daryl Plummer is Group Vice President and Chief Research Fellow for Gartner Inc. He is a key analyst in Web services, applications development, and architecture.
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