SOA and Web 2.0 are very closely linked to each other in some ways and are miles apart in some other ways.
The linkage: While SOA is primarily focused on improving business experience, it is true that business are run by human beings and hence improving user experience is an essential part of improving the overall business experience. Web 2.0 is very well positioned to extend the improvement in experience to the presentation layer by take advantage of flexibility of underlying software due to SOA.
SOA looks at improvements in experience from inside out (from software to human) while Web 2.0 looks at improvements from outside in (human to software)
The separation: Not all business applications need user interaction. In fact for core business applications, the less human intervention, the better (more automated business). Businesses are constantly on the look out for cutting costs... including data processing costs. And it costs a lot less to process data when it is done as close to the processor as possible (meaning without human intervention). This will probably remain true for a foreseeable future irrespective of how cheaper the processing power becomes, unless it becomes available absolutely free.
Although this number could be different for some businesses (such as e-businesses – eBay, Amazon), for most other businesses, more than 80% of IT applications form core business applications. Hence Web 2.0 probably has space for contribution in the remaining 20% applications only which are non-core in nature...
2 comments:
That's a good point in the integrating difference between SOA and Web 2.0.
Web 2.0 offers end users choices in interacting with the system in a favorable way. SOA belongs to the system designers. Don't you think Web 2.0 would become dominant over SOA or they are not direct competitive?
Good question and is an interesting one too. In my opinion, they are not directly competitive. With my understanding about the concept let me explain -
The role that users play, is not a great one in SOA but a vitally important and central one in Web 2.0. The upshot is that the Web has provided a more proven model for how to integrate our systems, design our products around our customers and communities, and focus on the aspects that are most important to our businesses. SOA provides a more engineered, predefined, and formal view, that satisfies perhaps a larger number of important technical criteria but often seems to miss the very point about what matters; that people are central to software and it’s our data that is irreplaceable and of supreme market advantage. But remember, be it, our software or services — necessary as they are — are like electricity and network bandwidth are to our IT systems; essential but not the primary value. So I would say they are not directly competitive.
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