I think that the way SOA delivers value to the business is indirect, as with any other technology. E.g. using a modern OO, managed programming language for development is good for IT, but the business should not be concerned in general about it. Nonetheless they should see the benefits because IT will work better (i.e. faster, cheaper, ...)

I think SOA is good for IT mainly because it should deliver interoperability and reuse in practice, which in the end means improved agility to implement business requirements (i.e. translate them into technical implementations). But still I think it is an IT artifact. I may change my mind with time or after I read all opinions I have bookmarked about the superior alignment of SOA with the business , but by now this is my opinion.

However, SOA may make possible the existence of tools allowing "power" users (e.g. Excel-capable) to access the whole of the enterprise resources without the help of IT, making thus the enterprise more agile: IT can come later to stabilize results, but advancements could be done ad-hoc by the own users. This kind of tool could make a difference in the enterprise. However, it also may not. SQL and ODBC could have achieved something similar in their time, but they did not. Nonetheless, SOA is much more powerful than them.

BPM goes towards this line, actually exposing services to power users. However I see it as too heavy; I do not see BPM revolutioning anything. But who knows.

Cheers
--Javier

--- In service-orientated-architecture@yahoogroups.com, Michael Poulin <m3poulin@...> wrote:
>
> I cannot agree with you, Javier, in service definition.
> One of the reasons: "a number of well-defined automatic interfaces" may be totally unrelated to the corporate business and provide no or negative value to the business (nobody talks about agile IT and business in here any more). That is, the basic reasoning of SOA and its major acceptance drivers are totally lost. However, the definition you provide IS compatible with the SOA RM, unfortunately (to my opinion).
>
> As of about business director, even from pure technical perspectives, where are you going to get money for your salary? However, if you have a super-color printer...
>
> - Michael
>
> javicamara javier.camara.melgosa@... wrote:
> Currently, my favourite ones are:
> - Service-Oriented Architecture: It is said that the architecture of an Information System is Service-Oriented when it supports the Service-Orientation paradigm.
> - Service Orientation: It is a way to structure an information system so that the implementation of the whole functionalities offered by it is distributed across discrete units called services, which can be used through a programmatic interface.
> - Service: A service is an element of an information system which offers a precise set of functionalities through a number of well-defined automatic interfaces.
>
> They can be expanded but these are short enough. Honestly, I think these are compatible with the OASIS SOA RM ones, seen from the technology side. However, the ones from the RM are too abstract for my linking.
> I won't try to explain them to my mother. She is not interested in SOA, and indeed should not be. Neither should be a business director. As you can imagine, I see SOA only as a technical artifact.
>
> Regards
> --Javier
>
> --- In service-orientated-architecture@yahoogroups.com, "Gervas Douglas" gervas.douglas@ wrote:
> >
> > No one anywhere in the known universe has yet come up with a
> > definition of SOA which commands widespread acceptance. Perhaps it is
> > time we had another crack at it.
> >
> > Over to you ladies and gents...
> >
> > Gervas
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
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