I've been speaking at different conferences in the past year. First, the SOA conferences where we talk about the revolutionary approaches to creating an agile architecture based upon the use of service. Second, I'm also speaking at the enterprise architecture (EA) conferences where we talk about different EA approaches, metadata, and challenge each other as to who can create the most abstract and confusing concept.

If you talk to the EA guys, they would tell you that SOA is really just an approach, and it needs to exist beneath the more holistic world of EA, if at all. However, if you talk to the SOA guys they would say that SOA is a new way to do EA, and thus ultimately is going to replace the statuesque. So, who's right?

I found Christopher Koch’s blog hitting this topic, in essence asking the same question:

"What do you do when the organizing strategy for IT you've been selling for years--enterprise architecture--is threatened by a new order--SOA? Do you invoke revisionist history and erase all references to enterprise architecture? Or do you risk eye-rolling the business by telling them you have to do both at once now?"

What's most interesting is that many organizations don’t hold EA in high regard, but view them as a slow moving evolutionary process that seems lag behind the desires of the business.

"...the lack of success of EA over the years means that while it may be present in an SOA era, it will become less and less visible. You can’t do SOA without the kind of cross-enterprise view and standards espoused in EA. But SOA offers a compelling product that is lacking in EA: services. At the risk of trivializing 20 years of glacial progress in EA, SOA seems to be the part of EA that really matters to anyone outside of IT."

The fact of the matter is that both the EA and SOA guys have good points, indeed in many cases are the same guys. You have to leverage a disciplined approach to any enterprise architecture, including a holistic understanding of information, processes, and services. However, it's also clear that a new approach is required to build architectures that are much more agile than the enterprise architectures I'm seeing today, and able to take advantage of emerging assets, such as the Web 2.0 and outside-in services.

So, can the two tribes come together? Well, as I stated above, in some cases they are the same tribe already. EA groups looking to improve the way architecture is done have adopted SOA as a clear direction that's moving them to a healthier state.

However, in other cases the EA guys are standing firm on their assertions that SOA is "just a software development approach", "a fad", and thus not worthy of any major attention, nor change in thinking. Those are typically the guys who have architectures that look like somebody designed a highway system on crack, much to complex and static.

Smart architects understand the value of SOA, and are embracing change. Good for them, good for the people that pay them.

Posted by Dave Linthicum on January 12, 2006 06:49 AM