Now that I'm an independent I've been working with a number of authors and reporters attempting to figure out SOA, and while some are doing average jobs, some are dong great jobs. Case in point a nice article entitled "SaaS and SOA: Together Forever" written by Intelligent Enterprise's Doug Henschen. Doug does a great job linking these two notions which are indeed becoming one in the same, and also tell you how to begin the movement towards synergy between SOA and SaaS.

"From a SaaS delivery perspective, SOA is what separates the current generation of SaaS providers, epitomized by the likes of Salesforce.com and NetSuite.com, from the failed application service providers (ASPs) of the dot-com era. From a consumption perspective, you certainly don't require a SOA to use SaaS, but if you want to effectively mix and match external services with on-premise assets and services, SOA will make it possible to efficiently build, deploy and manage composite apps."

The article goes on to talk about the synergies between SaaS and SOA, including the notion of mash-ups and how they are changing the way we deal with SaaS and thus providing more value for the enterprise. Or, moving from a visual application delivered model to that of services and composites. Also, how you build up to SaaS and SOA, and the steps it takes to get there.

At the heart of this issue is how SaaS delivered services exists within the context of SOA. Doug describes how much planning is needed to get there, and how this is an emerging concept. Doug was nice enough to reference my SOA Meta Model as a point of reference.

"In other words, as Sinatra would put it, "the best is yet to come, and babe, won't it be fine." In this model of a services-oriented architecture, data sources and legacy apps (bottom tier) are wrapped in services and exposed along with original, new services. The data abstraction layer ensures consistent, virtual access to any data source. The enterprise services bus addresses data services/ messaging. SaaS and more granular Internet-based services join the services layer and may be orchestrated as part of larger composite apps."

I can't argue with that. Also, it's exciting to see this concept emerging, it's will indeed change the way we build business applications going forward. It's about time.

Posted by Dave Linthicum on December 15, 2006 05:12 AM