I agree with you - that the origins of SOA are in the clouds, connecting machines, agility. A side challenge though is justifying the investment in SOA, and at least showing the progress an organization is making with SOA. Showing log files of web service calls is not enough and not liked by an executive. Showing a pretty picture, that can add value to end users - makes them smile.

David -

Thanks for posting this article. Your question occurred to me when you posted your last entry about SOA and AJAX.

My answer to the question is that AJAX is a very important face of SOA, but not *the* face. AJAX is successfully being used in a wide variety of applications where SOA is not to be found at all, and vice versa.

In addition, I think one of the arguments for AJAX and SOA being a "killer app" comes from Client/SOA. However, I would question how wide the acceptance of this design approach will be inside enterprises with any level of governance.

There's no doubt that both AJAX and SOA are changing the way we conceive of and write applications, and I'm glad you're plugged into the AJAX community. However I am in favor of recognizing these as two parallel and largely independent trends with independent benefits.

Curious that you would put all the value "in the cloud". Why do you not see huge value in making information and services usable for people? It seems to me that User Experience and Information Access infrastructure is a large and under served area. AJAX, mashups, tagging, social networking, search, and ad hoc analytics tools may be just the beginning of something much bigger but these technologies and approaches are contributing value on par (or greater than) "the cloud" itself.