On Digital Strategy | Dion Hinchcliffe

Is Web 2.0 The Global SOA?

Are we heading towards an architectural singularity in the software industry? Sometimes it looks that way. If you do a superficial comparison at least, Web 2.0 is all about autonomous, distributed services, remixability, and is fraught with ownership and boundary/control issues. And yet, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is all about, you guessed it, autonomous, distributed services, composite functionality, and is fraught with ownership and boundary/control issues. Sound similar, no?

It does seem that we have a classic case of fractal architecture on our hands. Is Web 2.0 actually the most massive instance possible of service-oriented architecture, realized on a worldwide scale and sprawling across the Web? The answer folks is, apparently so.

I’ve been thinking about this carefully for several weeks now as the similarities seemed to inexorably call to each other as I worked with each of them in turn (disclaimer: I’m a SOA architect by trade). Both Web 2.0 and SOA are already slippery, nebulous concepts yet there are unmistakable patterns within each that actually are very tightly related, though wrapped in slightly different cloth. Each encourages the liberation of the underlying functionality of software systems by providing open access to everyone that needs it. Both warmly embrace Web services and the aggregation of existing functionality into new solutions. And Web 2.0, according to O’Reilly, looks at Data as the Next Intel Inside, making large, back-end database driven functionality a core competency. SOA totally gets this as well. And both Web 2.0 and SOA provide the building blocks for creating people-centric processes starting at the scale of an organization and going up.

Granted, most SOAs are conceptually trapped inside an organization’s firewall or VPN. And Web 2.0 envisions the global Web as the stage writ large upon which to act out your grand visions of building collective intelligence and mashed up functionality. But scale is only one of the minor differences really, and not a genuine discriminator at all.

Do the linkages go deeper, to a more fundamental level? Are Web 2.0 and SOA different at their core and if not, how exactly do they relate?

I believe that there are at least two significant connection points. One is that Web 2.0 can be conceptualized as a global SOA. Two, that many traditional brick-and-mortar business that are currently using SOA as their architectural model will want to connect their Web/Web 2.0 faces up to their SOA. This makes Web 2.0 not just being the Global SOA but makes meeting smaller SOAs everywhere not just likely, but inevitable. Note that the respected industry analysis firm, Gartner, recently said that by 2008 that 80% of all software development will be based on SOA. And interestingly by 2006, Gartner believes that 60% of the $527 billion IT professional services industry will be based on exploiting Web services and technology. We’re talking serious convergence of focus here folks. If true, this means that more than half of all software development, SOA and otherwise, will revolve around the Web, inside or outside organization boundaries. All of this means Web 2.0 and SOA will meet each other both coming and going, and begin to become each other as well.

Web 2.0 = Global SOA? Why Should We Care?

But the real question really is does the relation of the two give us an advantage as we design and build Web 2.0 applications, services, and SOAs? One problem could be that many folks outside the IT industry just haven’t heard of SOA. And even then, there are vociferous arguments about what an SOA really is, just like there are endless debates about what Web 2.0 is. But in the end, there are best practices that need to cross pollinate here and SOA’s IT-bound sphere of influence isn’t really a factor. In fact, really only Web 2.0 designers (yes, you) will have to understand these techniques and their connections. Web 2.0 users themselves will generally be blissfully unaware of Web 2.0 as the global SOA.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Web 2.0 and SOA also have significantly divergent elements too. Web 2.0 emphasizes a social aspect that SOA is completely missing. And probably to its lasting detriment. SOA has much more central control, management, and governance while Web 2.0 is free wheeling, decentralized, grassroots, and with absolutely no command and control structure. Web 2.0 also talks about presentation, the front-end displayed to the user. SOA is largely silent on the issue of presentation though it certainly admits it exists. So SOA tends to be generic and faceless where Web 2.0 makes much of human/service interaction. They seem to need each other to be whole. Finally, Web 2.0 is almost too informal and practically calls out for discipline while SOA is mute and autistic in comparison, a technical virtuosity that wants to be social but doesn’t know how.

All of this makes me want to view one through the other to check basic principles. For example, SOA has best practices for building business processes into vast supply chains (so too does Web 2.0). SOA is also a mature view of software that eschews a technical view of information and data. And it identifies a motive force for these processes via something called orchestration. This is a concept that Web 2.0 does not have explicitly and could certainly use (an orchestration mash-up anyone?) though it is provided in some degree by its users. SOA principles also encourage creation of a common vocabulary across systems that is in the language of the domain (common definitions of customers, order, channel, product, for example). So it gets very close to addressing a big issue in software development today: That too many IT systems today tend to have technology myopia and ignore their most important elements… the people that use them and the way that they work. Web 2.0 gets this part even more right in all the significant ways. Web 2.0 embraces people, collaboration, architectures of participation, social mechanisms, folksonomies, real-time feedback, etc. All things that SOA, in its grey, dull, corporate clothes, does not, at least not explicitly. The complementary nature between the two seems clear.

So, I believe there are complementary synergies between these two powerful software approaches. One can very much be used to check and finish the other. SOA is both the “Mini-Me” of Web 2.0 (identical in almost every way but 1/8 its size) and a key archetype for it as well. Though admittedly one that lacks a few important ingredients. What is compelling, and I’ll talk about this in detail in future articles, is that Web 2.0 actually has powerful mechanisms that “complete” SOA (if you’ll allow one last Austin Powers reference.) Web 2.0 offers a face to SOA with numerous best practices for presentation, has emerging technical innovation like radical decentralization that is necessary for stability and scalability which SOA too often doesn’t address, and Web 2.0 identifies important techniques to immerse users into social processes that can make SOA data and services vastly more valuable.

Yes, so Web 2.0 is a global SOA, done right for the whole world. It’s big, it’s everywhere, and it’s here today.

Do you agree that Web 2.0 is the Global SOA? Post your thoughts below…

Update: Early stage VC investor Peter Rip had some interesting things to say about this article, including “Web 2.0 is a lighter weight version of SOA.”
Update 2: Both Richard Monson-Haefel and ZDNet’s Joe McKendrick weighed in on this topic with good observations and commentary.
Update 3: This eventually turned into the SOA Web Services Journal cover story in Dec. 2005: Web 2.0: The Global SOA.  This in turn led to March’s SPARK event with Microsoft on the convergence of Web 2.0, SOA, and SaaS.
Update 4: This topic (and related issues for Web 2.0 in the enterprise) has turned into a regular blog on ZDNet.
Update 5 in May, 2006: Om Malik writes a detailed piece on the future of Web 2.0 and is most sanguine about it for the enterprise, interestingly enough, and links to this post.

Technorati: web2.0, soa