Read Digital Edition


ADS BY GOOGLE
Top Three Links You Must Click On


Why 'Enterprise Architects' Are Ineffective with SOA
The fact is, tactical needs have trumped strategic direction over the years

Architectures are like archaeology; in essence, layers upon layers of systems, applications, databases, and connections, typically built or procured to solve a tactical problem.

Many corporations talk a good game and brag about the strategic long-term direction of the enterprise architecture that serves the business. The fact is, tactical needs have trumped strategic direction over the years. Thus, layers upon layers of technology on top of technology are the end result, and an architecture that is inflexible, static, fragile, and thus difficult to change along with the business requirements. This is the norm, not the exception.

About David Linthicum
Dave is an internationally known cloud computing and SOA expert. He is a sought-after consultant, speaker, and blogger. In his career, Dave has formed or enhanced many of the ideas behind modern distributed computing including EAI, B2B Application Integration, and SOA, approaches and technologies in wide use today.In addition, Dave is the Editor-in-Chief of SYS-CON's Virtualization Journal. For the last 10 years, he has focused on the technology and strategies around cloud computing, including working with several cloud computing startups. His industry experience includes tenure as CTO and CEO of several successful software and cloud computing companies, and upper-level management positions in Fortune 500 companies. In addition, he was an associate professor of computer science for eight years, and continues to lecture at major technical colleges and universities, including University of Virginia and Arizona State University. He keynotes at many leading technology conferences, and has several well-read columns and blogs. Linthicum has authored 10 books, including the ground-breaking "Enterprise Application Integration" and "B2B Application Integration." You can reach him at david@bluemountainlabs.com. Or follow him on Twitter. Or view his profile on LinkedIn.

In order to post a comment you need to be registered and logged in.

Register | Sign-in

Reader Feedback: Page 1 of 1

Of course the argument that there are bad motor vehicle drivers is in no way an argument against the goodness of motor vehicles and the current need for well trained, disciplined drivers of those vehicles.

SOA is fine if apoplied pragmatically and for business gain. Most Architects have their heads up their own arses and have no idea of the business need and will happily see projects fail or damaged and business cases blown as lons as rigid architectural purity is preserved. if they had their way most businesses would have lovely architectures and no business.


  Subscribe to our RSS feeds now and receive the next article instantly!
In It? Reprint It! Contact advertising(at)sys-con.com to order your reprints!
Subscribe to the World's Most Powerful Newsletters

ADS BY GOOGLE
We talk a lot about social media on Marketing Trenches. And for good reason – Social media seems to...
Intel has put out its promised beta SDK for Windows (C and C++) and Moblin (C) developers working on...
InformationWeek stumbled on a Microsoft patent application dating back to 2006 deceptively titled “M...
Berlin-based ThinPrint AG, the printer virtualization house, thinks it’s got a cloud solution for th...
IBM has acquired Guardium, a seven-year-old subsidiary of Israel’s Log-On Software transplanted to M...
But on the web, access to services is implicit in the fact that the business is offering the service...
Behaving like it’s got a future, Sun Monday put out what it calls a significant new version of Virtu...
Oracle has offered to cordon off MySQL inside a combined Oracle-Sun to get the European Commission t...
The second set of charges filed last week against Indian outsourcer Satyam Computer Services founder...
Gartner told Reuters that it overestimated how many PCs Acer shipped in the last seven quarters by a...
Apparently Google Gears ain’t gonna stick around that long. Google Apps will eventually get their of...
Office Web Apps, Microsoft’s answer to Google Apps, are supposed to be out sometime in June along wi...
Gartner thinks the server business has stopped sliding into the abyss. Third-quarter sales weren’t a...
Gartner is buying ~$40 million-a-year AMR Research Inc for close to $64 million in cash. AMD special...
Singed by user reaction to its plans to up the price of its support contracts, SAP Tuesday postponed...
Oracle seems to have divided the open source ranks over the MySQL delay it’s having closing its acqu...
We hear – well, you know how people talk – that Oracle has been quietly meeting with the European Co...
The Korean government is going to sink around $172 million into cloud computing next year under a st...
In response to Opera’s complaints Microsoft has reportedly modified the proposed ballot screen that’...
Microsoft has sold the Folio and NXT businesses it got when it bought Fast Search and Transfer, the ...