Comments from Grady Booch on SOA

Grady Booch, a father of UML and now an IBM fellow, made this comment about SOA in his blog in March 2006:

"My take on the whole SOA scene is a bit edgier than most that I’ve seen. Too much of the press about SOA makes it look like it’s the best thing since punched cards. SOA will apparently not only transform your organization and make you more agile and innovative, but your teenagers will start talking to you and you’ll become a better lover. Or a better shot if your name happens to be Dick. Furthermore, if you follow many of these pitches, it appears that you can do so with hardly any pain: just scrape your existing assets, plant services here, there, and younder [sic], wire them together and suddenly you’ll be virtualized, automatized, and servicized.

What rubbish."

Booch is right. The important thing is that SOA is a strategy that requires time and effort. SOA is a multi-year journey. You need some experience to understand what SOA really is about, and where and how it helps.

And, in IT, each system is different. As a consequence, you will have to build your specific SOA—you can’t buy it. To craft it, you’ll need time and an incremental and iterative approach.