Chasing SOA unicorns

I spotted an amusing analogy for the evolution of SOA programmes…

…by Neal Ford in his blog: The perfect SOA is like a unicorn – a mythical beast – in the real world, we struggle to change our enterprise architectures from donkeys to horses.  To quote Neal:

“most company’s enterprise architecture looks more like a broken-down donkey. The SOA experiment is to see how close you can get to a unicorn before you run out of money. Maybe you’ll get to Shetland pony and stop. Or perhaps you’ll make it all the way to a thoroughbred racehorse. There are even a few that’ll create unicorns, but they are exceedingly rare.”

Of course, there is nothing wrong with striving to create a unicorn – with the realistic expectation that your SOA will end up with something a lot better than a donkey but probably without a horn.

Ronan

p.s. Myth experts will recall that unicorns can only be captured by the pure of heart.  Perhaps that is where the problem lies with SOA as well…

Post to Twitter Post to Delicious Post to Facebook Post to LinkedIn

Comments are closed.


Twitter Goodies

Recent Comments

  • Gravatar icon of AJ Brown AJ Brown
    November 1, 2010 (8:36)
    CICS and PHP - DON'T PANIC It's great to see transactional support of any kind for a cloud language... be it PHP or not (whi...
  • Gravatar icon of Vivekanand Kurdikeri Vivekanand Kurdikeri
    July 16, 2010 (12:41)
    Does Micro Focus Server for SOA miss the point? I think Micro Focus has done a tremodeous introduction of Web Service from a COBOL. May not be a ...
  • Gravatar icon of Ian J Mitchell Ian J Mitchell
    June 15, 2010 (6:14)
    CICS and PHP - DON'T PANIC Hi Steve, Well, we don't actually *demand* that you host the PHP in regions separate to those ru...
  • Gravatar icon of Rick Warren Rick Warren
    April 3, 2010 (12:27)
    AMQP - Great idea, but it will never work As someone who has worked on DDS from an implementation perspective as well as an OMG standards p...
  • Gravatar icon of Steve Craggs Steve Craggs
    December 12, 2009 (9:15)
    Did Teilhard's JuxtaComm patent wipe out IBM, Microsoft and SAP? Subsequent to my post, the Calgary Herald ran an article (http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/P...
  • Gravatar icon of John O'Hara John O'Hara
    December 10, 2009 (9:01)
    AMQP - Great idea, but it will never work Now, this is a late reply! @Thorlin. I looked at DDS before embarking on AMQP (I also looked a...
  • Gravatar icon of Jeff Darcy Jeff Darcy
    December 7, 2009 (2:40)
    Come in Texas East District Court, your time is up The important thing to remember about patents is that they're all about the claims. While the bu...
  • Gravatar icon of Emil Emil
    October 27, 2009 (9:08)
    BAM vs BI Good article. Thanks, Emil
  • Gravatar icon of Business Opportunities Business Opportunities
    October 23, 2009 (11:04)
    So Oracle got Sun - but why? Oracle has stepped up the rhetoric when it comes to its plans for Sun. In a message to Sun custom...
  • Gravatar icon of Gaurav Agarwal Gaurav Agarwal
    September 16, 2009 (1:15)
    IBM gets Cognos to fill the gaps IBM has two BAM solutions now Cognos Now! and Websphere Business Monitor. Why two BAM solutions f...