In the early days of SOA many new products arrived on the scene that seemed to be solutions looking for a problem. As the SOA space matures (or maybe matured, since some have claimed it is dead*), so do the products and the relevant architectural patterns that use those products. However, there are other areas of SOA where you find solutions looking for a problem – the services themselves. One of the hype factors of SOA is the amazing agility the business gets when you servicify your enterprise. Some technologists see this as an opportunity – even a necessity – to make every service they design enterprise class – making assumptions about how this service will be reused by the business units without having requirements for reusability and without the governance in place to properly identify if there is an enterprise need for the service. These are the kinds of actions that can lead to SOA failures.

The “Field of dreams” analogy was used often in the early SOA days. The idea that a bunch of services available to the business will enable a serendipitous discovery of new revenue streams and more efficient business processes has yet to bear fruit. Not that it has no merit, but given tighter budgets and higher scrutiny these days, a more pragmatic approach is appropriate. An approach that builds services based on providing proven business value, not for technology’s sake. While this seems obvious, I’ve seen time and again that services are created in the name of pure SOA. Beware this path! There is a large price to pay to expose services publicly (either within the enterprise or without).

IMO, even in a SOA world agile practices should guide what we build, how we build it, and how we evolve our SOA. Take the approach of the system changing (embrace it) instead of trying to (usually unsuccessfully) design the complete system up front. Know why you want to expose something as a service (reusability? flexibility?). If the service can be justified as needing enterprise scope because it provides proven business value then make it so. But don’t do it in the name of SOA.

*I believe what was really said is we are beyond the SOA Hype Cycle.

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