- Grid computing will grip the attention of enterprise IT leaders, although given the various concepts of hardware grids, compute grids, and data grids, and different approaches taken by vendors, the definition of grid will be as fuzzy as ESB. This is likely to happen at the end of 2008.
- At least one application in the area of what Gartner calls “eXtreme Transaction Processing” (XTP) will become the poster child for grid computing. (see Gartner Research ID # G00151768 - Massimo Pezzini). This “killer app” for grid computing will most likely be in the financial services industry or the travel industry. Scalable, fault tolerant, grid enabled middle tier caching will be a key component of such applications.
- Event-Driven Architectures (EDA) will finally become a well understood ingredient for achieving realtime insight into business process, business metrics, and business exceptions. New offerings from platform vendors and startups will begin to feverishly compete in this area.
- Service Component Architecture (SCA) will become the new way for SOA applications to be defined as support from all the major platform vendors (sans Microsoft) will be rolled out.
- New lightweight containers models will become more prevalent, with continuing adoption of Spring, OSGi, and EJB3.
- Web 2.0 applications will start to become more prevalent in enterprises. Many initial successes of quick and dirty, Enterprise Mashups with attractive looking RIA style applications that include Flex, IM, and threaded discussion groups will be developed for useful business applications such as collaborative workflows. The associated hype will leave some wondering why they are embarking down the path of long term SOA projects with similar goals in mind.
- Some of those Web 2.0 applications will fail, with an important piece of the user interface just not showing up one day because one of the supporting feeds just isn’t there any more. The guy who mashed it up in the first place doesn’t work there anymore, and many will be scrambling to figure out who is supposed to fix it, and who to point the finger at.
- As a result, a renewed focus on governance will emerge. Industry pundits and thought leaders who had previously been strong proponents of SOA governance will passionately start evangelizing the antithetical concept of building process and governance into the creation of enterprise mashups.
- By end of year it will be clear that an understanding of infrastructure requirements for common problems such as predictable scalability, reliability, security, (*-ilities) will be necessary in order to support any combination of SOA, REST, or Web 2.0 style applications. However the exact architecture or even the list of requirements in support of such infrastructure will not be well understood or agreed upon. Such a common understanding will not come to bear until at least 2010. This will be the new frontier to explore in the coming years.
- Oh yeah, and Dave Chappelle will make a huge comeback this year, but without the $50M contract. :)
Great predictions. Grid has been on the back burner waiting for the killer app. I've heard it said that grid will put the final nail in Big Iron, which now processes most of the world's transactions. We'll see. The demise of the mainframe has been predicted many times.
With respect to Big SOA, I completely agree. Big SOA can be done right, bringing a much-needed big picture view to individual SOA initiatives. However, Big SOA is often merely a money pit with little or no measurable value. See my post on the subject.
Regards,
Kelly A. Shaw, Ph.D.
Analyst
Serena Software
Dear Dave,
I've been doing more thinking about your predictions concerning mashup governance. Current SOA Governance tools will help tame the chaos behind the firewall, and may even help manage acces to services provided by SaaS vendors. Assuming, of course, that IT knows about the SaaS vendors.
But will any SOA Governance tool be able to enforce governance policies in the big WOA world? Will IT have to change from an enforcer to merely an advisor?
What do you think?
Regards,
Kelly A. Shaw, Ph.D.
Analyst
Serena Software
Hi Kelly,
Thanks for the comments. I'm not sure I agree with your assessment that "Big SOA" is a money pit with little or no value (although I have to admit I don't really know what your specific definition of "Big SOA" is). Its kind of funny, your use the term "Big SOA" reminds me of how I used to point fingers at "Big EAI" :)
I believe that adoption of SOA should be approached at an enterprise level because it requires changes in ownership and responsibilites, and requires buyin at all levels of the organization in order to be successful. I also believe that an organization adopting SOA should choose initial projects that can show benefits in a matter of months, and accompany that with a longer term vision of where they are trying to get to.
I was merely pointing out that initial success of quick and dirty Web 2.0 applications may cause some to question their broader SOA initiatives, but in the end those applications may fail if they are not subject to the same kind of governance exercises as "Big SOA".
Just as IT needs to worry about rogue services in a SOA, it also needs to worry about mashups by mavericks is all I'm saying.
Dave
Great article.
What do you think about the role of SOA w.r.t Enterprise Mashup [sply server side mashup ] ? Can SOA based framework be the foundation for server-side enterprise mashup ?
oh, like this post, added to favourites
SCA looks more Corba-ish. Hope it is not a step backward...