SOA can get leverage from social networking and web 2.0

From "Is SOA -- built upon Service Component Architecture and augmented by Web 2.0 approaches -- the ultimate corporate stimulus package?" by Joe McKendrick:

That's the theme of a recent IBM-hosted Webcast entitled "SOA in a Down Economy: Using Rational Application Developer with WebSphere Application Server to Increase Productivity."

...as pointed out by the speakers, the principles and practices of Web 2.0 are becoming part of SOA.

The emerging SOA-Web 2.0 power duo was explored in some detail by Chris Brealey, senior technical staff member for IBM Rational Software. "At IBM, we strongly believe in service oriented architecture and Web 2.0 as two styles or sets of principles that are extremely complementary, and both endeavor to provide a means for you to achieve great agility and great heterogeneity," he said.

Leveraging SOA and Web 2.0 to renew economic growth will be an important theme at IBM's upcoming "IMPACT" conference, to be held May 3-8 in Las Vegas.

In a previous post, Joe McKendrick reports from a discussion he had with Miko Matsumura, deputy CTO at Software AG, about how social networking can help service orientation.

"Tribes are really kind of the ultimate end game for SOA. It turns out that SOA is not a system integration problem, it is a social integration problem and that getting people to play well with others... But it's hard to do."

Miko says the emerging social networking approaches will address this formerly insurmountable cultural challenge to SOA. "The whole social network becomes sort of inextricably linked to the evolution of SOA. Without the ability to evolve agreement you can't even create solutions."

Many enterprises have highly distributed teams that may even span the globe, from Mumbai to Memphis to Munchen. Along with employees, there are also contractors, customers, and suppliers that need to become more closely aligned with the process. "It's really a social endeavor, it's a social network.... Instead of dragging something down by the weakest link, we're actually trying to drive out all the expertise and actually make something very optimal at the enterprise level. So we're trying to solve the hard problems in system integration through social integration and we're trying to be able to scale systems that way."

David Linthicum have discussed the potential marriage between SOA and social networking from a different angle - also seeing a clear opportunity to increase the value of a SOA by linking it with Twitter:

Lately I've been mixing SOA with social networking within a few engagements, and I have to tell you that the value is clearly there. Thus, you can take the API from one social network, and perhaps a few others, and blend the information extracted with corporate information, such as sales data, to spot trends in what's being Twittered and what's being sold. Believe me, the links are there. In essence, you mix and match the data services (enterprise and social network) to create a business intelligence layer built upon services.

There are a ton of applications for enterprise SOA with social networking systems such as promoting upcoming events, selling products, or recruiting employees. Or, perhaps providing customer support and relationship management through a social network. It's all being done and it's a great bang for the buck.