A recent blog post by Anne Thomas Manes on the alleged “Death of SOA” has been causing quite a stir. (In fact, my colleague at Cutter, Doug Barry, wrote (The Acronym) SOA is (Perhaps) Dead (at Some Companies) in reaction.) The contention is that the bad economic situation has finally finished the “SOAsaurus” off and that we must now concentrate on services, along with mashups, cloud computing, and software as a service (SaaS) — and not service-oriented architecture (SOA).

Knowing full well that SOA is alive — if not always exactly flourishing — in many organizations, my first reaction was that here were some sexy sound bytes designed merely as a marketing ploy.

At the same time, I had to admit the piece did strike a chord somewhere. In particular, I was reminded of a piece written nearly Read more …

On Monday, Anne Thomas Manes published SOA is Dead; Long Live Services on her blog at the Burton Group. My last check using Google showed that at least 50 bloggers have referenced her posting. Some have delighted in Anne’s statement that “It’s time to accept reality. SOA fatigue has turned into SOA disillusionment.” This point-of-view is further supported by a presentation Anne gave earlier this year that reported a Burton Group study that showed 50% of SOA projects were a complete failure and another 30 percent were considered not wholly successful in the 20 companies studied. This is pretty dismal stuff.

Paul Krill from Computerworld reported on Anne’s posting in SOA gets an obituary. You need to read to nearly the end of his article to see — as Alex Niehaus correctly points out in his Read more …