We see change is coming with the digital natives using mashups to manipulate the environment, social networks to connect with others, content communities to express themselves, blogs to remember who they are, wikis to educate themselves and others and instant messaging to communicate. Further down the aisle of time it will all go mobile and then we lose whatever traction we’ve got.

“Social Computing is not a fad. Nor is it something that will pass you or your company by. Gradually, Social Computing will impact almost every role, at every kind of company, in all parts of the world. Forrester Research, Social Computing – How Networks Erode Institutional Power, And What to Do About It”

Here is another article on the same issue: http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=201804743

We see this change is coming fast down the back of an aging workforce and managerial philosophies that erodes slower than the managers them selves.

Who

Digital natives and the rest of us.

When

Now and Zen.

Why

Evolution happens.

Where

Internet, Intranet, Xtranet, Younet, Themnet, Everynet

How

SOA is one part of the stew that will enable a company to transform it’s enterprise architecture into a  constantly moving window of opportunity.

What can be done about it

Leave the fortress and build huts instead which means in EA-speak “Think, act and breathe agile and lean EA”.

A while back I came across a post on nform.ca, where information architect Gene Smith of the Atomiq.org blog outlined the 7 building blocks of social software.

I recently used the model to explain the key capabilities of social software when brainstorming ideas with some friends. The model worked really well, everybody felt that they understood what the foundation consisted of and we could focus on other issues.

Explaining SOA to some really smart bussines people

Then at another meeting, I was asked to explain SOA to some business people. I tried the traditional approach of explaining how services could be thought of like pieces of LEGO. That the pieces could be assembled in new configurations and thus creating new business processes. I showed them a picture trying to illustrate what I meant. (ZapThink has an excellent article about the LEGO concept of SOA) (The Swedish Magazine NyTeknik has an excellent image depicting the Lego nature of SOA)

But it was to no avail.

Sure they understood the basic concepts but when we came to more and more details such as defining a service as stateless, discoverable, autonomous, loosely coupled, composable, abstract, reusable. Then adding the concepts surrounding governance and SDLC.

I had an epifany and once again I could see where the puck should be

Thats when I had an epifany, why not explain SOA in the frame of social software. I used Gene Smiths original model and rewrote it to be about services instead of people.

7 building blocks of SOA

Identity
A way of uniquely identifying services in the system

Presence
A way of knowing which service is online, available or otherwise reachable

Relationships
A way of describing how services are related

Conversations
A way of communicating with other services

Groups
A way of forming mashups of services

Reputation
A way of knowing the status of other services

Sharing
A way of sharing things that are meaningful to services, such as other services