Web 2.0 = SOA in the wild

Saturday, 11 February 2012

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Analysis, E-Government, Technology

By James Smith | 12 September 2007

What makes Web 2.0 applications different to the earlier generation of online offerings? In Web 1.0 we were trying to push innovation at users. Now the pressure is the other way – the users are pulling and shaping Web 2.0. Steve Hodgkinson is the Director of Ovum’s government practice in Australia and New Zealand.

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There are key differences in technology, business models and user behaviour. On the technology side, broadband is finally delivering the goods. People are connected globally across multiple device types – PCs, PDAs and phones – and they love it. This has enabled the Web to actually become the promised ubiquitous platform for rich always-on interactive applications where people engage, contribute and participate.

The logic of application development has also changed. Development is ‘lightweight’ (that is, launched in a basic form and refined rapidly with use to evolve and to scale), standards are open, software is open source, and the creation of pure web services is an explicit aim.

On the business model side, while the best outcome for many start-ups is simply to be acquired by Google, robust commercial models are emerging based on finely tuned micro-market advertising, and the charging of transaction and subscription fees for both data and software services.

Millions of users are publishing content, debating its meaning and organising it by tagging so that likeminded peers can search it efficiently. This network effect is creating new behaviours of global collaboration and knowledge sharing. It is also empowering users with choice. Web 2.0 is a user driven realm. It is a highly efficient market for ideas and services where users acting as both suppliers and consumers decide in realtime what appeals and what does not.

Implications for CIOs Many elements of Web 2.0 may subsequently end in tears, following in the steps of over-hyped elements of Web 1.0, but there are some big implications emerging for enterprise CIOs and knowledge workers.

Web 2.0 is a highly decentralised form of systems development that is succeeding in creating genuine web services – loosely coupled, reusable and interoperable – where many corporate attempts at SOA have largely failed.

Releasing SOA into the wild may be more effective than constraining it within dysfunctional corporate governance arrangements. SOA is fundamentally about behaviour, and Web 2.0 seems to have created the environment for SOA to actually flourish bottom-up where top-down approaches have been stonewalled.

One of the big differences between Web 2.0 and Web 1.0 is that Web 2.0 companies are not necessarily seeking to create sophisticated, integrated service offerings like an SAP or a Microsoft Office. They are simply seeking to create highly targeted web services that match exactly to, and evolve rapidly with, user needs.

You can see this in the pattern of venture-capital deals for Web 2.0 companies. The deals are smaller and more numerous. The companies are more focused and disciplined with cash. The result is a huge burst of decentralised web services innovation – SOA in the wild. Check out www.allthingsweb2.com/mtree/.

This site provides an open directory of almost 2,500 Web 2.0 offerings in 160 categories. While some of these applications appear trivial, many are actually progressively decomposing once proprietary enterprise applications into open web services. Anyway, how long ago was it that the idea of a website for users to post home videos seemed trivial?

Web 2.0 is blurring the boundaries of the organisation by creating richer networks of individuals that are no longer as constrained by corporate structures and their firewalls. Web 2.0 stimulates collaboration, sharing and choice. People are choosing to work from home if the corporate IT environment frustrates how they would like to access information or work with their peers outside the enterprise.

As software-as-a-service applications mature and gain the legitimacy of the global mega-brands such as Google, they potentially start to provide viable alternatives to traditional enterprise software. It may not be too long before some users prefer to use Skype, Google Apps, Zimbra or Zoho Office for collaboration across organisational boundaries.

Received wisdom for CIOs has been to enable ‘knowledge worker’ innovation by providing the organisation with an efficient and flexible ubiquitous IT infrastructure platform. This is fraught with big strategic decisions, byzantine governance, million-dollar contracts, enterprise architecture, interoperability frameworks and mandated standards…the trappings of top-down organisational dynamics.

Web 2.0 seems to be delivering elements of this ubiquitous IT infrastructure platform via the bottom-up alternative of ‘SOA in the wild’. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for applications developed in the wild to be domesticated back into the enterprise, and also to see who drives this – CIOs or users?