As an architect at a solutions provider that spends a lot of concrete time with SMB customers and some time with the tier 1 guys, I completely agree with the notion that SOA is cemented in at least the minds, and in many cases the architectures, of the biggest of companies. But I think you miss some of the picture on your discussion of the simple heads. You paint a good picture of the thinking of the ISV that doesn’t compete in the tier 1 space, but I would say that the end-customers in SMB, those buying SOA, have a completely different perspective. It’s not the technology, it’s the complexity and cost.

In the SMB space, SOA is pipe dream in the mind of the VP of IT because it’s perceived as just too complicated and expensive. Most of the SOA press is around improved plumbing, and if I have a limited budget and limited resources (that spend most of their time just keeping things running), I can’t afford to replace the plumbing just because new plumbing is cool. I need the CFO to require an application which happens to be built on a SOA framework, or I need a burdensome and scary regulation and a prepped consultant to tell the CFO that I need an SOA solution.

That’s why I think that Oracle and SAP are poised to really win with SOA in SMB, and it’s going to be much more difficult for those guys that are “just infrastructure providers.” I’ve talked to a couple of Oracle customers that have unknowingly modified BPEL when they toyed with the JDeveloper that was included with Financial Management product. These guys are building a SOA infrastructure and don’t realize it. And for all those Oracle and SAP wannabes, the technology is on their side. The openness and standardization of SOA should enable interoperability regardless if the underlying implementation is 11g, WebSphere Application Server, or ODE.

Finally, I will say that there is the issue of SOA maturity. It’s telling that a team of architects, engineers, and admins from IBM Global Services or Accenture is required to install the required middleware, let alone build applications and maintain the infrastructure. This is back to the cost and complexity, but again it’s tough for a VP of IT to justify a DBA, let alone an SOA admin.

Although I won’t deny that the technology is import, it may not be at first glance for the obvious reasons (i.e. technology for technologies sake).

Solving the real I.T. tasks that exist within any organisation is very difficult, programming is difficult, at least programming well. Thus if you wish to solve such issues your need Rockstar programmers. The thing is you wouldn’t ask a rockstar to come play in your band only if he use your particular choice of Guitar or drums, rather he would bring his ‘Axe’ of choice, his ‘kit’ that he was most effective at weaving his creativity with. Thus what I was suggesting in the comment was to solve your problems you need heroes and rockstars from the programming world, but they will only be interested and motivated if they can bring there own kit. In this instance a rockstars stratocaster may be Ruby on Rails, their Telecaster or Les Paul could be Groovy or Python. With there choice of ‘kit’ they bring their skills, creativity, agility and get-tin it done attitude using their own internal 80/20 agile cycles. Right now there are loads of these rockstars out there attracted to web 2.0 companies or even their own startups, if you want a piece of that enthusiasm, if you want some heros to work for you you will need to provide an environment that rockstars work in, rest assured most of these prefer REST to Ws-deathstar, thats just what they work with.

So actually it is about the technology but only indirectly because it’s actually about the people, the heroes and rockstars that are going to make your company rock.

P.S. Simple vs Complex - head is totally wrong, its not about simple vs complex it is agile,adaptive fast iteration vs heavy planning, architectural top down design.

regards
Al