Why are we still talking about 'dead' SOA?

I'm surprised that the dead SOA conversation continues to have life. The now infamous post by Anne Thomas Manes that appeared at the beginning of this year sparked more debates in the blogosphere than anybody could have anticipated. Hopping on the bandwagon, we even hosted a webinar with Anne about SOA's role in cloud computing titled "SOA: Dead Man Walking in the Cloud."

What surprises me these days, however, is that the conversation/debate is still being held. Just this week, Joe McKendrick's blog over at ZDNet has an entry dedicated to the subject and a post from Manes clarifying the common misunderstanding - the term SOA has lost it's luster yet we need to continue to focus on delivering services that generate measurable business value. Since Joe's always on top of the news, this tells me that the conversations about SOA being dead are far from over.

Now I've spoken to Anne about the post and she raises some excellent points that seemed to have been taken out of context by a lot of folks in the industry. At some point, however, we have to ask ourselves when this 'SOA is dead' debate will die. The more we talk about it, the more life we give it. The bottom line always has been - and will continue to be - that the technology needs to break down the silos, streamline the business processes and simply work so that companies can stay in business. And make a little money.

So for us to get on with the task at hand, can we please let the 'SOA is dead' debate die? By this, I mean we need to focus on the way technology supports the business and not get caught up in the jargon.

This is the last post you'll see on the 'SOA is dead' debate. Perhaps you’ll all join me in this effort to no longer give the topic life.

-Jeff