Interesting article from Dion Hinchcliffe on running your SOA like a Web start up. As with most of Dion’s writing, well worth a read. The difference between SOA and cloud computing/APIs is well understood. Blogged on it recently. The question is how can we apply Web principles to the enterprise computing? Lets start by understanding the differences.
Business Drivers:
SOA and APIs are very different. They start from very different points with different end goals and most importantly originated by very different people. SOA is a technology approach, one with very sound computer science principles, all of which will get adopted. These projects are mostly originated by architects. API projects on the other hand are driven mostly by product managers. As their applications are getting more adoption they see a new revenue source, new way to satisfy customer demand by making APIs available.
Technology:
SOA and API are different – simplicity and scale. most SOA is based on Web services standards that solve every corner case known to mankind. Complexity increase with flexibility. APIs are mostly REST based. We see this change with our enterprise customers, many of them are adopting REST/Web API approach to solve their SOA projects. Secondly is scale. The same difference that we see in classic enterprise and Web computing software shows up here.
As Dion says there is value in applying API principles to SOA projects:
- Ease of use – as discussed above simplicity make a lot of sense.
- Self Service – as one makes things simple, using non-confidential or classified services/APIs should be easy – not calling 14 people and getting 20 approvals.
- Visibility/reporting – this is important for both the consumer and provider.
Not sure account management, developer community and licenses apply to internal enterprise projects or for that matter for API projects, but that is for another blog.
Cloud computing is bringing simplicity and scale requirements into focus for the enterprise and these differences are getting closer. As always Dion’s pictures/drawing are awesome.
