Yea, I feel your pain. So much time effort and money put into SOA and it is a complete a dismal failure. Sorry to have misled you. Daryl Plummer and I are deep in depression. Sucks to be us. Oh well here’s some free advice to help you get by. In fact I will make this very easy for you. All you have to do is copy and paste the following, substituting your name for the big red XXXX.
——————————————————————————cut here
To the CIO, CEO, CFO, CTO and shareholders,
As a result of the following I can now only deduce that SOA is a failure and any attempts at SOA will result in failure. Under my direction:
- I have failed to associate our SOA initiatives with our business needs, therefore I cannot show any value for the hundreds of services we have created ,
- I have failed to properly create and support an SOA Center of Excellence, Steering Committee or Competency Center,
- I have failed to enlist the executive staff as true supporters and evangelistscfor our SOA efforts.
- I chose to buy an ESB prior to truly understanding our SOA infrastructure needs (In reality this wasn’t my fault, the vendor said it was super duper necessary)
- I have failed to provide my developers incentives to reuse artifacts,
- It was not my responsibility to follow what was going on next door where there was a separate team dealing with BPM, I mean they are two different initiatives,
- I firmly believe that SOA is nothing more than fancy CORBA or COM.
Despite all of the things I have NOT done, SOA has failed. My additional failure to recognize and implement best practices that have been proven successful in many other companies worldwide also play into the failure of SOA.
Oh well, we should move on and try something new. On the bright side 70% of our initiatives fail anyway. The failure of SOA is SOA’s fault not mine.
Thanks for understanding and I’d like to declare in advance that Cloud Computing, Virtualization and SaaS will be failures under my direction as well.
Thanks for listening
XXXXXX
Project Manager, EA Artchitect, Lead Developer (Choose One)
———————————————————————-cut here
Email this to the largest DL you can find, and rejoice in the fact that you are not alone. Many others feel the same way.
-f
P.S. You failed, not SOA. Now go resign.
19 responses so far ↓
1 Gopi Bulusu // Nov 12, 2008 at 3:20 am
Want to add
P.S 2: Just make sure the BPM guy resigns too
2 SOA Center Service Oriented Architecture Blueprints » Platforms for cloud services // Nov 12, 2008 at 11:03 am
[...] Relevant to my previous “End of SOA SOA Sky is Falling Henny Penny 2.0” blog post, Frank Kenney from Gartner posted a great blog about the current state of SOA. [...]
3 Tom Tinsley // Nov 13, 2008 at 10:45 am
You are right on! After having a successful SOA implementation, I authored a book, “Deadlines and Duct Tape”, on this very subject.
4 Application Architecture, Development & Integration » Blog Archive » SOA Failure // Nov 17, 2008 at 8:01 am
[...] just read a PAINFULLY funny post by Frank Kenney called Ahh Shucks, SOA is a Failure. He nails the top reasons why SOA initiatives fail and not so subtly points out that the person [...]
5 Kleber Bacili // Nov 17, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Very funny way to show the main reasons to fail on SOA initiatives.
Regards,
Kleber
6 Anthony Bradley // Nov 17, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Leave it to Frank to spit in your eye because it is good for you. I tell clients that SOA is in a reverse-dating-breakup-blame scenario. When things go wrong SOA can look you in the eye and with sincerety over the failed relationship say, “Really, its not me, its you.” We have enough proof now that SOA is not bad. But there is still a LOT of bad SOA out there. These are indeed, good tips.
7 Ahh Shucks, SOA Is A Failure - Aquele blog de SOA // Nov 17, 2008 at 10:36 pm
[...] uma das formas mais legais que já vi de ilustração sobre erros comuns em SOA. Post escrito pelo Frank Kenney, mandando muito bem, pra [...]
8 CVRS // Nov 19, 2008 at 1:11 am
An interesting way to nail down the main causes of SOA Failure.
9 D James // Nov 20, 2008 at 11:01 am
Facetious as this post is, the P.S. at the end is an unfortunate bias that there is some SOA ‘truth’ out there. SOA works in some case but fails in others - and, not only because of the organization, or, people. Face it, in some cases it just doesn’t make sense based on your company’s architecture.
Yes, as a concept it is a good thing - and, depending on how your enterprise is organized it may only fit in some pockets but not necessarily all.
If your business can integrate applications with a positive NPV and less cost without SOA what would you choose?
10 Pigsaw Blog » Blog Archive » Bookmarks for 20 Nov 2008 // Nov 20, 2008 at 7:01 pm
[...] Ahh Shucks, SOA Is A FailureA letter from a fictional enterprise architect. (gartner soa humour ) [...]
11 Service-Oriented Architecture mobile edition // Nov 20, 2008 at 11:34 pm
[...] Gartner’s Frank Kenney provides the perfect excuse letter for corporate managers and shareholders for explaining why an SOA failed. Among the [...]
12 Application Architecture, Development & Integration » Blog Archive » Business Alignment, Strategy & SOA // Nov 21, 2008 at 7:34 am
[...] One of the oldest adages about application success or failure is that it hinges on being closely aligned with the business. Ironically, even though people have been saying this for decades, many organizations still fail at lining up closely with the business. It seems that every new approach to applications gives us yet another chance to get this wrong - SOA is no different! (See Frank Kenney’s SOA Failure post) [...]
13 Totto // Nov 21, 2008 at 8:36 am
Perfect postscript to “The laws of SOA” - I hope you don´t mind us quoting this fantastic post here: http://wiki.community.objectware.no/display/OWSOA/The+Laws+of+SOA
14 Structured Methods : HR Interoperability Links - 2008-11-21 // Nov 21, 2008 at 9:43 pm
[...] Ahh Shucks, SOA Is A Failure A letter from a fictional enterprise architect. Despite all of the things I have NOT done, SOA has failed. My additional failure to recognize and implement best practices that have been proven successful in many other companies worldwide also play into the failure of SOA. [...]
15 moebius recursive » Ahh Shucks, Gartner Is A Failure (Again) // Nov 23, 2008 at 9:23 am
[...] is becoming routine to see baiting headlines like Gartner’s latest on SOA Is A Failure. Suitably, this puff piece was delivered by the king of the [...]
16 Die perfekte Entschuldigung für geplatzte SOA-Projekte at SOA meets BPM // Nov 24, 2008 at 10:45 am
[...] Gartner-Analyst Frank Kenney die häufigsten Gründe für gescheiterte SOA-Vorhaben auf. In einem Blog-Eintrag formuliert er einen fiktiven Entschuldigungsbrief, den Projektverantwortlichen nur kopieren und [...]
17 Blog Xebia France - Revue de Presse Xebia // Nov 24, 2008 at 2:17 pm
[...] aujourd’hui avec l’autre évangéliste de SOA, le Gartner Group, qui nous gratifie de Ahh Shucks, SOA Is A Failure (Frank Kenney). À croire que le Gartner Group s’applique son célèbre Hype cycle et, après avoir loué [...]
18 Matt McKnight // Nov 25, 2008 at 11:57 am
SOA is so overblown…can we please stop talking about it as a generality and instead only speak of what it actually means? There’s way too much divergence in what people mean to say whether it is good or bad at a high level.
For me it’s been pretty simple-
Applications should provide running instances of remotely accessible and technology neutral APIs, with a preference towards messaging style asynchronous integration. (as opposed to user interface, shared file, shared database, RPC, or, my favorite, no integration)
Let’s face it- services and soa have always been around. DNS and DHCP are great services in the enterprise. Email is a great service. There are still places where component reuse make more sense than service reuse. Services can introduce a huge level of complexity and interdependence in the enterprise requiring a whole new level of bureaucracy. They can force projects that are otherwise dead to continue to live on because someone out there depends on them.
Your cynical attitude towards “failed SOA” efforts is ridiculous. Failed SOA efforts are because people are asking for too much money to do something simple. By overcomplicating and overselling the idea, Gartner shares the blame of raising expectations that there is some benefit to be gained by doing the Enterprise SOA thing in order to sell more of their product. Enterprises already are service oriented. Get over it and start talking about something that actually increases delivery speed and provides simple application APIs like Ruby on Rails, a technology Gartner nearly completely overlooked, despite the fact that it has flipped the build vs. buy equation for us on several projects already.
19 Thinkovation » Blog Archive » SOA - Dude, it’s alive and kicking // Jan 14, 2009 at 9:30 am
[...] oriented approach to software architecture, design and development can provide. A superbly ironic post by Frank Kenney on the Gartner blog site provides some handy insight, highlighting all the [...]
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