Tis the season to be jolly and predict happenings in 2013. One such set of predictions comes from Eric Roth who looks specifically at SOA.
SOA is shifting to support social, mobile and cloud. SOA is being used to support task specific services called Application Program Interfaces - APIs. These APIs are used in mobile devices and cloud computing solutions. A good example of an API is the Like or Tweet buttons on web pages. The APIs are how these systems communicate. APIs are now often the façade of SOA with SOA providing integration, security, governance and management of services.
Eric also sees a trend for "application modernization" driving SOA integration.
Applications must be modernized to support new technologies such as mobile, cloud, social and big data. For example, big data might not sound like a SOA use case but the use of low-latency, real-time messaging is used in many SOA implementations and is now being used to solve many big data problems by analyzing and applying rules to events. SOA supports events and event processing supports big data solutions – particularly high-velocity problems.
Other people offering their predictions around the SOA space include Larry Warnock, the CEO of Gazzang:
Buoyed by increasing adoption of and trust in cloud technologies, big data will move out of the shadows and start to creep into the boardroom. While big data is already a conversation topic at most enterprises, it’s traditionally been relegated to IT and development projects. Next year, these organizations will start to see big data as a solution for driving better business intelligence, product innovation and customer service.
And of course we've seen SOA and Cloud align a lot over the past few years, so it's no surprise that there are some predictions in this area too. For example, according to Ryan Hughes, 2013 will be the year where the term 'Private Cloud' is shown to be no more than 'Cloud-Washed Virtualization":
Just because you might have flexibility to decide how much RAM you can assign to a VM, doesn't give you the right to "cloud-wash" your internal IT operation and call it something that it's not... because although it may be Private (can someone tell me again why it's important to be able to touch your servers?), it's certainly not Cloud.
In fact Ryan believes that the term 'Cloud' will be more tighly defined to include:
• transform your IT into only operational expenditures (OpEx)
• go global in minutes
• never have to guess your initial or future capacity
Finally with the amount of buzz around mobile these days it shouldn't be a surprise that some predictions see it continuing to strongly influence the future. IDC for instance see mobile and Cloud, with "as a Service", dominating.
For the past several years, the IT industry's transition to the 3rd Platform, built on mobile computing, cloud services, social networking, and Big Data analytics technologies, has dominated the annual Predictions from International Data Corporation (IDC). For 2013, IDC predicts the transition to the 3rd Platform will shift into high gear as the industry accelerates past the exploration phase and into full-blown, high stakes competition.
Those of you with time machines or crystal balls may be able to give us a more accurate indication of what to expect in 2013. But even if you don't possess such things, we'd be interested in your thoughts on the current set of predictions or even some of your own. And let us be the first to wish everyone a very merry festive season and a happy 2013!