Share via


The Cloud, about computing and services and how it relates to the SOA strategy

There is no doubt that the industry did shift from Hard- to Software years ago. We all faced the rise of IT-power and vendors for decades.

Year over year, the Law of Moore described the stage, at what pace the industry will walk ahead (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law).

Even with good will and imagination, we have been able, to adopt this law for Software and the related industry. Even it was more "virtual", still the increase in software and related functions was obvious.

With the shift from Software to Services in the last years, this aproach became challenging and it is an industry-wide trend: The leading IT (Hardware)- vendors first invested in Software (IBM, HP), using their installed base, to grow this segment. But the game changed, when IBM aquired PWC and HP EDS.

as of a sudden, Services & Consulting became the differentiator in the market. Being first with consulting was the name of the game -

But didn´t we miss something ?

Is it really about selling consulting and "utilization" ? Do customers really invest in getting tought about "how to use a trading platform", "how to use a search engine" or "how to use a navigation-software "?

The angle is the related service the consulted solution will provide. The value-ad is less to own the consulting part: It is to the pure service a company does deliever.

This is, why SOA was the natural predecessor of cloud: The definition of services had to be done in order to cloud-enable them. It was the fundamental turn-around in the way, customers and vendors had to think. The question is now defined in the way, how to provide this service-solution. Just being earlier at the customer-site through consulting is only one part of the game: Helping to define better services is changing it from buttom up. And it does mean, you don´t win, because you are first, it does mean, you have to innovative in thinking.

"Cloud" is still related to what kind of software can be hosted virtually. Cloud in the eyes of customers to mean, what kind of services can be hosted. That is changing the way of looking at it. Cloud in the first sense is called "hosting".

So - is it fullfilling, to talk about "cloud" and why Business Architects change the game.

“Service enabled selling” is the name of the game. Defining our approach, especially the approach we Business Architects lead the discussionis a challenge, we should face. It is us who have to give Cloud a face.