Informatica Perspectives

The following are the remaining five "HBIs" (half-baked ideas) I am formulating to explore how SOA, cloud computing, Enterprise 2.0 and virtualization are shaping our information and business environments in the coming decade - the 2010s. These are based on a keynote speech I presented at the recent Cloud QCamp online event. (For HBIs 1-5, click here.)

HBI #6: Made to order — application vendors will become assemblers of made-to-order, pre-built software components. Many industry analysts predict that the concept of an "application" will be obsolete - rather, our businesses will depend on services that are combined, mixed, matched, mashed and reused as needed.  More and more solutions are being built collaboratively, paving the way for the creation of modular, standardized building blocks that can be assembled, on-demand, for specific requirements. Application providers will more likely play the role of "assemblers" - rather than "creators" - who can leverage these components and quickly deliver services or components at reasonable prices. And they will have the upper hand in the market going forward.

HBI #7: Opportunity knocks — companies will seek services from third parties, providing new opportunities for smaller microbusinesses - as well as large "cloud combines." As applications continue to break down into loosely coupled components, enterprises will rely more on cloud-based functions, versus developing and maintaining everything in house. Many such services may be provided from third parties. It is likely, then, that "MicroISVs" may be the providers of these service-oriented components, providing services through brokers or brokered marketplaces, earning income on a per-transaction basis. A MicroISV may be an entrepreneur working from a spare bedroom; or may be a unit of a larger non-IT enterprise as well. Many of today's enterprises have already evolved into confederations of entrepreneurs and ad-hoc teams on a process level.  At the high end of the market, we will also see dominant vendors and service aggregators offering bundled cloud services and affiliated ecosystems. This may include well-established platform vendors who have large partner ecosystems.

HBI #8: Integration, light and simple. Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 is becoming the "Global SOA." SOAs may represent private clouds within enterprises, but perhaps the whole world is evolving into one gigantic SOA. This convergence has interesting implications for companies seeking faster and more cost effective ways to integrate their disparate silos of systems and information. Part of this evolution is that it's getting easier and easier for the average business user to do the integration and application development automatically.

HBI #9: SOA, WOA and cloud will increase outsourcing, but outsourcing will take a new form - fewer mega-deals, more micro-outsourcing. Sure, many companies will keep aspects of development in-house, since SOA, WOA and cloud can make integration so quick and painless. But SOA, WOA and cloud also offer major opportunities for outsourcing arrangements. First, busy IT shops - especially those with large enterprise systems - may not have enough human resources to effectively deploy SOAs, WOAs, and cloud formations. Second, infrastructures based on SOA, WOA and cloud formations will lower the barrier of entry for outsourcing providers, which will energize the market. Third, the growing standardization and "hot-swappability" of SOA, WOA and cloud components makes it easier to outsource pieces of the IT infrastructure to cloud providers. We already see this happening with Amazon Web Services and IBM's "Blue Cloud" initiative.

HBI # 10: More business users will be building their own applications. More IT people will be involved in the business. There's been plenty of talk about the separation between IT and business users. But thanks to SOA, WOA, and cloud computing, the walls are coming down. We have a whole new generation of users coming into the workforce - the so-called Generation Y group born between 1978 and 2001 - who live their lives by the computer, and expect services and information to be readily available on-demand. These individuals clearly understand the power and reach of information technology, and understand that business can't function without effective IT services. We also have many aspects of computer science programs being reoriented around the concept of "services," versus bits and bytes. And, regardless of economic conditions, businesses desperately need skilled managers and professionals that understand and can talk to both the business and IT side. A couple years back, Gartner predicted that many IT departments would begin to shrink, with up to a quarter of these entities would be absorbed into business units.