Service-Oriented Architecture

1. Simplify the scope of SOA (and so our lives who need to deal with it day in and day out) – SOA is perfect example of the one of the ‘Doom signs’ that I talked about my another blog ” Are we growing on a fundamentally doomed DNA for tomorrow's IT eco-system” . As SOA become popular stuff, there seems to be SOA solution for everything in the life, including marriage problem (that’s slight exaggeration but you know what I’m talking about). It basically meant that the global SOA framework has millions of stuff to be designed, looked after and ‘reengineered’ to make it work in SOA way. I think that’s way too much. So if there is only one wish that Santa is going to grant, that will be to simplify the scope of SOA so that millions of engineers and consultants who are spending countless hours on SOA with clients can save lot of precious time and energy and deliver exactly as much is needed exactly how it is meant to be.
2. Let SOA investments be absolutely business (performance) goal driven (and given to IT to meet the goals than meeting the specifications only) – I think Santa can relate to this easily. He doesn’t give X-mas gifts to children just like that. He knows what goals he has for those children. SOA investments are somewhat like that. Many of the SOA programs don’t really have well defined business goals and in fact for many of such programs, there aren’t any expectations from business at all. That scares me a lot while nearly 60% (don’t count on this number, it just means majority of it) of the SOA intellectual teachings on the web say that SOA is all about business and yet, most of the SOA programs don’t have any clearly defined measurable business goals that are used to define, design and deploy the SOA capabilities.
3. Give us freedom from ‘technology minefield’ to focus on architecture and business – That’s another issue with Santa. He fortunately or unfortunately doesn’t need to rely on technology as such to get his Christmas stuff done. So he will need to spend some more time with me to understand how technology minefields are blocking the focus on the core through which value is created – Architecture and Business engineering. It seems majority of consumers are badly occupied solving technology problems in order to free up their thinking CPU for going to next step of SOA.
4. May every IT portfolio competently adopt SOA as core of their part of the IT architecture (and save the world from the complications of yet another competency center) – this is endless debate but because it is my wish list, I think I  can be free to ask Santa to make it happen, some may like, others may not. If you fall into any of these two categories (likes and dislikes), you just can’t miss reading my another blog (and post your comments of likes and dislikes both welcome equally) “Who Needs the SOA Competency Center in this world?” 
5. Make all the vapor stuff disappear (and bless the real stuff no matter how small that might be) – Unfortunately Santa has not spent any of his time following the fun in the IT industry so it is going to be very difficult for him to understand the problem of a thick vapor layer that has engulfed the real-stuff behind SOA across the globe. So I don’t mind spending time with him and I’m sure when he understands the seriousness of the vapor problem (no less than global warming and ozone layer depletion in my view), he may not mind casting spell to make all the vapor disappear. Current rate of disappearance is very slow and it is big time hindering the focus on what really SOA could do/should do.
6. Orient the top brains (and minds) towards serious and selfless collaboration to create next breakthrough innovation with SOA – I mean, how long can industry be talking about the same thing again and again and again and yet again. SOA is a good thing and it has been very kind to industry to give new hopes, new excitement and new view-points. But it got to be moving forward. We all are making small small steps for that but I think it will be just great if top brains across the globe could unite and bring forward best of the innovation in this space that can transform the industry. SOA needs it. Otherwise we all will be sitting in our own small corners and beating our own drums for all small stuff that we could do and our time will be up. We all are selfish to some extent in our business space and competitive landscape so I thought I will leverage the divine power to resolve this problem.
7. Save me from feeling guilty of not having “seven” wishes. It seems everyone has either top 7 or top 10 for whatever they want to say. Unfortunately I got stuck at 6th and I could not figure out what my 7th wish could be. I hope Santa doesn’t mind that.

So that’s all I have. It is very difficult for me to anticipate what will be going in the people’s head when they read this blog (so risk is entirely mine) but if you have your wish-list for Santa for SOA for 2010 and beyond then treat this blog space as your home and share with us what your wishes are. Who knows, Santa just might be listening to all this and it could turn out to be a rather serious affair. Wish all of you a great X-mas ahead!