In February 2007, as we were starting up the SOA Consortium, I facilitated a series of invitation-only, vendor-free, SOA Executive Summits, with leading CIOs and CTOs representing Fortune 1000 corporations, major government agencies and non-governmental organizations. The purpose of the Summits was two-fold. First, was to validate, augment or contradict the mission, vision, strategies and tactics of the newly formed SOA Consortium. Second, was to conduct a roundtable discussion on real-world Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) implementation opportunities and challenges with advanced SOA adopters.
One of the questions I asked during the roundtable was “Where will the services come from?”…
…Two years later, inspired by a conversation with a cloud computing software provider, I revisited the “where will the services come from question” with members of our community of practice. However, instead of focusing on where they might “get services”, I asked if their organizations are currently, or considering, “offering services via the cloud”, to augment interactions with business partners and existing customers, and/or as a means to generate new revenue streams.
