Saturday, December 19, 2009

Partly Cloudy: Are the new technology buzz words worth it?

My Nexus Muses:
I wish you all a wonderful and safe holiday season!
If your family is like mine, you know how excited some family members become over the newest technologies they receive as gifts. They can’t wait to get the newest game system or the latest smart-phone.
It seems to me that business and technology professionals often become excited about the newest technologies.
I recently met with a Chief Information Officer (CIO) who is interested in using new technologies to reach his customers. He was particularly excited about “Cloud Computing” and “Software as a Services” (SaaS).
As a profession with many years of experience, I wonder how much the newest technologies are really repackaging of existing ideas. I also wonder about the value of the new technology buzz words.
During the past decade, great attention was given to Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). I recognized that SOA was really a repackaging of the best practices for information technology developed since the mid-1960s. SOA embodies many proven concepts including: structure, encapsulation, abstraction, separation of concerns, loose-coupling, high-cohesion, etc.
Some executives and managers used the SOA message to re-examine and improve their efforts around the embodied concepts. They established Enterprise Services groups and Enterprise Architecture teams. Others became mired down in adopting the new SOA approach; leading to the question, “Is SOA dead?”
Today, we face new technology buzz words: Cloud Computing, Software as a Service, Fabric, etc.
Are the new technology buzz words worth it? What do you think?
__Joseph Starwood (http://www.linkedin.com/in/JosephStarwood)