Evolution to Service-Oriented Communities, Service-Oriented Economy and the Semantic Web

                       


A recent debate on the Network World web site between between Cisco and Cienna regarding the need for networks to be application-aware precipitated this blog.

NetworkWorld has recently run a "Face-Off" in order to get opposing views on the need for networks to be application-aware.  You can visit the following links to get their two points of view:

Issy Ben-Shaul is Director of Engineering of Cisco's Application Delivery Business Unit
http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2006/041706-application-aware-yes.html

Raghu Ranganathan is Technology Director in the Office of the CTO at Ciena
http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2006/041706-application-aware-no.html

I recently submitted my comments to Issy Ben-Shaul which were subsequently posted by NetworkWorld. 
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/5456

Networking Dilemma

I have written about this in one of my blogs: http://soanetworkarchitect.com/2006/02/27/soa-networking-dilemma.aspx .  The focus of this blog was to outline that as we move to communicate intelligently between enterprises, we must either communicate associated meta-data about these enterprises or we have to assume a common metadata (ebxml attempts to agree on common processes and metadata between enterprises).  Once we share the associated enterprise meta-data, reasoning and therefore intelligence can take place.

However the question is:  Does the network need to be aware and participate in the exchange of intelligence between enterprises?  Just because networks can, should they?


Communicating Metadata in order to have Intelligent Exchanges between Enterprises is not the Same Thing as having an Intelligent Network

I think that we often get these two ideas confused.  Just because we want to evolve to be able to intelligently communicate and share services between enterprises, does this mean we want the network and associated network devices to participate in these exchanges?  I would say yes we do, provided there is some value-add and these appliances do not adversely affect network performance.  In fact we see many of these SOA Appliances becoming Policy Enforcement Points for security, governance, compliance and expect other policies in the future.

 
Three Stages of SOA Evolution before We get to the Semantic Web

The Semantic Web is a move to agree or communicate metadata through the use of taxonomies in order for reasoning to take place in the network.  But until this happens, I believe there will be three evolutionary steps that SOA will go through, before we get to the semantic web:

Stage 1 – Enterprise SOA,

Stage 2 - Service-Oriented Communities (SOA Hubs), and

Stage 3 - Service-Oriented Economy (SOA Networks). 

And the primarily reason I believe that these evolutionary steps will take place – it is all a matter of trust and as this trust evolves over time enterprises will be be prepared to share more information about themselves.  First this trust will be in the form of a small number of shared services and a limited amount of metadata between know parties, then the sharing of business processes, and then taxonomies.  However this evolution will happen over time.

 

Trust between Unknown Enterprises Is Hard to Comprehend for Most People

While SOA adoption is well underway within the enterprise, in the next stage will start to share services in Service-Oriented Communities (SOC).  These SOC’s will be made up of trading partners that are well known and are likely going to replace some EDI deployments since these SOA hubs will provide much more value and flexibility.  The last stage, the move to a Service-Oriented Economy (SOE), requires a larger leap, since in this stage services are exposed to unknown partners.  In a SOA Hub environment the security, policies and relationships are much easier to control (relatively), however to go the next Stage requires a huge change in control; our understanding of the Semantic Web and our view of trust.

I believe that this hurdle to sharing services and business processes outside the enterprise to unknown partners is a major hurdle to overcome ie. Stage 2 SOA to Stage 3 SOA.  And subsequently the move to share taxonomies outside of the enterprise, as we evolve to the Semantic Web, is even a large leap of trust and understanding. 


And until we get to the Semantic Web, I feel there is a role for the network to participate in the exchange of intelligence between Enterprises.