Humans and SOA
I recently ran across an interesting article from Duane Nickull entitled Humans as part of the SOA equation.
I think he has a very interesting point of view in that human interaction is a key consideration for any SOA architecture. One of the failures of previous EAI/BPM solutions has been extremely limited considerations for human interaction. By focusing in on a higher level of business process simulation (as opposed to workflow simulation), SOA can break through some previously impermiable layers.
One of the major strengths of SOA is that it is an IT enabler that finally takes the perspective of the human instead of taking the perpsective of the machine. And, this is important when trying to position SOA within an organization.
Unfortunately, IT still considers SOA to be the next technology thing, but to be truly revolutionary, it needs to be considered from the business side of the house — where automation of business process coupled with embracing changes to the process are extremely valuable.
