Here are some excerpts from an interview Rosenberg did with ITBusinessEdge:
Question: So. You're among those who feel Microsoft doesn't "get" SOA? Why do you say so? Do you think they don't get it -- or don't want to get it?My take is that inside of Microsoft its aggressor A-types are all about dissing SOA and promoting .NET ad nauseam. At the same time the Microserfs and developers must understand the inevitability of SOA for at last a portion of the most advanced and innovative enterprises' and service providers' architectures.
Rosenberg: I would say that not only does Microsoft not get SOA, they purposely are trying to usurp the whole concept for their nefarious doings. Microsoft offers nothing in the way of architectural development tools or infrastructure that supports the ideas behind an SOA. The Microsoft architecture of .NET is not designed to be service-enabled and when you try to service-enabled it yourself -- when you try to build the infrastructure so you can take advantage of reuse, you find yourself in a very customized system having defeated the purpose.
If you look at Microsoft infrastructure, it's all about trying to lock people into their hegemony and SOA is all about giving control to the user.
Question: Did you see Microsoft's 100-something page thesis on SOA, titled "SOA in the Real World?"
Rosenberg: I can't tell you I've sit there and poured over every word. It's not unlike their "Get the Facts" anti-Linux campaign -- it's simultaneously interesting and full of crap at the same time.
What's interesting to me about Microsoft's approach is the obvious thing to do with SOA is to say, "Of course we have a strategy -- here's what you do now and here's what we'll do in the future." What should've been very easy for them to say, "Yes, we'll be a part of this and we want to start to think about our way of doing [SOA]" -- that would be acceptable. Instead they take this bizarre approach.
There's no clear answer from Microsoft on what their vision for SOA is or how their products or things you'd buy from them would participate in a SOA. For that matter, there's nothing from Microsoft that would say to someone, "I should use these products for my SOA."
All of the sudden .NET went from being a language, to an application framework, to being a "Windows platform" again.
Developers are quick to shun things that they don't trust and I think Microsoft sets the tone for how their development community thinks about larger scale concepts and so far they've succeeded in making SOA confusing.
Question: So, is Microsoft's talk about SOA a barrier to its acceptance among developers?
Rosenberg: From what I can tell, they're not doing themselves any favors. The whole sort of wait-and-see approach is not great. What's interesting is developers do eat that Microsoft dogfood pretty fiercely. They wait for Microsoft before they make choices.
It's a challenge for architects in terms of being flexible and having agility in their work. If you look at IBM or BEA, it's very clear what their vision of SOA is. With Microsoft it's just not clear.
I think some of that is related to the fact that .NET was not built to be a SOA or a services platform. They don't want a heterogeneous environment, they want the entire Microsoft suite everywhere. For instance, a couple of months ago they were calling it service-oriented infrastructure. What is the rationale with not going with the industry standard terms?
Before I started this company [MuleSource], I was the CIO of financial services firm. Initially we had an all LAMP and Java infrastructure. Prior to my getting there, they outsourced the development of a .NET application. We went from having a highly scalable, flexible infrastructure that was able to consume data and services across the enterprise and added a .NET application into the infrastructure -- it was a complete and utter silo.
It was built around this framework that was not meant to go in a services direction, and we basically had to adjust everything else in the enterprise for this one application that couldn't align itself with the rest of the business.
And that is the unfortunate side of what .NET has done to development. Conceptually, Java guys are more likely to understand the SOA model than the .NET guys are -- developers are not trained to think about other applications in .NET. They aren't trained to think about wanting to consume or expose a service to another application. That has so far been a barrier to using .NET as a platform to do SOA.
For better or worse, this development style is what .NET developers live and breathe. If Microsoft doesn't have a component, it doesn't exist. But in the real world, you still need to solve that problem.
How can a company that in-the-know be so clueless about as an important concept as this? This is the world's largest technology company and it's proven to be completely impotent and useless with SOA so far.
Question: So, do you think this is a sort of marketing ploy by Microsoft or just because they didn't anticipate that SOA would take off?
Rosenberg: I think it's a bit of both. What I'd tell you is that they should embrace SOA. Open source, you can see why they don't embrace it -- but SOA, they should say it's awesome and encourage it. It doesn't make a lot of sense.
In the real world, we see people who have similar situations to the one I described, with one or two .NET applications that they want to get on the [enterprise service bus (ESB)]. Does Microsoft give you an obvious answer? Kind of, but not really.
And so, as the world turns toward SOA, Microsoft will fight quietly inside of itself about what it really is as a company -- a partner to its customers, or a parasite on the hide of productivity.
Ultimately the marketplace will determine Microsoft's end-game role. If there's an advantage to SOA for those that embrace it broadly and effectively -- and I believe without question that there is -- then there will be a penalty for those that do not embrace SOA principles. This will become apparent first as SaaS and hosted, on-demand applications providers.
For those IT shops that throw their infrastructure fates to Microsoft's software development and business development competencies (where the latter is the strength), they may encounter cost and agility disadvantages.
If I and Dave Rosenberg are wrong on SOA benefits and n Microsoft's lack of general support for SOA, then the more purely .NET shops should demonstrate market strength via lower TCO and greater business agility over time. The .NET-based businesses should play better amid complex, global business ecologies, and be able to take advantage of mixed sourcing across a waterfront of available services.
Under the dictates of comparative advantage, .NET and its Microsoft-oriented progeny should not create greater value and higher productivity for its customers than more general alternatives, such as open SOA. A choice of the best service for the job will dominate a choice over only the .NET service available.
I'll be waiting and watching, though my risk is an observer is much lower than the architects placing their bets in the coming years. The ante, incidentally, is the very survival of their companies as we enter an "flattened world" era of increased globalization, lower barriers to entry, open trade, and lightening fast market disrupters.
For those with an inclination to hedging bets -- banking on general SOA while supporting service-enabled .NET might be more secure and auspicious than banking on .NET while trying to support SOA objectives from a comparative disadvantage.
