The Inovis Blog

Every time we turn around, there is a new set of acronyms we need to learn in the IT world. The latest Gartner IT Expo Top 10 list is yet another opportunity for acronym based learning (ABL) in 2008.    The acronym of most interest for enterprise architects is WOA, which is a subset of SOA, and will drive innovation for SaaS providers; specifically for Inovis customers’ B2B and SCM needs as it relates to IaaS.

WOA indeed! 

Web Oriented Architecture (WOA) is an emerging best practice model, which is essentially a subset of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).  SOA is fundamentally an architecture model which manages consumers and producers of web services (WS-*) within and outside of the enterprise.  Services are interoperable capabilities which perform a specific function and traditionally have SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) over HTTPs (Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer), but WOA is simplified to support mainly HTTP and eXtensible Markup Language (XML) driven Web 2.0 applications.

WOA represents a focused set of “simplified” SOA capabilities as noted by Dion Hinchcliff which essentially focus on stateless web services which deploy Representation State Transfer (REST).  The simplication essentially rests in the limited protocols and content representations used in WOA deployment, where traditional the SOA landscape emcompasses more diversity in content, connectivity and discovery.

source: zdnet

WOA will be able to provide capabilities for B2B leaders, community participants, and innovators to rapidly develop content and functionality to be used for a given business community. An example of the type of content for a community would be the sharing of RSS feeds.  The other part of the WOA prediction from Gartner is that WOA will help drive innovation for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)  platforms and ultimately integration-as-a-service (IaaS).

SOA and web service integration offerings will drive additional capabilities for B2B platform providers who are delivering IaaS, beyond the simplified focus of WOA.  Both of these use cases/models are valuable capabilities to support the sharing of information, data and effectively managing a business community.

So, by deploying content integration via WOA and delivering richer capabilities (On demand translation, service level metrics….) via SOA and WS-* which require higher quality of service (QoS) levels, companies will be able to rapidly enable new partners and processes.    So how does IaaS relate to Saas in B2B? 

Hopefully this addresses at the high level the difference, at least the marketecture, and relationship of WOA and SOA.  By better understanding the deployment options and how these new architectural models interact/relate, we may be able to better drive supply chain management (SCM) innovation through hosted services and integration of  business communities.   

Over time the Inovis blog will continue to provide an overview of new technologies (acronyms and all) and how they relate to Business Community Management (BCM), so if you see something from an analyst which you might think is important – send us an email.

I think I’ve covered most of the acronyms I set out to cover but, are there any acronyms you think should be better explained in the Business-to-Business Integration (B2Bi) space? 

Let us know…