Simple Service Enterprise - part 1

I plead for a Simple Service Enterprise.
One that is ruled by Business, not IT.
One that is interoperable with any other business, customer or consumer, regardless of the platforms they operate on.
Regardless of the vendors that dominate those platforms.
Regardless of the programming languages used on those platforms.
Regardless of the devices used.
Regardless of the operating systems running on those devices.
Regardless of the programming languages used on those devices

I wanna have it all, for free - or almost free. I want a fuss-free, cost-efficient, business that scales horizontally, vertically, diagonally even if that's what I need; because either my customers demand it, or it allows me to gain market share - be it regaining lost share, cannibalising existing services that will be cannibalised by others if I don't do it myself, or simply gain market share in new markets

And I need IT to follow me where ever I go, sustain me all the way, not in the future, not in the near future, not when ever their partners decide to, I want it now. NOW!

I sympathise with you - and offer the solution right here

The picture above depicts our comfort zone: old fashioned data at the bottom, a few services on top providing the functionality and information that makes up our core business, a presentation layer, and our end user who is in our office. Welcome to the past, and the present of course. I'll be playing the role of Business for a short while

Fast reverse 10-20 years. There are our trading partners to the right, with whom we do business. Ten years ago, consumers decided they want to do business with us as well. All good. Both cost a bit of money, but it was all worth it:

Then, devices popped up all over the globe. Phones, tablets - and they all wanted to have what everyone else was getting. Worse, even our own employees demanded so. It started to become a whole lot messier:

Then, people who had told us that XML and SOAP were to lead us into the future, now claimed that JSON and REST would bring us into the next future. Of course we listened to them like we did before:

We have to admit that it cost tons of money, yet when we, business, asked they always screamed: we're just providing the same three services we've always provided, you should be grateful!
But we weren't grateful - we were confused. We just spent gazillions on XML, WSDL and SOAP, and lengthy (not to mention costly) projects, in order to build a SOA, because that's what should be done, IT said. And now, all of a sudden, the future had changed!

(...) Exit me, enter me.
Welcome to my world. I don't get it either. Well I do, but I don't get why businesses don't properly subject all this to sane ROI inquisition like they should (have ages ago)

Here's what I've advised, architectured, designed, built and implemented in the past 15 years. It's cost me many, if not all, customers, because none of them ever called me afterwards because they had a problem, or even an issue. I see some of them every now and then, and when I ask "And, well and, how is it doing?" I get the utterly disappointing answer "Fine, very fine. Thank you"

This is what I left behind:

Notice the differences? There are quite a few.
In the next posts, I'll drill down to their details