I’m always amazed how inflexible some people are when it comes to taking an “Enterprise” view of a company’s architecture.  People seem to get fixated on 1 tree in a forest and don’t realize there are a lot of other trees out there that could benefit from a proper Enterprise architecture design.  While there’s a lot that goes into creating the “optimal” enterprise architecture, I think Web Services can play a huge role.  The problem is, many of the people I interact with just don’t seem to get it.  I’ll admit that Web Services are a fairly new technology (although not that new at this stage of the game), but the concepts are actually quite simple and actually make sense.

Web Services fit in especially well when companies have a myriad of technologies that don’t talk nicely to each other.  It could be mainframes, custom apps, relational databases, etc.  I’m in a situation now where several disparate systems need to be hooked up to help automate processes that currently require too much human interaction.  While a few of the people in the meetings I’m attending seem to grasp what I’m trying to tell them about creating a flexible architecture, the majority of them are so tied up in their political views of the systems they interact with (or own) that they just can’t seem to take into account those “other trees” in the overall company forest. 

Fortunately, the main decision makers see the benefits of having an open architecture through incorporating Web Service interfaces into mix. Give that Web Services are flexible and platform independent, can easily be secured using a variety of technologies from Microsoft and IBM (not to mention SSL for point to point calls), and can easily be created or consumed, they’re an obvious choice for integrating different types of trees in the enterprise forest.  I’m not saying they’re perfect for every situation….no technology is perfect.  But they can certainly be effective at extending systems and making them easier to talk to by other systems.