"So what?" That's the key question for every technology and business trend or innovation. For a long time the "so what" has been hard to answer for service oriented architectures in business intelligence and enterprise performance management. Although everyone touted they had one, the benefits consisted of having a more efficient development environment for the software vendor. This should not be underestimated, as it means lower cost of development, higher productivity and shorter development cycles, but what's the point for the customer?
The answer to that question was often in information delivery. A SOA enables software to be more layered of nature. The infrastructure layer can be separated from the functionality layer and that functionality layer can be separated from the presentation layer. This allows reports, queries and analyses to be shared using the web, being embedded in Office, using specific client software where applicable, mobile devices, or -- new on the list -- desktop gadgets. The list of possibilities is endless.
Ok, that's something. It leads to lower cost of ownership for the users, and more flexibility.
But I think there is a much more important benefit. Service oriented architectures are the key to unparalleled innovation. In my view, Oracle is not only the largest enterprise software vendor, but we enable a complete ecosystem. It has never been so easy for small and innovative software vendors. They can build their analytical software for a specific vertical or functional domain, their special visualizations, their unique adaptors to specific data sources. All the stuff that facilitates it running, such as security, database, authentication and other infrastructural tasks has been done already. And for users, there's less risk working with small, innovative software vendors where their offerings have been certified to work within this environment.
With the SOA based approach, the open standards Oracle uses and Oracle's "hot pluggable" strategy, users get more choice.
--frank
