Enterprise Software & Innovation

Innovation is not happening as much as it should in the enterprise software industry- Even on-demand is seen in some quarters as an extension of what was getting done in the past. Most of us feel strongly about it– read Vinnie Mirchandani's perspective on this- similar is the case in the opensource world as well. Most of the software sale that we get to see are incremental sales/minimal functionality extension – we do not necessarily see new waves in adaptation of enterprise software. I strongly believe that SOA & composites would force structural changes and unleash innovation whereby software will be described as a portfolio of capabilities and possibilities instead of modularized applications. Data models will be standard-based and externalized to enable interworking between services, and data will be considered to be like any other form of "digital content" ever ready for exchange and transformation between systems. Grady Booch points out that in the enterprise space, a considerable amount of innovation is happening in two dimensions:
- on the edges of the enterprise and
- in the spaces between enterprises
He sees that on the edges, energy is being spent in frameworks that live above middleware (domain-independent ones, such as Ajax, as well as domain-specific ones, aligned around specific industries) and those that work in conjunction with devices [classical mobile devices and devices with RFID tags. In the spaces between, there is the formation of systems of systems (both legacy and new systems). In the context of such Web-centric systems, services have proven to be an essential mechanism in both dimensions. On the edges, services deliver behavior in a manner that transcends the underlying technology. In the spaces, services provide a powerful means of semantically rich communication between systems of various kinds. On the edges, services deliver behavior in a manner than transcends the underlying technology. In the spaces, services provide a powerful means of semantically rich communication between systems of various kinds.