How Open Source Might Drive SOA

The continuing march of open source software through the enterprise appears to be unabated with an expected increased adoption of open source service-oriented architecture (SOA) software in 2011.

Earlier this year Talend acquired Sopera, a provider of open source middleware software that is based on SOA. Talend has now outlined its goals for Sopera in 2011, which primarily focuses on integrating the Sopera technologies with a variety of enterprise service bus (ESB) technologies and the open source master data management (MDM) software developed by Talend.

But what’s really interesting is where interest in open source SOA is starting to come from. While enterprise developers have been pushing the merits of SOA, Patrick Walsh, vice president for the new application integration division of Talend, says that he now sees Web developers starting to appreciate the benefits of good application architecture.

As many of them begin to consider the implications of cloud computing, they are looking for ways to make sure that their applications can consistently scale. That means many of them are starting now to appreciate the benefits of SOA and ESB technologies.

Of course, Talend also expects to see enterprise developers that are already familiar with SOA to appreciate the value of a less expensive open platform. But as things continue to develop in 2011, the most important thing that could be happening in terms of SOA will be the convergence of cloud computing and the next generation of applications for the Web, many of which will need to scale in unimagined ways to meet the needs of thousands of potential mobile computing users.

So when you think about it, the convergence of cloud and mobile computing, coupled with open source, just might turn out to be the best thing to ever happen to SOA.