After emerging from the research cave, Nick presented the newest acronym from the acronymizer: WOA. Web-Oriented Architectures represents SOA plus the Web plus Representational State Transfer, often called REST. We don’t turn on the acronymizer any more often than we absolutely must. It’s loud, and it catches entire analysts in its jaws and crunches them up like Mars bars. WOA is necessary, Nick and his colleagues argued, because:

It’s a descriptive term for a subset of SOA. (People who are doing WOA are doing SOA. People doing SOA may or may not be doing WOA.)

It’s simple.

It returns resiliency and simplicity to the kinds of projects that it benefits. (See also, Things for Which You Do Not Need Ironclad Integration Brokers.)

It shows that Gartner is not a slave to the notion of Enterprise Class – not everything needs to be about more reliable, more available, more impermeable. We also understand that there are times when less is more.

Syrup or Waffle? When I was in Antigua, they served us sour cream for the waffles. It tasted substantial, and good. I say it’s a topping, but a tasty one that adds real value. Tell us if you agree: Here or elsewhere.

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Immediately after introducing the notion of Web-Oriented Architecture, Daryl Plummer and David Smith introduced a new analytical construct – the market influencers graphic, in draft format for the Web services area. In the Web 2.0 environment, a substantial influencer on the future of Web services, we see Google, eBay, Yahoo, IBM and Microsoft in the sweet spot. We’re not saying Google is necessarily competing for the same dollar that IBM is, but we are saying that they are competing for attention and influence in this confusing and influential intellectual direction. (How many times did you IBM something today?)

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