As an occasional pundit and commentator on IT trends, I've had a lot of chances to watch the "next big obsession" come and go for enterprise IT shops. The one commonality we've seen, is that if the obsession successfully takes hold in business, then it will become so ubiquitous that it becomes kinda boring to the IT guys on the cutting edge.
So goes the case for SOA... We've tracked the "Is SOA Dead?" thread over the last couple years and it was fun, because it points out just how common SOA has become part of the enterprise IT landscape, delivering value so quietly that we almost take it for granted now. Just like "eCommerce" used to be a big deal, then it just became the nature of doing business over the Internet.
So one of these questions I posed to Peter Schooff of eBizQ was this very thing - and he posted it to their Forum - What are Enterprise IT Geeks Obsessed with Today? I was looking for stories, and not the next dot on an analyst wave or cycle diagram. He posted the question and some fun answers there.
Clearly you can't escape Cloud Computing right now as the grand champion of obsession (Make mine Private or Public?). Mobile platforms and smartphones - riding high again. RIAs, particularly REST-type web apps are garnering a lot of geek attention. But what never changes is that these innovative obsessions aren't just about money - they are inevitably tied to doing things better, more efficiently than before. The cost savings and revenue upside are the results of success, but not necessarily the motivator.
I particularly liked Sandeep Gupta's comment in the forum that "IT geeks do not change...they are always passionate about the technology space/environment that they work in.....obsession brings aspiration and passion...leading to effeciency and growth" and that to me describes the accelerating nature of innovation that is going on here.
Also great - Brenda Michelson's comment (via Twitter) about "Hopefully getting things done!" Well put. And Phil Ayers laments that IT folks he runs into "just don't have time to be geeky enough and keep up with, let alone apply, the vogue technologies and methodologies." Yeah, there is probably a little too much talk about the next big thing and not enough application going on. So until next time...
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