Many in the Knowledge Infusion community continue to ask questions about the difference between SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) and Web 2.0. The following article from eWeek caught our attention and serves as a great education point for the HR and talent management community. These should be terms that are clearly understood as you are creating your long term HR technology strategy.
A few excepts:
"Web 2.0 is used in many ways but predominantly has two aspects���one social, the other technical* Web sites and Web applications using AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) to improve ease of use make it even simpler for users to compose blogs and assemble mashups. Desktop-installed software increasingly is being displaced through the use of AJAX and services, he said.* "We're transforming from an application-centric enterprise to Web 2.0, which is putting the user in charge. "Users can create, consume, customize, collaborate. They can access all information anywhere, anytime on any browser. I used to say the 'A' in SOA is AJAX; now I say the 'M' in SOA is mashup. Enterprise mashups are user-driven and user-focused."* The new Web 2.0-enabled enterprise is sort of "like the long-tail approach���there is more opportunity in catering to a mass of niches than a niche of masses.* "[http://With Web 2.0,|http://With Web 2.0,] the way users access enterprise applications is changing. It uses a common UI that combines transactional behavior and collaborative behavior, and this is through a browser."
Take a read. Even if you don't understand some of these concepts, what is important to understand is that Web 2.0 and SOA will change the HR space forever. The UI issues we deal with today will be replaced over the next 3 years with UI's that are completely web driven similar to Google and Yahoo. The biggest issue for HR will be data and process; things that should be being transformed today to be ready for this massive shift in deployments.
Another infusion of knowledge, and the future...
The Merging of SOA and Web 2.0
