Web 2.0 Is From Mars, Enterprise Is Up Uranus

Jim brings a welcome "inside the firewall" perspective to Radar. We were talking about Web 2.0 vs SOA vs "Enterprise SOA" (which had us all reached for the barf bags) and Jim came up with this great line about the mindset that could coin the phrase "Enterprise SOA": "Their worldview is one of control over the enterprise". I agree completely.

The Enterprise and Web worlds use different frames, like Lakoff's political frames: one is the stern father (the IT department) with strict rules, transgressors to be punished; the other is the nurturing parent (the API provider) who encourages experimentation, self-development, and happiness. These two have trouble seeing inside each other's world-view.

By way of illustration, SOA reminds me of the engraving over the entrance to the University of Wyoming's engineering department in Laramie: CONTROL OVER NATURE IS WON, NOT GIVEN. That fits with the command-and-control mentality. Web 2.0 would never say "CONTROL OVER USERS IS WON, NOT GIVEN".

We could reframe all the Web 2.0/Internet rules as Enterprise rules quite easily.

Metcalfe's Enterprise Law: The security risk of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users.

Reed's Enterprise Law: The downtime of a network grows exponentially with the size of the network.

Moore's Enterprise Law: If you wait 18 months you can buy twice as much computational power for the same money, therefore you should never upgrade.

Torvald's Enterprise Law: Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are exploited.

Godwin's Enterprise Law: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a lawsuit due to someone being offended approaches one.

Brooks's Enterprise Law: Adding more people to a late software project is the only way to appear to be doing something about it.

Enterprise Definition of Social Software: software that wastes more time as more people use it.

I appear to have left my point behind, but that's okay :)