What is WOA

This article from cnetnews.com states: Web-oriented architecture (WOA), a descriptive term for a subset of service- oriented architecture (SOA), has recently arisen as the next buzz-phrase to help further confuse the IT architect. So what is it? The article explains that WOA is an implementation of SOA that utilizes representational state transfer resources that permit data and services to be utilized through a uniform resource identifier. Another explanation comes from Nick Gall from Gartner:

WOA is an architectural style that is a substyle of SOA based on the architecture of the www with the following additional constraints: globally linked, decentralized, and uniform intermediary processing of application state via self-describing messages.

Information Architecture within the Enterprise Architecture Context

Browsing the blogosphere I came across this post from Anton Ventor in IT Knowledge Exchange. Anton displays a diagram of how Gartner views Information Architecture within the context of Enterprise Architecture. The shaded region in the 2^nd column represents Information Architecture. He notes that the term ‘business’ is featured in the diagram, especially under the context of application architecture. Do you agree with the diagram?

SaaS Trend in Ecommerce

A recent study by Gartner has revealed that 90% of Ecommerce sites will utilize SaaS by 2013 as reported in this article from ebizQ. The results of the study indicate that Ecommerce sites will use at least one of the following services: product reviews, product recommendations, or social sales capabilities. A statement from Gartner to ebizQ announced that:

“The trend toward SaaS applications has affected customer relationship management (CRM) and other applications, and e-commerce isn’t exempt from this trend. E-commerce SaaS solutions enable companies that couldn’t afford e-commerce to have these capabilities and compete online. It provides organizations with live Web sites, and enables e-commerce SaaS service providers to provide individual services, such as product reviews or click to call, that can be incorporated into e-commerce SaaS platforms, as well as on sites that are using licensed software.”

Gene Alvarez, research VP for Garnter, cautions Ecommerce companies to investigate before jumping to use SaaS tools. According to him it is very important for organizations to

“develop a SaaS strategy that accounts for the scoping, evaluation, selection, operation and different architectures or SaaS solutions, as well as determines the organizations comfort level in leveraging externally provided IT applications.”