Long Tail SOA and the Mythology of Reuse

I have been preoccupied for the last several months with traveling and becoming a new dad, but I managed to cobble together an article for the latest issue of SOAWorld magazine. It presents and contrasts two rather opposed SOA strategies--Mainstream SOA and Long Tail SOA--and argues that organizations embracing SOA tend to focus too much energy on building Services for reuse. Highly reusable Services perform business functions that are in high demand, hence the "mainstream" label, but these Services are scarce compared to the accumulated demand for one-off Services. In general, only 20% of a company's Services are highly reusable. Targeting only these neglects the other 80% of the company's Service market. To truly become agile, IT organizations should build Service portfolios at the Long Tail end of the spectrum, because Services do not need to be reusable to be valuable. . .they just need to be available.

http://soa.sys-con.com/read/557348_1.htm