When businesses decide to go to the cloud for an enterprise application and open an account with Salesforce.com or some other SaaS (software as a service) provider, they typically don't consider how that SaaS app will integrate with their existing software.
SOA may have seemed the savior of bad software architecture and poor development project planning, but the reality is that it's a complex and difficult venture. Thus, the number of failed SOA projects is about equal to the successful ones. In other words, you have a 50 percent chance of failing, and the odds of failure are even greater if you work within a larger Global 2000 organization or within the government.
With the advent of mashups, innovative developers all over the enterprise are seeking new ways to leverage the value of corporate information through the use of external Web applications, APIs, or services. Although the thought of this adventure has sent many corporate security specialists running behind their firewalls, mashups are here to stay. Indeed, they have strategic value for many enterprises, so you'd better figure out how to live with them.
