03.22.11
Applications Get a New Life
[Cartoon]
Just when we thought Service-Oriented Architecture with components and composites had replaced the application paradigm, along comes the smartphone. Applications on these handheld devices are growing at a fantastic pace. Since these applications can help us in so many ways, it is hard to believe that applications are not the best design for program logic.
Smartphone applications take advantage of every sensory mechanism available to them with some very innovative usage. Who would have ever thought that the camera could be used in so many ways like reading barcodes to identify products or translating signs in one language to another. How many more sensors will be added with applications that make our lives even better?
Most of the applications running on smartphones have more lines of code and consume more computing resources than the applications running on mainframes of only three decades ago. It is downright amazing, but are we going down the same path?
If we are on the same path with smartphone applications as we have taken with large business applications, then will we eventually arrive at Service-Oriented Architecture? Are we simply repeating history because the developers of smartphone applications are more “get it done” programmers than architects?
We are in the early stages of understanding smartphone architecture. The technology is just waking up and stretching its limbs and testing its sensors. It is like watching a baby grow during the first few years of their lives. We can only wonder what the baby will become when it grows to adulthood.
In my opinion, some things can be predicted. The first prediction is easy. It will change. There will be more sensors and there will be more applications. Secondly, I believe that smartphones will adapt to Service-Oriented Architecture. It only makes sense that solid, proven, architectural principles will drive the architecture of smartphone-type devices.
The new applications are only a beginning to open our senses to our environment and the people we share the environment with. Applications can already be just plugged in by anyone. Programming is not required. Things will only get better as more architectural principles are applied in the design of the smartphone components.
The Enterprise Architects can see what is coming and are already preparing. They know that this will be their time. Corporations will be able to completely focus on their business, and automation will be viewed as an agile enabler. Automation will finally become the self-service contributor that the Corporate Office has always wanted it to be. –Enterprise Architects Masters of the Unseen City
Closing the Business / IT gap.
