Why Best of Breed and loose coupling doesn't always work

Over the weekend there was another great example of why best of breed software choices aren't always the smartest. It demonstrated why the ability to work together to get something done is more important than just lobbing together the best things you can find. Sure the Americans on paper had the better players... but the Europeans had the better team, much the better team as it turned out.

From an SOA perspective this is an important lesson, it means that its actually the links between services are critical success factors, rather than just the services themselves. When people talk about getting in lots of best of breed services and just orchestrating them together they are missing a key point about cohesion.

Loose coupling isn't the best thing in the world all of the time. Sometimes things are better if they are naturally cohesive and actually have a high degree of coupling. This can make it easier to get them to work together and actually deliver more value because of this cohesion.

So be very careful when obsessing about loose coupling or using only "Best of Breed", think about the right level of coupling and the services that work for you.

And remember... don't listen to Accenture, when doing SOA its better to be a team than a tiger.

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