Service consumption (not delivery) as a core capability
Jon,
There may be a distinct danger that the only people who understand recursion (all the way down) will have to be born before ’58 (Algol’s bird year) or at least before ‘68 (the Algol refresh). During computer science class my kids today learn how to type in word or powerpoint (I am not kidding).
Now the Achilles heel of OO always was that everyone wanted to build and nobody wanted to consume. The good news is that the core capability of today’s youngsters is consumption (as we just saw, an essential skill for successful IT going forward , see also http://bit.ly/consumerisation).
Too bad today’s standard for IT Service Management (ITIL V3.0) has taken the eye of the consumption ball somewhat and is unlike 1.0 and 2.0 focused almost exclusively on service providers nor service consumers. While the cloud will mean that for the average organization the management of service consumption will be way more important than managing service delivery.
The SMI (Service Measurement Index) as initiated by CA technologies and endorsed by Carnegie Mellon looks like a good first step (just like consumers/buyers of a new TV set , first look up what other consumers found, so should organizations about to consume a new service check out what other organization found of this service. Guess for cloud “reuse” is just as important as it was for OO and thus SOA. So we better hope “reuse” does better this time?