I am sure that Web 2.0 is a jargon that is living its own place and fame for now. It is no more mere marketing gimmick that web entrepreneurs were selling to its investors and venture capitalists.

In the first place some small players came with their own creative applications for Web 2.0. I will call this Web 2.0A age or rather Web 2.0.1 beta. Such applications then got popularity among users and created a news in web world. That was public version of Web 2.0.1. Some big players of web ignored what was happening around then and some took serious note and started building Web 2.0 applications. Very few intelligently bought the potential competition and started working on integration activities. This was version Web 2.0.2.

With some biggies participating in this with user base increasing day by day everybody jumped on creating and integrating web applications. Seamless movement from one application to other with single login was the mantra with 'unified user experience' tag. This was version Web 2.0.3.

So far every activity happening was limited to coding or development part of the web game. Recently IBM lauched new blade servers that are specially designed for Web 2.0 kind of web applications where traffic is heavy and computing power requirement is high. This I call a version Web 2.0.4. And I suppose the world is now ready for upgraded version of web i.e. Web 3.0.

Yesterday night Microsoft launched its highly awaited 'tech preview' version of Live Mesh which is its latest platform. This new platform will link devices to the internet through Windows software. By the end of the year Microsoft Live will support Mac systems and mobile phones for connecting to internet.

Microsoft Live Mesh will enable variety of devices to be connected such as game consoles, set-top boxes, auto PCs, and more. With this newer platform Microsoft perceives the web as "the Hub of our social mesh and our device mesh." The web has spread its wings but still people consider desktop or laptop as their personal asset. The thought has not grown beyond that. With Live Mesh Microsoft is trying to create mesh as a personal asset that will have your devices, desktop, laptop, gaming consoles all interconnected. Once your mesh recognizes device connected to it as your personal then its configuration and personalization settings, its applications and their own settings, and the data it carries will be seamlessly available and synchronized across your mesh of devices.

The URL for Windows Live Mesh is https://www.mesh.com/Welcome/Welcome.aspx. Sign in to experience what it has to offer.

Let's keep our finger crossed to hear more on this integration platform from Microsoft. 

It is quite difficult to think in terms of services.Though services are implemented with the help of Object oriented languages We should always remember some basic points while designing the services.

Object Orientation:

• Assume homogeneous platform and execution environment
• Share classes, not schemas
• Assume cheap, transparent communication
• Are linked: Object identity and lifetime maintained by infrastructure
• Typically require deployment of both client and server in sync
• Are easy to talk about and become a natural path for customers to follow
• Customers have 20+ years of experience and great intuition about what “object oriented is”
  

Service Orientation:

• Assume heterogeneous platform and execution environment
• Share schemas, not classes
• Assume variable cost, explicit communication
• Are autonomous:  Security and failure isolation are a must
• Ease “continuous deployment” of client and server separately
• Builds on ideas from component software, distributed objects, and MOM
• Dominant theme is to manage/reduce sharing between services

I hope my services saga continues with this post

Beyond the hype and buzz created by SOA, here are my few thoughts about SOA.

 1. SOA is business strategy:

 SOA is often looked as the yet another project taken by IT dept or always treated as IT thing. Off course, its implementation is very much IT thing but it should be looked more as a strategy for synchronization and alignment of all business processes of an organization.

2. SOA is not rewriting your ALL applications:

SOA implementations in proper manner always support organization's legacy systems, on which the organization is relying on from past several years. As for implementation of legacy application organization has put many $$ and your team members had put Hercules efforts for maintenance, it has worth continuing what you are using.

3. SOA gains multifold value when it’s implemented as Enterprise architecture:

SOA should not be looked in "isolated application islands" for any organization. When application island happens in organization the worth of every application decreases as the synchronization becomes problem with various systems.In this scenario SOA should be looked as a vehicle and opportunity to waive a "common Enterprise fabric" to get your business processes [and their systems] aligned or realigned.

4. Web services are tip of SOA iceberg:Yes, Web services are essential component for implementing SOA but while building these web services, SOA derives more value from service reuse and scalability. We should look beyond the web services to get the view of SOA horizon.

Hope, this post will carry out more brainstorming sessions...