The VP of Marketing’s Favorites

You’re walking down the hallway, when the VP of Marketing stops you and asks: “Hey, whaddaya know about SOA?”

You pause a little unsure. “SOA?” And come up with a great CYA response: “That means a few different things to us programmers. Which SOA are you talking about?”

“You know, Service-Oriented Architecture.”

“Ah. Gotcha. I’ve done a little work in it.” Really you haven’t, but it’s going well. “Are we looking at adding that to our products?” you ask.

“We’re thinking about it. Why don’t you stop by at 3 and tell me a bit about it.”

“Sure,” you say, as you race back to your cube to look up SOA on Wikipedia and frantically learn all you can about it before 3:00.

Here are some big words that have been tossed around a lot recently, words that many programmers I’ve met know very little about. Learn these so you won’t feel dumb and have to BS your way out when the non-techie marketer grills you.

SaaS (Software as a Service). Usually, “as a” wouldn’t be included in the acronym, but SS is pretty plain and has been used a million times over. And SaaS looks cool in an advertisement, and, of course, that is all that really matters, right? So SaaS it is. This is actually a real technology, and you’ll probably want to explore it, as there probably will be jobs in the near future that require an understanding of it. The whole basis here is that software is deployed over a network (such as a local intranet or the Internet). The software actually runs on a remote server, and the user interacts through a small client application or browser. And since the software runs on a central server, all your deployment headaches go away. You make the changes on the server, not on the client end. (And this fits in with that cloud thing I was talking about earlier.)

SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture). This isn’t as bad as it sounds. On the most basic level it simply refers to separate, distinct software packages working together and sharing data. The different software packages are considered “services” as they provide a service to other software. If you’re interested in exploring this, Google it, there’s a lot out there.

BI (Business Intelligence). This almost sounds like one of those industry buzzwords that has no meaning, but like the others in this section, it really does mean something, and you might be surprised to know that a lot of high-level executives are very aware of it and the software that supports it. In general, it refers to a means of getting just the right information out of the computer, information that actually matters to executives, without having to wade through piles of printouts filled with numbers and charts. Several different software vendors provide such software; Oracle, for example, has an entire line of BI software that includes powerful database applications and even add-ins for Excel. The Excel add-ins let the executive sitting in his big comfy leather chair simply right-click and move through data within a spreadsheet. (And remember, this term is quite well-known to executives—that is, your bosses—and they don’t need to know that you’ve never heard of it!)