It recently dawned on me with all the discussion around "SOA is dead" and the desire of analysts to discover the next thing, that IT mindshare is really very similar to a reality show.  I'm not just talking about the life imitating art aspect, I mean that the IT industry behaves and evolves very similar to American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, or any other reality show with contestants, judges, and a voting public.  If you think about it, analysts are just like the judges in these shows:  Gartner could be Simon Cowell; Forrester could be Len Goodman (guy from DWTS - I had to look it up :)); the Burton Group might be Randy Jackson; I won't share with you who I think is Paula Abdul, but I'm sure you'll have your own opinions! 

These judges are evaluating the individual contestants which are the technologies and solutions that are out there being "discovered".  These can be independent ideas or solutions, products, or technologies spawned from one or more vendors.  Regardless of their origin, the judges use their credibility to influence the public to vote for specific contestants.  The enthralled public are the IT organizations eager to take advantage of a new technology or approach to make them more successful.  They vote with their budget priorities and investments.  While they will often fall in line with the judges' general consensus, a good effort can cause the public to override them.  I like that part as it at least gives one hope that a good contestant can persevere regardless of any authoritative bias.

To be fair, I'm not a big fan of these reality shows, probably for the same reason that I don't get too hung up on the names and acronyms du jour of IT.  SOA was a one time winner of "IT Idol of the Stars", but now it is a new season and the judges are eager to find the next new talent.  Before we do so, we need to recognize that while there may be a "younger version" of technology out there waiting to be discovered, at the end of the day, SOA isn't going away because it is much more than a contestant - it is a paradigm.  Just like the music won't be leaving American Idol, distributed systems built on services won't be ripped out of IT strategies.  It might change its name and approach to evolve with the times (think Starship, not Chris Gaines), but just like old blue-eyes or Johnny Cash, I have no doubt that SOA will continue to get better and more appreciated with time.