Microsoft today announced a new, amorphous project entitled "Oslo" which encompasses the corporation's "Software + Services" roadmap for the coming years. "Software + service," you may recall, is what passes for Service Oriented Architecture over on the corporate campus, and is distinguished from that broader industry category primarily in its focus on the continued use of proprietary applications and services rather than the more open-ended approach of "pure" SOA.

Oslo is oriented around five areas:

• Server- Biztalk Server, of course, the "...core foundation for distributed and highly scalable SOA and BPM solutions."
• Services- Biztalk Services, hand in hand with the above
• Framework- The .net framework
• Tools- Visual Studio development software, for authoring the above
• Repository- A common metadata repository across all of the above, plus links to Microsoft System Center

Now, the more cynical among us might simply see that as a list of existing products thrown together with a cool Nordic code-name to leverage assets that were already in development and which have no additional added value in the SOA department. I think, however, that there may be some real value to the initiative, and that it may provide a more realistic method of achieving SOA benefits in many organizations without the heartache that starting with more "pure" tools from scratch might entail.

This view is influenced somewhat by my subscription to Microsoft's more incremental approach to building SOA, which they are promoting as "real-world," but you could as easily attribute it to their encumbrance with existing proprietary product lines and fighting a rear-guard action to keep them in use as long as possible in the market. But it's worth remembering that many of their customers are similarly encumbered, for good or ill, and so the approach makes a lot of sense to them. I won't pretend I don't have mixed feelings about continuing to dig the pit deeper, particularly in light of other trends obvious in Redmond (licensing and forced upgrades being the most disturbing) but I may well find myself recommending Oslo or its ilk if all unfolds as promised.