More SOA false prophets from Microsoft 'Oslo'

Once again Microsoft continues to muddy its SOA (service-oriented architecture) strategy with a push into model-driven development (MDD). While on the surface it may appear that this is meaningful, in fact all Microsoft is doing is dumbing down the already mediocre tools and "prescriptions" that currently suggest an obvious misunderstanding of the fundamental (primarily vendor-enforced) components of SOA, which usually include items like business process management, enterprise service bus, registry and governance.

Instead, Microsoft has a set of things that are not in line with any other vendor or standards group: "a bundle of BizTalk Server 2006 R2, SharePoint Server, Visual Studio Team System and SQL Server, known as the SOA and BizTalk Process Pack."

All this does is reinforce lock-in to Microsoft products and defeats the purpose of even associating with SOA.

Modeling in and of itself is a good thing in a lot of cases. For instance in Japan, our (MuleSource) partner OGIS has built a whole development strategy around MDD, but the models are relative to the subjective SOA vs. this Microsoft junk.

In a story posted Tuesday on eWeek, Darryl K. Taft writes:

Modeling is a key component of Microsoft's new "Oslo" strategy. As part of Oslo, Microsoft will work to deliver a unified platform integrating services and modeling, moving from a world where models describe the application to a world where models are the application.

I hesitate to call it pointless but I can't figure out why it matters. As Savio Rodrigues over at InfoWorld said:

You know, SOA and especially Composite Applications, are supposed to be about heterogeneous environments. I didn't find a thing that leads me to believe that Oslo has much to do with interoperability. So, "extends SOA beyond the firewall" should really say "extends SOA beyond the firewall from one 100% Microsoft shop to another 100% Microsoft shop."

Is this just a marketing exercise?