We’re clearly moving to a service-oriented way of doing business. And the services businesses will increasingly rely on will originate from a number of places — they could be SOAP-based services, but they may also be mashups or REST-based services, or they may be coming from the cloud.

There are four forces converging that are changing the way services are being delivered. There’s SOA. And cloud. There’s virtualization. And Enterprise 2.0. These forces are all interrelated, and all leading to the same thing.

I just wrapped up the keynote address for ebizQ’s latest Cloud QCamp, exploring the growing convergence of SOA with cloud computing, Enterprise 2.0 and virtualization. Listen to the Webcast here.

David Bressler of Progress Software joined me in the second half of the session for his take on SOA=cloud, followed by a rousing audience Q&A session.

What’s a good word for this convergence? Dion Hinchcliffe coined a good term for it — Web Oriented Architecture. Perhaps the path to agility is through WOA, enabled by these cloud and Enterprise 2.0 services.

To wrap up the session, I proposed 10 HBIs — half-baked ideas — for the year ahead, and beyond:

• HBI #1: Less talk about “service oriented architecture” in the market — but this doesn’t mean SOA will have gone away.
• HBI #2: The new economy emerging from the downturn will drive SOA, WOA, and cloud computing in new directions — as vehicles for new business growth.
• HBI #3: The rise of the Intelligent Web — SOA, WOA and the cloud are turning business intelligence into “collaborative intelligence.”
• HBI #4: The rise of the “Loosely Coupled Business,” built on brokered or aggregated services.
• HBI #5: Computing Power “Too Cheap to Meter?” Thanks to SOA, WOA and the cloud, massive data center power is available for literally pennies.
• HBI #6: Made to order: Application vendors may begin to look more like “Dells” than “IBMs” as they become assemblers of made-to-order, pre-built software components.
• HBI #7: Opportunity knocks: Companies will seek services from third parties, providing new opportunities for smaller microbusinesses — as well as large “cloud combines.”
• HBI #8: Integration, light and simple: Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 is becoming the “Global SOA.”
• HBI #9: SOA, WOA and cloud will increase outsourcing, but outsourcing will take a new form — fewer mega-deals, more micro-outsourcing.
• HBI # 10: More business users will be building their own applications. More IT people will be involved in the business.