Don pointed out to Goran that the Indigo definition of "a service is simply a program that one interacts with via message exchanges." Goran pointed out that that definition "really doesn't highlight how it'll help a customer". I think part of the reason they are both right is that they are talking about different things. I would say Don is talking about Service Oriented Programming where Goran is talking about Service Oriented Architecture. This gets back to the levels of architecture that I blogged about. Platform tools like Indigo are components used in systems. I'm guessing the customer's Goran mentioned are at the system-of-system level for whom the messaging plumbing is below the abstraction level they care about. Of course, SO* buzzwords are thrown about with such frequency these days it's hard to keep track of the difference.
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