Service–Oriented Architecture

Frequently Asked Questions About on SOA

1. What is Service-Oriented Architecture?

2. If SOA is not new, then what is different about it now? What has changed in the last decade?

3. Is SOA really needed?

4. What are the major benefits of SOA?

5. What percentage of organizations will adopt SOA within 5 years?

6. Why will some organizations choose not to adopt SOA?

7. For companies that choose not to adopt SOA, what will they adopt instead?

8. What issues must I consider before implementing an SOA?

9. What special skills are needed?

10. How do I get started?

11. I have more questions about SOA.

1. What is Service-Oriented Architecture?

SOA describes an information technology architecture that enables distributed computing environments with many different types of computing platforms and applications. Web services are one of the technologies that help make SOAs possible. As a concept, SOA has been around since the 1980s, but many early IT technologies failed to achieve the goal of linking different types of applications and systems. With SOAs, companies can benefit from the unimpeded flow of information that is the hallmark of connected systems.

2. If SOA is not new, then what is different about it now? What has changed in the last decade?

The technology environment has changed dramatically in the last 10 to 20 years, making service-oriented architecture more practical and applicable to more organizations than it was previously:

• Universally-accepted industry standards such as XML, its many variants, and Web-services standards have contributed to the renewed interest in SOA.
• Data governance frameworks, which are important to a successful SOA implementation, have well test and refined over the years.
• A variety of enabling technologies and tools (e.g., modeling, development, infrastructure/middleware, management, and testing) have matured.
• Understanding of business and business strategies has grown, shifting attention from technology to the people, cultural changes, and process that are key business success factors.

3. Is SOA really needed?

SOA is not for everyone. While SOA delivers significant benefits and cost savings, SOA does require disciplined enforcement of centralized governance principals to be successful. For some organizations, the cost of developing and enforcing these principals may be higher than the benefits realized, and therefore not a sound initiative.

4. What are the major benefits of SOA?

SOA will be adopted incrementally because of its compelling long-term business value to companies. This is one of its best features, allowing companies to test SOA in discreet areas of the organization, without having to make large capital investments on something they are not yet certain of.

Traditional IT (as now) will not be agile, flexible, or adaptable enough in the future to accommodate the critical new business functionality that is required to keep businesses competitive.

A few of the benefits of SOA include the following (but note that this is not an exhaustive list):

• Measurable business value: increased business agility and flexibility, and faster time-to-market and time-to-value
• Reduced IT development costs
• Reduced complex integration and maintenance costs (integration is typically one of the larger headaches for IT departments)
• Ability to re-use existing IT assets and integrate them with future assets
• Integrate disparate IT systems so they can communicate with each other, reducing the need for multiple systems that do different things in isolation
• Extend the life of their current IT assets, while still adding needed functionality
• Create an expandable IT architecture that meets current business needs, while ensuring long-term expandability and flexibility to meet future business needs as they arise
• Reduce the total cost of ownership of IT assets by extending life and using non-proprietary technology to maintain the system

5. What percentage of organizations will adopt SOA within 5 years?

Adoption rates will vary based on an organization’s size and industry segment:

• Large organizations: 80% are expected to have adopted SOA by 2010. Most will have roadmaps and smaller pilots underway, while focusing on re-architecting their infrastructure.
• Medium- and small-size organizations: 50% - 60% are expected to have adopted SOA.
  A significant portion will have gone through discoveries, roadmaps and pilots.

6. Why will some organizations choose not to adopt SOA?

There are several reasons an organization may choose not to pursue SOA:

• Lack of awareness at all levels (starting with the CEO and CIO) of how SOA may help companies become more competitive.
• An IT culture that is resistant to change. In fact, studies show that more and more CEOs are driving their companies toward SOA to ensure adoption in cases where CIOs or the IT culture are change-resistant.
• Business patterns or a business model that is not amenable to the true definition of SOA

7. For companies that choose not to adopt SOA, what will they adopt instead?

These companies will continue using what most companies are using now:

• More tightly-coupled and inflexible applications
• Point-to-point interfaces, which are inflexible and a big problem right now
• Numerous replicated and unmanaged data repositories. This is also a big problem now.

8. What issues must I consider before implementing an SOA?

There are challenges. For one, governance is imperative. Often the biggest challenge is developing and enforcing disciplined processes and organizational structures to ensure that existing services are reused and not duplicated. The magic number seems to be 50. Having more than 50 services seems to increase the likelihood of duplication, thereby decreasing one of the main benefits of SOA. At the same time, it’s important to avoid over-governing the process.

9. What special skills are needed?

None. However, SOA does require people to think of business and technology differently. Instead of thinking of technology first (e.g., "If we implement this system, what kinds of things can we do with it?"), practitioners must first think in terms of business functions, or services (e.g., "My company does these business functions, so how can I set up my IT system to do those things for me most efficiently?").

It is expected that adoption of SOA will change business IT departments, creating service-oriented (instead of technology-oriented) IT organizations.

10. How do I get started?

SOA is best approached as individual projects - each of which bring your business greater flexibility and service orientation. Successful SOA adoption is done incrementally stressing the importance of starting small, and scaling appropriately. Alliance Technologies can help you identify what SOA projects make the most sense for you. Regardless of whether you're looking to SOA for an enterprise-level project, a tactical technology-level project or something in between, Alliance can help you lay out a roadmap that makes sense for you.

11. I have more questions about SOA.

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