Johannesburg, 18 Oct 2007
Service-oriented architecture (SOA) should be defined with an emphasis on service and business if its benefits are to be fully realised. This extends to the culture surrounding SOA implementations, which are often too focused on architectural rather than business issues.
This is the view of Andy Brauer, CTO of Business Connexion, who says service and business should be the point of departure when implementing an SOA, and not technology.
"Service orientation is here - ATMs and Internet banking are examples of the concept in action. The problem is that too often businesses focus on the infrastructure rather than the business requirements.
"Companies must clearly define what they want from a business perspective, and not only from an architectural perspective, or they won`t see the business benefits," he says.
Brauer adds that SOAs should not be too tightly coupled or their potential for agility and flexibility will be limited - and these are key requirements for future systems. "A lack of acceptance is another danger. There should be a team that works to ensure proper buy-in from both the users and the IT team."
It is also important to understand the legacy system when planning an SOA implementation. In cases where the legacy system is not already service-oriented, it is necessary to be able to migrate the legacy system to service-oriented delivery.
Brauer warns against moving in too much of a proprietary direction. "There are many different types of systems in the real world, and proprietary architectures will limit a business` flexibility and its ability to work with the service delivery concept," he says.
The benefits of SOA are that it optimises business processes, breeds efficiency and improves service: infrastructural spin-offs with favourable financial implications. Additionally, reusable code gives a business agility and flexibility from the back-end and allows it to adapt quickly to changing market conditions.
The first step towards a successful SOA implementation is deciding whether or not it is a necessary step. This requires a thorough assessment of resources. Following this, there are a few guiding principles: "It is important to start small, with a pilot project, before attempting larger implementations. The implementation should also provide access to the whole organisation and be based on open standards. Finally, it is necessary to understand that SOA is not an overnight solution, but rather something that evolves and grows and requires continuous attention," Brauer says.
The fundamental best practices for building SOA include the Web Services Description Language (WSDL), the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and the Open Architecture System Integration Strategy (OASIS). There is also the Zachman framework and The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF).
According to Brauer, however, there are two significant variations on all of these. "The first is to use a tightly coupled system, which requires an enterprise service bus. The second is a loosely coupled system.
"The world is increasingly turning towards peer-to-peer technology, which makes it difficult to derive service without being limited by architectures and enterprise buses. Strong governance and version control is required in this environment," he says.
Trends in SOA include a heightened focus on the role of the enterprise service bus, as well as an interest in business process management and business process modelling. There is also a move towards business process optimisation, which facilitates the streamlining of organisations.
Brauer says the leading software vendors are employing a variety of SOA strategies, but it is too soon to say which of these will succeed. "Oracle has a very functional approach and is looking at ways of retrieving information in a more elegant way. IBM is heavily focused on websphere. Tibco is focusing on the enterprise service bus. Sun recently opened up Java. HP is focusing on the framework and building blocks. CA and BMC are applying business process management strategies to traditional enterprise management systems.
"They all have stories to tell but it remains to be seen what is hype and what is delivery. I think the model driven architectures being developed by the open source community make a lot of sense because the models and templates can be re-used," he says.
Brauer asserts that SOA is not only appropriate for large businesses and focusing on service delivery rather than architectures is a lucrative decision for any size business. "With the right service delivery mechanisms in place, SMEs can compete with big businesses. SOA allows businesses to introduce new services and react quickly, which is very important to SMEs," he concludes.
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