Services-oriented architecture (SOA) is complicated; it needs planning and foundational components put in place to be successful, said Nardus Breytenbach, chief enterprise architect of Transnet.
Speaking at the 2008 ITWeb Enterprise SOA Conference, held in Midrand, he added: “The SOA promise is to increase business delight by closing the gap between business and IT.”
Senior IT manager at Matrix, Quinton Pienaar, spoke of the review processes and requirements that need to precede SOA implementation. “It is about looking at business processes. We looked at our existing applications and pain points in their services and then we defined a common language for all our applications and implemented governance to enhance the process.”
Business development manager at IBM, Joe Ruthven, said: “Alignment, is created through developing a shared language, shared priorities and joint decision-making processes. The value and benefits of it need to be explained in business terminology - it needs to answer the question of, 'what problem are you going to solve for me?'” Once the business case has been built and accepted, the company can work on building its SOA enterprise system.
There must be a focus on the mobility, agility and flexibility that SOA-enabled systems afford enterprises, and a clear understanding that the ideal of the system is achieved through structure and control, Breytenbach said.
This process takes time, said Paulo dos Santos, CIO of Pru Health. “It took four to five years before we could say we had fully implemented SOA. The business case took one year before it was received by business and there was a lot of scepticism that we had to deal with. There will be roadblocks and it's important that companies don't underestimate the learning curve.”
Pienaar issued advice: “When you pick a vendor, analyse what it offers very carefully. Make sure you have a strong implementation partner and developer buy-in on the project. Attend all relevant training and always start with a small project to prove the concept and expand from that.”
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