The uptake of service-oriented architecture (SOA) among South African companies is slower than it should be, according to an industry expert, who says local SOA deployment is mainly restricted to service-oriented businesses.
Oracle South Africa e-advisor and solutions manager Mohamed Cassoojee told delegates at the Oracle SOA executive forum in Johannesburg yesterday that SOA systems implementation has so far been limited to the financial and telecommunications sectors.
In these sectors, Cassoojee said, organisations are mostly implementing SOA as part of an orchestration model, without the redevelopment of their entire systems.
"The uptake of SOA is much slower than I would like to see. There are some creative users of part of this technology, while there is still much debate about what it [SOA] is, and there is currently a greater focus on components rather than processes."
Cassoojee believes that much scepticism still exists around SOA in SA, with many organisations not having a full understanding of the technology.
[VIDEO]He noted that organisations should view SOA more as a business initiative than an IT strategy, and must extract value from existing investments. Traditional IT systems and strategies are often not able to respond fast enough to business requests, and IT changes, forced by regulatory changes, can be expensive and difficult.
In addition, Cassoojee said, businesses should realise that brittle IT infrastructure breaks whenever changes are made, while redundant and inflexible IT systems can inhibit business agility.
On the other hand, organisations can benefit from SOA in terms of better alignment of business and IT, decreased integration cost and risks, and faster development times. Cassoojee explained that the technology allows for integration of heterogeneous environments and for the re-use and integration of old systems.
Rather than "rip and replace", companies can "wrap and re-use" old systems, which often still hold much value, he said.
"As part of the consideration for SOA planning, organisations need to look at the bigger picture, and assume an incremental approach rather than a waterfall approach, which assumes that business requirements will not change that fast."
[VIDEO]Oracle sales consultant for middleware and integration Carl Krauss agreed that SOA allows businesses to avoid "rip and replace" software scenarios.
Clients, he said, can use existing processes and middleware to implement SOA incrementally, specifically with the introduction of new products and services.
He pointed out that the type of existing applications used does not make a difference to the implementation of SOA, as long as these applications comply with general standards.
"SOA demands that you stick with standards or you will run into operability problems," Krauss said.
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