Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an idea whose time has come. Finally the underlying infrastructure has matured and technologists are in a position to provide businesses with the information and services they require. This architecture has the means to enable an organisation to be responsive to market changes, and to provide the business with the processes and information they require to be successful. Simply put, it promises the industrialisation of IT for business benefits.
The challenge, however, is the current status quo. Ever since I can remember, I`ve heard the same complaint - IT is too slow to respond to market challenges. Business has been frustrated by opportunities lost, reports too late and information inaccessible behind layers of complexity. This has led to a breakdown in the relationship between these units and ultimately, to lost business opportunities. As a result, business is hesitant to believe promises made by IT as this is prone to hype and underestimation.
SOA is the ideal opportunity for IT to win back credibility within the business and to establish itself as a strategic differentiator in any organisation. To do this though, things cannot be done the way they have been for the last 20 years. Undertaking the SOA philosophy without a business goal is a dangerous road. It will lead an organisation down a very expensive avenue where infrastructure gets laid for years on end, and yet the business sees no new value or improvement. This is currently the scenario internationally and locally with vendors selling long-term projects to implement SOA with no business goal insight. However, there needs to be a more pragmatic approach that looks to incremental short-term benefits driving a long-term strategy. Similarly, it is unlikely that the entire organisation needs be SOA-enabled. Instead the Pareto principle applies: enable the 20% of the systems that do 80% of the work.
Projects need to deliver real ROI and provide justification why company resources were redirected to an IT project. This is done by mapping initiatives back to a defined business benefit, and then to deliver on the defined business benefit on time, in scope and on time.
Similarly, SOA initiatives need to be driven by a business goal. The business requirement needs to be thoroughly understood and documented. This includes an analysis of the way the business works now and the metrics associated with doing business this way, ie the cost, the time, the number of people involved. Then the new process is defined in terms of how it needs to work.
Technology needs to prove its value to the business in addressing the business goal. This is done by measuring the improvement of the new process against the metrics from the documented process in the requirements specification. To achieve this, the technology partner needs to keep the scope of the project tight and meet the committed deadlines. In so doing, the business begins to understand how IT can assist in streamlining business processes, enabling continuous improvement and establishing real returns on investment for each business component delivered.
The result is simple, without trying to enable the entire enterprise the business has embarked on an SOA project and received business benefits that are quantifiable. Thereafter, once success is seen, certain governance and standards will need to be defined within the organisation to ensure a consistent approach to SOA projects. However, this should not cripple the business and it shouldn`t prevent the incremental delivery of ongoing benefit to the business.
Software AG has been delivering SOA projects for many years. As part of this, we have defined a project methodology that drives the delivery of business value through the application of technology. No project can be commenced without the involvement from the business and clear understanding of strategic issues within the customer`s business.
The end result is a focused, tested approach that will distil order from the chaos and hype, and drive the results envisaged by the customer according to the timelines and budget defined by the customer.
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