Companies should consider the business case for services-oriented architecture (SOA) and ponder the alternatives before making the leap, participants in the recent Oracle Technology Day have heard.
"Make a strategic choice. Don't fall into SOA just because it is the flavour of the moment," says Martin Krsek, executive director of SystemicLogic Australia. Krsek was previously with Nedbank.
"SOA is disruptive. It is not business as usual," Krsek adds. He says the adoption rate of SOA by companies could be as high as 90%, "but the real benefits will only be realised some years into the future."
In the meantime, most leading vendors, such as Oracle, SAP and IBM, have brought SOA products to the market and some service companies, such as Accenture, were adapting their practices to incorporate the phenomenon.
Four selling points
Krsek says SOA has four selling points: it can save on integration costs, it can further save on development and maintenance costs, it can improve the time to market by reusing existing programming, and it increases a company's level of business flexibility.
Challenges are there as well: principally the overwhelming need for leadership, buy-in at all levels, and the absolute requirement to standardise processes and vocabulary throughout the business. Proper implementation is essential, because as SOA spreads it becomes increasingly dependent on previously-developed services, like architectures where external dependency was minimised.
He recommends that before embarking on the SOA path, companies decide "the vision thing" and visualise what the anticipated outcome is. He is also in favour of implementing SOA in steps, saying the process is often too large to take in one step.
Krsek adds SOA makes little sense unless constantly reassessed. For this reason, SOA outcomes must be linked to the business outcomes and benefits claimed in the business case.
Monitor progress
"You must use a scorecard to monitor progress, using leading and lagging indicators to assess whether planned business benefits are being reached," he says. "The challenge is not the technology. It is managing the programme to its conclusion, Krsek concluded.
Speaking during question time at the event, Oracle SA country sales consulting manager Mohammed Cassoojee said SOA was a "concept beaten to death".
Asked the difference between SOA and well-considered enterprise resource planning (ERP), Cassoojee said ERP was seldom systematically implemented and was more rigid than SOA. SOA has also allowed companies to complete projects scheduled to take two years in three months and, in one case study, a project expected to take three months under older methodologies in a mere five working days.
"SOA is the ability to orchestrate existing systems," says Cassoojee. These legacy systems, he noted, were significant investments in their day and in that regard SOA puts a stop to changing for change's sake.
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