There is still a lack of understanding about service-oriented architecture (SOA) in the wider community and vendors are trying hard to sell technology when it may not always be what is needed.
According to Teresa Jones, senior research analyst, this was one of the most prominent results gleaned from a Butler Group study on the architecture. Jones is keynote speaker at this year's ITWeb SOA Conference to be held in September.
"Although the report's focus was on the platform, Butler Group believes SOA is not just about Web services; yet many vendors appear to proliferate this message," she says.
Jones believes there are a number of other issues that hinder a successful SOA implementation. "Although technical understanding is likely still to be a significant challenge for many organisations, I think the real risk is that the business is under such pressure that it pushes the 'just do it' approach onto its IT function, without the IT function being able to voice that there is an approach that can bring future flexibility and savings."
She says the problem here is that the business has heard this message before and finds it hard to believe. "We have had so many 'hype cycles' over recent years that SOA risks being seen as just another one."
According to Jones, what is needed is a clear demonstration of business benefit, adding that the evidence is now starting to become more prominent.
Jones says a major challenge for business lies within the IT function itself. "The IT function needs to step back and see where service creation and reuse has real value, rather than trying to always create something new that is then a challenge to maintain."
Infrastructure requirements
"The top three software infrastructure requirements can be described generically as message-oriented middleware, service orchestration, and service virtualisation," she says.
"These requirements may not map nicely to vendor offerings but we believe that defining the real requirements is important rather than pinning labels on them."
She explains that there has to be a way of moving messages around the network; business logic needs to be implemented to organise the message flows; and various transformations are needed to correct any technology mismatches between service requesters and service providers.
"I think I would add a fourth requirement for infrastructure," she says. "That a registry is vital to hold information about what services exist and what technical means are needed to interact with them."
Jones will focus on these and other issues surrounding the successful implementation of SOA in business at ITWeb's SOA 2007 Conference, to be held at Gallagher Estate on 19 September.
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