The real-time enterprise is an organisation in which all information, whether generated from sales, customer interactions, accounting functions or any other aspect of the business, is immediately made available to the rest of the business for analysis or processing by business applications.
This immediate proliferation and use of data across the organisation is the basis for a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Unfortunately, any IT manager will tell you that real-time is not a real option: it is simply impossible to cut out a delay between the time data enters the system, or is updated within the system to when it can be used in other applications.
The question IT leaders need to ask when contemplating the complexities of a real-time service-oriented architecture is what real-time means for their organisation.
Julian Field, MD, CenterField Software.
The question IT leaders, in collaboration with their business managers, need to ask when contemplating the complexities of a real-time SOA is what real-time means for their organisation. If five seconds is the maximum delay allowable (the now scenario), data can be integrated into the SOA flow with the right technology, but at a cost. Most organisations will be satisfied with a longer delay, perhaps between five minutes and a few hours (the now-now scenario). In a business world where data integrity and availability is legislated and a necessity for management decision-making, waiting days or weeks for data availability (the just-now scenario) is unacceptable.
A correctly designed SOA becomes a tool that allows the company to integrate any new data and applications into its business processes quickly and easily, no matter what the originating data format or what language and platform the applications were developed on. In other words, the SOA makes the now and now-now scenarios possible.
Data integration in a disintegrated world
Common wisdom says the architecture of an SOA will best be constructed from new Web services technologies with an integrated metadata management component to assist in managing the information overload all businesses are struggling with. This is partially true.
Developing services and making them available for reuse while deploying them across the business is nothing new - although the actual implementation and reuse has been fraught with difficulties in the past. With Web services standards and protocols, the ability to build such reusable services as required has become a reality.
There is a caveat, however. As business starts focusing on the real-time enterprise, these seemingly simple standards deceive most IT leaders into trying the do-it-yourself platform-development route. This is a short-lived experiment as the coding and maintenance of these systems becomes increasingly burdensome. Even with WSDL, SOAP and other accepted protocols built into the system, low-level coding of business algorithms will always be needed to integrate non-compliant systems - and even, unfortunately, some compliant ones.
Real-time is one area where organisations across industries must make use of standard technologies and tools as their SOA foundation. The platform chosen must provide the company with the flexibility to handle all integration needs, with the necessary functionality to guarantee data quality and the reliability of data flowing through the SOA. It needs seamlessly to be able to engage the various source and target databases and applications deployed in the business.
Once the architecture is established, competitive advantage through in-house development can be delivered on top of the foundation - also using standards-based Web services technologies.
Controlling corporate data
Most importantly, the architectural platform must assist in managing metadata. Without metadata, it is impossible to get to grips with the various applications, data and databases in the company, let alone the myriad diverse and distributed services that make up the new-age flexible applications.
Locally, this may not apply right now as metadata is still a swearword in many South African organisations due to its expense and the complexity of getting it up and running. There is no immediate, measurable ROI from metadata projects, leading many decision-makers to put off effective data management in favour of tasks showing more immediate returns.
The path to the real-time enterprise requires the integration of diverse technologies and applications with corporate processes. The benefits waiting at the end of a successful real-time service-oriented integration project are enormous. However, managing the process can be overwhelming. The key to success is to select a platform that will assist with managing the transformation to an SOA while maximising each of the many advantages the architecture has to offer along the way - achieving the real-time enterprise over time, but experiencing real-time benefits as the project progresses.
Cost or technical leadership is not the reason for corporate real-time decisions built around Web services and metadata management, but control. As the architecture grows, it will be easy for large companies to see the number of services and data available grow to unmanageable proportions.
Keeping sight of the big picture - the reason for an SOA - is critical to the ongoing success of the architecture and to prevent it from becoming yet another IT system that needs constant attention and work without delivering any benefits.
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