Ensuring Service Enablement from SOA

The single reason that you use IT within your organization is for service enablement. IT has proven itself to be essential to provide the levels of service that customers demand. Implemented well, the operating costs of IT systems provide many opportunities to serve customers’ needs and provide operating margins commensurate with the profitability demanded by the organization’s stakeholders. Now, the concept of business services is being embraced by enterprise IT organizations through the adoption of the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) paradigm. SOA is IT’s response to the demands from the business that IT be more in tune with the needs of the business. By moving from a software systems development paradigm to a business service development paradigm, it is hoped that IT departments and business units will become more aligned. This holds out the promise of business and IT being able to cooperate and manage together using a set of shared principles and a common understanding of the overall business objectives. If you are implementing, or considering implementing, a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) within your organization, there are some simple questions you must ask. Firstly, what does SOA mean to you? Secondly, what are the business benefits you expect to accrue from your SOA implementation? Finally, if you are currently implementing SOA, how do you know that the implementation is on track to deliver the promised business benefits, on time and on budget?

What does SOA mean for you?

If SOA is the vision and the way forward provided to you by your suppliers, then ‘caveat emptor’ (buyer beware!) applies to you. We all want to have ‘A Good Thing’ and SOA does have a lot of potential to be ‘A Good Thing’ but SOA has become a rolling bandwagon, taking many to a place where they really should not be. There are many IT products and solutions currently in the market that lay claim to the SOA tag. With most, they could be useful for building out SOA but they are not a complete SOA solution. SOA is not simply an enabling technology that solves myriad business problems, nor is SOA lead by the technologies used in its implementation. Fundamentally, SOA is an IT implementation strategy that aligns the provisioning of IT services along the lines of the structure of the business. In many organizations the development, procurement and provisioning of IT systems are governed by policies which address technology issues. Corporate or Business Unit standards are created that try to bring commonality to both IT infrastructure and development by mandating particular databases, application servers, development languages, network components and so on.

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

• Email
• Print
• Share
  • Slashdot
  • Digg
  • Stumble
  • Reddit
  • Newsvine