SOA's seven most common misconceptions
November 14, 2005 Without a doubt, SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) is clearly poised as an emerging technology that is rapidly being adopted and deployed. However, many companies are taking the risk of plunging into SOA without really looking at other alternatives. Below is a list of the seven most common pitfalls that could potentially place an SOA implementation at risk: 1) Viewing SOA as a global project involving the entire enterprise An SOA need not be a galactic initiative that sucks up resources all across the enterprise. In fact, one of the beauties of SOA that it can start small and simple, deployed across a single business process. Definitions of SOA vary, but an SOA can be as simple as some Web services that accomplish an end-to-end process, such as fulfilling a purchase order. 2) Looking at a single vendor to offer integrated SOA solutions There’s no such thing as buying an SOA solution; there’s no such thing as SOA in a box, no matter what a vendor may tell you. SOA is not a product that a vendor can ship to you for installation over the weekend. Rather, SOA is a philosophy around developing your infrastructure using those vendor tools. If you have a J2EE or .NET Framework, you have a framework. An SOA is what you eventually do with those frameworks. 3) Assuming that SOA will grow out of a mix of Web services In a previous Weblog, I talked about the JBOWS (Just a Bunch of Web services) architecture. Somehow, there’s an assumption out there that a spaghetti architecture of Web services will somehow evolve into something resembling a full-functioning SOA. Actually, it’s possible (but not advisable) to build an SOA-enabled infrastructure with no Web services at all. An organization could have 1,000 Web services, but unless these services work in concert to address specific end-to-end business processes, that does not an SOA make. 4) Build it, and they will come No one will take advantage of an SOA-enabled infrastructure if they don’t know where to find it, or even if it exists. There’s a rule that if developers have to spend more than 10 minutes to find what they are looking for (and don’t find it), they will create it themselves. An SOA will never be of value if it’s confined to one silo of the organization, and its components are not made available and shared across business unit. An SOA service built, managed, and used by one business unit will cost just as much as any other legacy application. 5) Assuming that businesspeople won’t understand SOA Actually, most people on the business side can intuitively grasp the potential savings and opportunities an SOA can bring. The potential of reusing services across various business units, versus paying developers to rebuild a new service in each instance, is Management and Finance 101. The difficult part is building and managing such an infrastructure, applying IT governance, monitoring, and management to ensure that services are kept up and running, are scalable, and perform well. 6) Assuming that IT people won’t understand the business It’s time to put this misconception, which has been weaving its way through conferences, articles, and analyst reports for years, to rest. Indeed, SOA needs to be a multi-disciplinary, cooperative effort between IT and other departments. However, IT is part of the business, and IT professionals’ paychecks are signed by the business. Most IT departments understand that they play a vital role in moving the business forward. However, inevitably, specs and priorities will change during the life of a project, and that’s why projects fail. It’s incumbent on both IT and business users to keep each other informed; both have a financial stake in the business’s success. 7) Treating SOA as something far superior to a mere mortal project If you have been to any number of SOA conferences, or tuned into the multitude of SOA Webcasts, you probably have heard the message over and over again that “SOA is more than just another project.” Yes, true. SOA does represent a new way of thinking, and will transform your IT, and ultimately, your business processes. However, SOA still needs to be treated as a project, with the same deliberate planning of timelines, establishment of baselines, and measurement of key performance indicators as other large IT projects. SOA requires executive buy-in, it requires resources, and it requires proof that it is paying off. Source: Web Services.org USA & Canada, call toll free today at 1-800-547-4149 or just send us an email for additional information on any Web Services offered on this website. Have your website professionally optimized by the search engine positioning experts at Rank for $ales. If your site has dropped in rankings since November 16, 2003, contact the search engine positioning experts at Rank for Sales. Get your business or company listed in the Global Business Listing directory and increase your business. It takes less then 24 hours to get a premium listing in the most powerful business search engine there is. Click here to find out all about it. For the best technical information on hardware, software, Internet applications, e-Commerce, B2B, Web services or IT-related industry news, visit Tech Blog. Reciprocal Link Exchange Program: If your company is engaged in the business of Web Services, the development of related Internet application, ecommerce or B2B development, Internet security services, Web hosting services or is involved in professional Search Engine Optimization, My Web Services is seriously interested in a worthwhile Reciprocal Link Exchange Trading Program with your company. Click here to get all the details.
Sponsored by
Internet Trends
Sponsored by
LCWHG
Sponsored by
ISEN 
|
