Service Oriented Architecture and Web Services - Essay Example

Running Head: Web Services Service Oriented Architecture and Web Services: Challenges and Promises [Print here] [Department and November 2009 Abstract: Adoption of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is seen as a key enabler for the 21st century enterprise. Agility, flexibility and re-usability are the key success factors for application and web services providers. The IT architecture requires seamless merging with the business processes and solutions. Services act as the pipeline of electronic data interchanges. SOA is a “view” of the architecture that focuses on services as the action boundaries between needs and capabilities. SOA is characterized by discovering effective mechanisms for automation of Business Process Management (BPM), along with multitude of architecture, and design patterns. This essay examines the challenges and promises of SOA and web services to the enterprises of future. Introduction Service Oriented Architecture is an overly used and widely contextualized term that means different things to different people. Rotem (2007) examines the definitional edifice of SOA, and analyzes the term to derive its broader intended import. The Service Orientation component of the term SOA, addresses the enterprise, or the business perspective. In this context, SOA helps in analyzing business to identify core areas, and their allied processes. Services are intended to support the core business areas, and expose their capabilities through message interfaces. A set of services are choreographed to realize business processes. The Architecture component of SOA, defines the technical perspective. SOA is seen as an architectural style that is loosely coupled, interoperable, and built using components, or software agents called, services. Services have well-defined interfaces based on protocols (usually, web-services though not limited to it), as well as, quality of service (policies) that support the service consumers. Marks and Bell (2006) defined SOA as: “a conceptual business architecture where business functionality, or application logic, is made available to SOA users, or consumers, as shared, reusable services on an IT network. “Services” in an SOA are modules of business or application functionality with exposed interfaces, and are invoked by messages.” The goal of SOA is therefore to align business need with IT creed to achieve business agility. Applications Businesses in a globalized marketplace are acutely competitive. The enterprises are always seeking ways to reduce time to market, improve business alignment for growth, and increase knowledge sharing amongst their constituents. Aberdeen (2007) notes, “Organizations that are focusing on SOA infrastructure are outperforming those that are deploying only Web services. They are realizing lower application lifecycle costs, better throughput for projects, and higher levels of user satisfaction.” Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is thus becoming a strategy that organizations adopt to promote reuse and standardization of IT services. Globalization of operations, mergers and acquisitions no longer allows software applications to operate in silos but demand high degree of inter-operability, and availability of services across enterprises, and their partners. The main benefits of SOA stems from an increased possibility of reuse and integration that enhances the agility and adaptability of the organization as a whole. Gartner’s top ten technologies for 2009 (http://www.soabloke.com/2008/10/25/gartners-top-10-strategic-technologies-for-2009/) continue to show SOA orientation: business intelligence, web oriented architecture, and enterprise mashups. Implementation Strategy SOA should be seen as strategic business decision. It’s not a fad that should be pursued because others seem to be adopting it. Rather, it should be considered after due diligence, business imperatives, that can provide tangible benefits to the company in the medium and long run. In fact, the Gartner 2008 SOA survey (http://www.soabloke.com/2008/11/06/gartner-2008-soa-user-survey/) reveals that SOA adoption has slowed down in 2008 citing two main reasons: lack of SOA expertise and perceived lack of business case by the firm. It’s imperative that enterprises must perceive, and evaluate the business case at all levels of the organization and obtain the buy-in of all connected stakeholders. It is equally important to assess the infrastructure and systems by areas of functionality, and apply the 80-20 rule to focus on 20% strategic processes for 80% return. A typical implementation cycle is shown in figure 1. Figure 1 SOA Implementation Cycle (adapted from Richards, 2007) Salient implementation issues that organizations’ need to consider are:- a) appreciate existing problems or challenges b) cost and time effectiveness c) impact on current projects and applications d) plan and due diligence e) clarity of expectations Challenges Adopting SOA poses its share of challenges to any organization. Firstly, SOA adaptation can only succeed when an organization is flexible and amenable to structural or process-related changes. This is necessary since SOA permeates across system boundaries. A nimble organization is best suited to implement SOA. The architecture reflects the enterprise in its scope, embodying heterogeneous systems. A distributed infrastructure requires high availability and scalability. A distributed infrastructure with numerous interfaces would require new testing environments and message based testing tools (Sinclair, 2008). The organization must be prepared to develop new competencies encompassing project software analysis, design and development; project management; and systems engineering and processes. The program management can become problematic owing to interdependencies and new technology risks. Promises SOA provides competitive business and technical advantages that can fuel business growth, and hence, the top line. All organizations operating on the global turf would need the SOA support to render effective services at competitive price. Significantly, SOA promotes integration with business partners, and streamline the supply and delivery chain. From a technology perspective, SOA provides a more flexible architecture. It improves both data and application integration across the business processes. Duplication of effort across the business entities can be drastically reduced. SOA architecture would be more agile to new business processes and management imperatives; speed up custom application development; and facilitate enterprise wide portal initiatives. Future of SOA SOA is emerging and spreading in its different avatars. Mashups, business process management, software as a service (SaaS), and cloud computing are some flavors that percolate across business organizations. All these architectural approaches depend upon services. Dennis Quan (as cited in Mortleman, 2009) feels that SOA is critical to the emerging cloud computing IT landscape. Cloud computing is about delivering highly scalable services across the network. In the beginning the focus was on software as a service, but today, it is being applied more broadly, delivered from large and scalable datacenters. SOA will continue to play a vital role in IT landscape for years to come. References Aberdeen Group. (2007). SOA Middleware Takes the Lead: Picking Up Where Web Services Leaves Off. Marks, A., Bell, M. (2006). Service Oriented Architecture (SOA): A Planning and Implementation Guide for Business and Technology. Wiley. Service-oriented architecture in and beyond the credit crunch Mortleman, J. (2009). Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) | Cloud Computing. Retrieved from http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2009/03/17/235299/service-oriented-architecture-in-and-beyond-the-credit.htm Richards, R. (2007). SOA: Beyond the Hype. Retrieved from http://xri.net/=rob.richards Rotem, A. (2007). What is SOA anyway? Retrieved from http://www.rgoarchitects.com/nblog/2007/02/09/WhatIsSOAAnyway.aspx Sinclair, M. (2008). SOA from a Business Perspective: SOA What. Carpadium Consulting. Read More