01 service oriented architecture series - soa value

The Value of SOAPouria Ghatrenabi

Based on IBM SOA Certificate Learning Objectives

Learning Objectives• Identify business functions where SOA can improve competitiveness

and productivity.• Identify how SOA can provide return on investment (ROI) (improve

competitiveness, reduce costs, increase responsiveness.)• Identify the SOA features that make businesses more agile.• Identify the opportunity costs of not adopting SOA.• Identify situations where SOA does not provide the desired value or is

not appropriate.

How SOA Improves Competitiveness and Productivity

• By adopting an SOA approach, existing application functionality can be turned into reusable services that can be consumed by a new set of client applications and users.

Ref: Buecker et al. (2008), p396

SOA Return on InvestmentHow SOA improves competitiveness, reduce costs, increase responsiveness

• Businesses need the ability to integrate business and technology rapidly to achieve their business objectives

• Businesses have a strong desire to leverage the investment of existing business applications and systems without a costly rewrite.

Ref: Buecker et al. (2008), p396

SOA Features Helping Businesses AgilityComponents are the discrete business processes and services that make up a business.SOA makes it possible to continuously reuse components.

Business Components Interacting with IT Components

Ref: Bieberstein, et al.(2006), p19

Opportunity Costs of Not Adopting SOA

• Inability to move to higher-value markets• As a company is bound to its existing tailored systems, it becomes stuck in its

original place in the market. • However, with SOA, an organization can change business tactics and enable

new ones, giving it an edge.

• Inability to address more technologically advanced competition.

• Competition from lower-cost sources.

Ref: Mabrouk (2008)

When not to Use an SOAWhen you have a homogenous IT environment

When true real-time performance is absolutely critical

When flexibility is not needed

When tight-coupling in needed

If organization is not ready for it

Ref: Bieberstein et al., (2006)

Business Drivers for SOA

Enterprise Reconstruction• A trend in a company to break vertical silos into hierarchical structures,• Emerged to respond the need for high efficient performance of

repetitive business processes• Vertical silos reflect fixed set of tasks and defined interactions

Industry Reconstruction• The trend in the industry toward the specialization of businesses

according to their core strengths• As a result of outsourcing non-strategic functions, industry is moving to

business models with greater cooperation and integration with partners, suppliers, and customers

Ref: Bieberstein, et al.(2006), Ch 2, p12

Business Drivers Requiring Integration of IT

Support an agile business model

Reduce cycle time and costs

Simplify integration across the enterprise

Achieve better IT use and return on

investment

Ref: Buecker et al. (2008), pp397-398

When SOA Is Not Useful

A homogeneous IT environment

• If an organization depends on a set of coherent products - belonging to a same vendor, for example-

When true real-time performance is critical

• SOA depends on interoperable protocols, which are slow by nature

When things don't change

• If the customer sees no change happening to the business logic, presentation, data flow, process, or any other aspect of the application

When tight coupling is not an inconvenience

• When the component is yours and under your control, loose coupling can be a burden, especially if the component isn't really reusable.

Ref: Mabrouk (2008)

References• Bieberstein, N., Bose, S., Fiammante, M., Jones, K., & Shah, R. (2006).

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Compass-Business Value. Planning, and Enterprise Roadmap, IBM developerWorks.• Mabrouk, M. I. (2008, September 5). SOA fundamentals in a nutshell.

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