Sadek Drobi’s Blog

Anne Thomas-Manes, Burton Group Analyst

SOa is (or should be) a business initiative

Making IT more responsive and cost effective

Don’t Expect Business people to see value in SOA technology

You must represent the value in terms they understand

Dont try to sell SOA to an unreceptive aifience

• sell business projects based in business value
• Follow SOA principle when implementing

SOA concepts

• from a technical perspective
  • An architecture for designing systems
    • a “service” is a core unit of design, a service implements a discrete piece of functionality, exposes its functionality via a well defines interface
    • SOA is NOT made for interoperability , but the good in having standard service protocols and specifications that it can be consumed by multiple apllications
    • can be consumed by multiple applications
    • If functionality is required by multiple applications, it should be implemented as a service
      • if it wont be reused, it shouldnt be implemented as a service
  • SOA is not about design, not technology
    • is something you do not something you build or bu
    • ESB is an integreation technology , it even helps you to duplicate services!
  • Requires new design approaches
    • service-centric rather than application-cuntric perspective
    • “Proven” design patterns may not apply (we are changing the context  that the pattern where done for)
  • Soa is a lifestyle
    • it is more about culture than about technology
      • technology provides the tools and raw materials, but it is up to to use them effectively
      • SOA impacts planning,finding,development,operations,utilization, and managent of software
    • It’s like physical fitness
      • it requires a lifestyle change
      • The goal is to make IT healthy ( doesnt matter what the technology you use, what matters that u do it, consistently!)
  • IT Challenges
    • IT is not healthy
      • IT budget is enormous
      • IT viewed as unresponsive that results in missed oppotunity
      • IT Budgets share is 20% for new projects and 80% for maintenence!
    • Redundency is the problem! no budget for new projects!!!
  • Strategic business goals
    • Align IT and business, IT should support the business strategy
    • Increase flexibility and agility , to increase responsivity
  • benefits:
    • Give users better access to the information and capabilities they need
    • Increase productivity, efficiency, effectiveness, satisfaction
  • Reduce time-to-market
    • Deliver new features, new capabilities faster
  • Increase ease of doing business, make it easier to integrate with customers, partners, and suppliers
• SOA should be part of a largereffort to reengineer IT
  • Enterprise architecture
    • provide an inderstanding of the IT envoirement: Bussiness and technical strategies >> applications, information and infrastructure architectures
• SOA is a long term strategic investment
  • SOA is an emerging discipline
    • requires new design approaches and collaboration
  • Plan for a 15-20 year maturity cycle
  • SOA will impact planning, fundingm development
• Where are we now?
  • Stage 1: Using SOA technologies for integration (ESB doesnt bring SOA automatically, a minimal governance needed)
    • Generates spagetti integration and little reuse
    • Not SOA
  • Stage 2: Pulling in the reins
    • Focus on defining a standard runtime infrastructure (Do not think in terms of technology)
    • Recongnition of the need for governance
  • Stage 3: Enterprise-level planning
    • adopting an enterprise architecture respective
• Where are we going?
  • Stage 4: Delivering strategic value
    • Building a portfolio of reusable services
    • Decomissioning redundent systems
    • Reduce time to delevirey…

Making the Business Case

• Understand the motivatios of the people holding the purse
• How respective are they to SOA
  • If they are then tie SOA investment to high priority business goals, use it as an opportunity to reengineer IT (reduce redundency)
  • You have to spend money to save money
  • Think globally act locally
    • SOA must be accomplished incrementally - project-by-project
  • If they are lukewarm to SOA
    • Tie SOA investements to important business projects
      • focus on the hot buttons
  • If they are not reseptive to SOA
    • Practice Stealth SOA
    • Sell Business-driven projects
      • Implement SOA principles in the projects
    • Sell infrastructure projects based on hot buttons
      • Cost reduction
      • Compliance
      • Find evidence that u can use next year
  • Gather metrics

Soa can deliver enormous business benefits

• Alignement between IT and business
• Flexibilty and Agility