The Problems of IT are The Problems of Business€¦ · Service Orientation: Light at the End of...

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Copyright © 2006, ZapThink, LLC 1

Service-Oriented Architecture Fundamentals

Jason BloombergSenior AnalystZapThink, LLC

Take Credit Code: MERCSOAF


The Problems of IT areThe Problems of Business

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Business Constant: Change

CHANGE

CompetitionCompetition

Changing Changing MarketplaceMarketplace Customer Customer

DemandsDemands

Mergers & Mergers & AcquisitionsAcquisitions

Optimizing Optimizing ProcessesProcesses

New New TechnologiesTechnologies

Business Business PartnersPartners

A Business is Never A Business is Never STATICSTATIC


We’ve had IT challenges for years …

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… but even after yesterday’s promises…


… we still have the same IT mess, only worse.

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The Business Inflexibility Trap

• Inflexibility is the Mother of All Business Problems– If you’re flexible enough, you can solve all the other

problems

• Information Technology (IT) is an impediment to business change– It wasn’t supposed to be that way!


• Companies require Business Agility…

»Responding quickly to change, and

»Leveraging change for competitive advantage

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Business Agility

Agility is the key to innovationAgility is the key to innovation

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Service Orientation:Light at the End of the Tunnel

• Service Orientation is a business approach• It’s not about connecting things, it’s about enabling processes• The core business motivation is business agility• Rather than “rip and replace” old systems – make them work

better together• We don’t want more middleware for our middleware


Level Set – What is SOA?

• SOA is architecture – a set of best practices for the organization and use of IT

• Abstracts software functionality as loosely-coupled, business-oriented Services

• Services can be composed into business processes (which are also Services) in a declarative manner

• As fundamental a change as mainframe to client/server or client/server to the Internet

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What is a “Service”?

• Broad meaning: something providing a capability to another as needed– IT Services, like print services or

email services– Business Services, like accounting or

human resource management– Software-as-a-Service

• Narrower meaning: an abstraction of IT functionality or data– Web Services are one example– SOA starts with this kind of Service


The Benefits of SOA…

Reduced cost of integration

Improved value from legacy applications

Reuse leading to reduced redundancy

Greater visibility for governance & compliance

Increased reuse of software assets

Business agility

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Key Areas of SOA Investment

• Reduction in integration expense– EAI replacement/EAI maintenance reduction– Legacy enablement/migration/rejuvenation

• Increase in reuse – Reduction in redundancy– Better customer visibility

• Increase in business agility– Improved competitiveness– Faster innovation

• Enablement of governance & compliance


How to Think Service-Oriented

• Service-Orientation is about change• IT must respond to change and enable innovation

Rather than simply throwing more software & iron at the Rather than simply throwing more software & iron at the problem, we need a better way of organizing IT resourcesproblem, we need a better way of organizing IT resources

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Business Process the Old Way…

• People plugged into rigid processes• Inflexible & brittle


Business Process the Service-Oriented Way…

• IT resources (among other resources) available to the business as needed

• Business users create composite applications by composing Services on the fly

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SOA Abstracts the Plumbing

• The goal is reusable, composable business Services

• Many different approaches to implementation


SOA shifts the way we think

Architecture makes it workMiddleware makes it work

Leverages Heterogeneous Technology

Favors Homogeneous Technology

Compose ServicesIntegrate Silos

Loosely Coupled, Agile and Adaptive

Tightly Coupled

Designed to changeDesigned to last

Interactive and iterative development

Long development cycle

Metadata OrientedCode Oriented

Service Oriented ArchitectureTraditional Distributed Computing

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SOA’s Little Secret

• You can build SOA with whatever software you already have (for the most part)

• When considering purchasing software for your SOA initiative, look to fill the functionality gaps in your current portfolio

• Don’t just add middleware for your middleware!


Don’t Get Lost in the Terminology

• There are many styles for SOA implementation

• Focus on your goals: Reuse? Governance? Reduced integration cost? Agility?

ESB? EAI?

SOA?EDA?EDA?

Fabric?

Abstraction?SOA Infrastructure?

Service Grid?Service Network?

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The Best Technology…

• Is complex on the inside yet simple on the outside

• The secret is the abstraction layer


• Coarse-grained business Services

• Location independence

• Underlying systems loosely coupled from Service consumers

• Dynamic discovery and invocation

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SOA Abstraction Layer

Sounds good, but how does it work?

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The Secret of the Best Ice Skaters

• Making ice skating look difficult is easy

• Making it look easy is difficult

• A good abstraction makes it look easy, but actually adds complexity


The Secret Sauce: Metadata

• Service contracts enable Services abstraction

• Business logic in composite applications represented in metadata

• Composite applications builtdeclaratively (through configuration), not programmatically (with code)

• Puts business logic in the hands of business users!

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What are Metadata?

• Literally, data about data• More broadly, data about the workings of a

system, as opposed to the data the system works with

This is a purchase orderIt has an address fieldIt has an item fieldIt has a dollar field…

ABC Co.32 Widgets$47.00

Metadata

Data


Metadata for SOA

• Contract metadata– What a Service should do (functional)– How a Service should behave (non-functional)

• Process metadata– How processes are configured– How processes are composed

• Policy metadata– What rules apply in various

situations

• Schemas• …

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Metadata Management Requirements

• In an SOA, business logic is in metadata, not code

• Types of metadata– Service interfaces– Business process flows– Policy definitions– Event messages and types– Schema and semantics

• Need: development tools and methodologies

State ofthe Art!


Goals of Metadata Management

• Design time storage and discovery of all kinds of metadata

• Service versioning/lifecycle management• Runtime Service discovery• Governance• Composite application/business process

management

SOA is not about the code…it’s about the metadata

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SOA Management: Many Facets

• System management – identifying root causes of technical problems, mitigating or solving them

• Metadata management – storing, managing, and enabling the use of various metadata

• Business Service management – managing business Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in the context of SOA


The Problem with SOA Management…

• Managing Service interfaces & dependencies

• Application management

• Systems management

• Network management

• Root cause analysis• Etc…

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The First Rule of SOA Management

• You need management when you offer your first “mission critical” Web Service

• Even one Service requires management

• Don’t wait!


How Do You Eat an Elephant?

• One bite at a time!

• Don’t expect to have all the answers on day one

• Take a step-by-step approach

• Show business value at each step

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Building SOA the Right Way: Take an Iterative Approach

• Top-down only: have the plan, may not be able to execute

• Bottom-up only: build Services, may not be reusable

• SOA planning must be both– Develop the vision (but not the

details) ahead of time– Service development should be

iterative


The ZapThink SOA Roadmap

• One way to help lower your risk

• Steps should overlap

• Your roadmap will vary

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Building for ongoing change:The Death of the SDLC

• Traditional Distributed Software Development– “Waterfall” – Gather requirements,

design, develop, test, deploy as separate steps

– Works great when things don’t change– But, over time, usually fails to meet

ongoing business requirements• What if things are never “done”?

– Need Iterative approaches– Same order, with overlapping cycles– Better, but still assumes project

completion• SOA – applications are never complete,

Services are always in flux– Traditional SDLC wholly inadequate


Service Lifecycle Governance and Quality

• Connect design time to runtime

• Quality a never-ending goal

• Quality – much more than being bug-free– Meets business requirements as those

requirements continue to change– Meets Service levels and other policies as those

policies change

The agility requirement for SOA vastly The agility requirement for SOA vastly complicates the quality challengecomplicates the quality challenge

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SOA Quality Assurance

• First level – Web Service testing– Test Service consumers and providers

to ensure proper exchange of messages– Performance test to ensure scalability

and reliability

• Second level – integration/dependency testing– Ensure composite apps work properly– Test underlying infrastructure

• Third level – metadata testing– Test ability to change contracts, policies, SOBA logic


The Challenge of SOA Testing

• Impossible to create realistic QA environment– Metadata configuration differences too prevalent

and too dynamic

• Necessary to test in production environment– Services must support test

messages– Quality assurance processes must

be part of governance framework

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Challenge: SOA is Architecture

• Remember…SOA is architecture – in particular, Enterprise Architecture, including:

– An aggregated architecture of all the individual IT systems within an organization

– The human element within the enterprise

– Systems, people, and organizational constructs at other companies that have relationships with the enterprise

– Individual consumers who are that enterprise’s customers

– Corporate governance


Challenge: Inertia in the Organization

• Architecture doesn’t have features and business executives pay for features!

• Moving to SOA means breaking down silos and sharing resources

• The technology change is easy – it’s the human change that’s the hard part!

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Challenge: Reuse = Sharing

We all learned to share in kindergartenWe all learned to share in kindergarten……

But by the time we get to the working world, we But by the time we get to the working world, we forget how!forget how!


Challenge: People, Change and Fear

• People are inherently resistant to change

• People consider job security, authority and responsibility when asked to share

• Fear is the strongest emotion of all!

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Challenge: SOA Governance

• Establishing and communicating the policiesthat employees must follow

• Giving employees the tools they need to be compliant with those policies

• Providing visibility into the levels of compliance in the organization

• Mitigating any deviations from established policy

Not just governance of SOANot just governance of SOA……governance in the context of SOAgovernance in the context of SOA


Thank You!

ZapThink is an advisory, analysis, & influence firm focused exclusively on Service-Oriented Architecture, Web Services, & XML.

Read our new book, Service Orient or Be Doomed! How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business.

Jason Bloomberg

[email protected]

The Problems of IT are The Problems of Business€¦ · Service Orientation: Light at the End of...

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