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.
Retrieved December 12, 2015, from http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/tutorials/ws-soa-ibmcertified/ws-soa-ibmcertified.html
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