Editor's Note: Anyone interested in where SOA is at today and where it's going in the future must attend ebizQ's upcoming SOA in Action Virtual Conference coming this November 19th. Sign up right here.
What follows is my podcast with Jignesh Shah, Product Line Director of SOA Governance Products for Software AG, where he works closely with customers and real life SOA projects in order to guide the direction of Software AG's products. In this podcast, we offer a quick introduction to ebizQ's upcoming SOA in Action Virtual Conference, which is coming this November 19th and where Jignesh will be a speaker.
Listen to or download the 6:22 podcast below:
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Would you say that today's difficult economy makes SOA more valuable for companies?
Well, I think the current situation does introduce a very interesting dynamic. I think a lot of the companies that started with SOA a while ago are in fact in a good position to get a lot of leverage out of their SOA implementations and deployments as they are able to respond better to changes in business practices and changes in business processes as the business adapts to the tough economy.
And they will also benefit quite a bit from the cost savings due to the nature of shared resources that they benefit from as part of an SOA approach. But for companies that have not yet embarked seriously on SOA or have not invested heavily in SOA, this is an interesting kind of inflection point. On one hand, it will be a little difficult to justify investment in SOA because it is a long-term program.
But at the same time, companies might do well to take a look at specific areas in their application portfolio that could benefit from an SOA approach today so that they can reap the benefits of these investments when the market does come back. At some point, the economy is going to recover. At some point, we will once again be bullish about business opportunities. And with the right type of investment into building out an SOA infrastructure and approach today, I think those companies may well position to take advantage of those opportunities when the economy does recover.
So people need to also prepare for recovery. Now, what are some of the key obstacles facing companies looking for SOA success?
What we're seeing now is some good news and bad news. The good news is that SOA has moved beyond hype. We do have successful companies rolling up their sleeves and making real progress with SOA. But some of the more mature management and operational aspects of SOA are now some of the new obstacles. For example, as you start scaling SOA beyond pilot projects and beyond just departments, to really an enterprise wide scale; we're looking at a new level of transparency and accountability that is needed to make SOA successful.
SOA is about transcending silos to deliver business capabilities, not being stuck in any single IT or business geographic domain. But we have to keep in mind that the current IT support structure is built around these silos so when you cut across silos you're essentially in some ways weakening your support structure. It does acquire a new level of transparency and some new techniques and frameworks to be put it into place to create accountability when SOA starts scaling across the enterprise.
Great. And accountability is always good. What is one of the key things that most companies could do today to improve their SOA?
I think if you are starting with SOA or if you're in the early stages of SOA, one of the most important things you should recognize is that it does require a champion. It requires a leader who can guide your organization through the organizational and process changes that are inevitable with SOA. Trying to do SOA purely on a grassroots basis, I haven't seen a lot of success that at some point you have to have a top-down element to SOA.
You need to have the right level of sponsorship. You need to have a leader with the leverage, the influence, the network, perhaps even the budget to make SOA happen. The other thing that we're seeing organizationally as an evolving best practice is the establishment of the SOA Competency Center. And this really seems to be working quite well in its various forms across large even very large enterprises.
So having a core group of people with a strong leader driving SOA through your organization, adapting the organization and changing are adapting the processes to align with the SOA vision is critical. So those will be really the two things: having an SOA champion and establishing a strong Competency Center that will greatly help you improve your chances of success with SOA.
Well, that makes a lot of sense. Now, what do you see as the future of SOA versus Web Oriented Architecture?
This is an interesting question and there has been a lot of debate between this Web Oriented Architecture subset/superset or something completely different from SOA. To me, a lot of what Web Oriented Architecture is about is extending the principles of SOA in even more loosely coupled fashion. I think a lot of the Web 2.0 type of technology and approach to building applications are very much the future of IT applications but I think they are complementary.
I think SOA can in fact be the foundation for Web Oriented Architecture, for a lot of the organizations. SOA can be that layer that provides stability, governance, and the Web Oriented Architecture piece could be the one that provides self-service application building and the agility that business needs. I see them more as complementary rather than being entirely separate or a subsets or supersets if you will.
Great, very interesting answers. And I want to make sure to remind everyone who is listening to this to make sure you sign up for the SOA in Action Virtual Conference because if you have any questions you can ask them there.
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