Leveraging Information and Intelligence

The use of a data abstraction layer and data integration when building a SOA provides some key advantages.  While almost always a good idea, it comes
with different levels of value, depending upon the problem domain, the core business needs, and other factors.  Before defining your SOA as well as your data abstraction and data integration strategy to support it, it's helpful to define how much value this
architectural component will bring to the enterprise.

I'll take you back to some basics.  The value proposition of a data abstraction layer is the ability to loosely couple both services and applications from the underlying physical database.  This provides the value concept of agility, or the ability to change the database without affecting processes, services, and applications.  Agility is the core value proposition of SOA that allows architects to quickly align the architecture with the changing nature of the business. 

When measuring agility we first need to determine a few things about the organizational requirements, including:

1. The degree of change over time or the number of times over a particular period that an organization changes itself to adapt to a new mission or missions. 
2. The ability to adapt to change or the organization's ability to react to the need for change over time. 
3. Finally, the relative value of change or the amount of money made or saved, as a direct result of the changes.

Thus, the company is able to see clear value by changing the business.  Indeed, the cost of a SOA development project could be multi-million dollars, and still be cost justified here.

However, all companies don't benefit from change as much as the above example.  Manufacturing companies, for instance, may also benefit greatly from having an agile architecture (SOA), but may only gain 25 percent of the benefit as compared to the financial company.  The same can be said about Retail, Healthcare, and Education.  However, since the initial investment in the talent, technology, and distraction is relatively low, in most cases, the cost clearly justifies the definable ROI.

Key to the ability to provide agility, and thus value, and thus ROI, is the use of a data abstraction layer that's able to abstract the data complexities and redefine the data for use within a SOA.  The direct value is the ability to avoid redevelopment in the longer term, and thus have long-reaching productivity benefits.  Agility means we can quickly change the data as the business changes, adjust the SOA, and redeploy solutions as needed to keep up with a changing business.