You read that right. If you really want to determine the worth of a service-oriented architecture to your business, try setting it up without any particular technology in mind. JP Morgenthal, principal with Avorcor, posits this line of thinking in a post -- to make the point that SOA is not about IT.
All too often, SOA is tangled up with technology, servers, and infrastructure. However, technology actually inhibits service-oriented thinking. Perhaps its time to to think of SOA purely in business process terms. "Let me put this to rest right now, SOA has nothing (N-O-T-H-I-N-G) to do with IT. It is a design pattern that can be applied to any type of system in the world," Morgenthal says.
To illustrate his point with even more clarity, Morgenthal points to McDonald's -- which has perfected a human-based SOA. That's right, there's no law that says SOA can't be human based.
Just look at McDonald's with drive-up windows, which presents all sorts of communications problems, with all the surrounding noise. "The solution is pure SOA and the only technology involved is purely telecommunications," Morgenthal says. To improve quality of order fulfillment at the drive-thru window, McDonalds plans to connect its drive-through window ordering system with a call center. "Wow! Do you get it? McDonalds does! They turned order taking into a service. A service that, if they choose to in the future, they can outsource with no impact to the processes that are in place."
Morgenthal adds that "this is what SOA is about. It doesn't belong to IT. If you're responsible for designing processes that are optimal, redundant, foolproof and reliable, then YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR SOA! To be ultra clear here -- if you design your system as a set of services, such that the service provider can be changed without impact to your processes, then you might be an SOA."
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