Business Transformation in Action

"I'm here to tell you that SOA is alive and well..."

With those words, Randy Heffner, analyst with Forrester Research, kicked off ebizQ's latest SOA in Action conference, which included a stellar lineup of industry luminaries and practitioners.

In Randy's keynote, he cited recent Forrester surveys that show SOA to be alive and well. "Among the largest enterprises, 75% say they'll be doing SOA by the end of this year," he explains. Among those with SOA efforts already underway, 30% to 40% are expanding these efforts, he adds. In addition, only one percent of companies in the survey say they are so disappointed by SOA that they intend to scrap their efforts.

Randy also noted that about 18% to 25% of the survey group admit their are still "struggling with SOA, and they're not going to expand further until they figure it out." If SOA is still so popular, why are so many companies still struggling with SOA?  Randy points out that "SOA is a diificult and complex initiative," and to succeed requires "reframing from some of the broad messages you hear in the industry."  Companies struggle with SOA, he explains, because, first, "they treat SOA as a technology" rather than a business transformation. Second, they "treat SOA as objects and components," and third, "they over-focus on reuse," which is but one of the benefits.

Randy suggests seven "fixes" that can help get SOA off the narrow technology project track and onto the business services track:

Fix 1 -- Use SOA to create a business model. "Use SOA based bus services to insert a layer of simplicity around the business where you most need it."

Fix 2 -- Build service portfolios, not service libraries. "The library view can be a very haphazard, amnesic way to manage services. Service developers will forget what services are out there.... We're trying to leverage projects, and put them within this broader strategic context withoin our porfolio."

Fix 3 -- Adopt a "street-level" strategy to address both short and long-term SOA. "We need to move away from this big-bang approach to SOA." A street-level strategy is adaptable to any shifts in the business -- such as hard versus good economic times, Randy adds.

Fix 4 -- Avoid the reuse trap. "Yes, reuse is a good thing, and you will see benefits. But it's not all about reuse, it's about the right design, and reuse is the side effect that should be happening as you're doing good design."

Fix 5 -- Adopt a variety of SOA funding strategies.  You can get SOA money in and of itself, get SOA funding for solutions that use SOA, or get it through training or R&D programs. Most SOA funding comes from solutions-oriented projects, Randy says. 

Fix 6 -- Do SOA governance. If a company was event doing just one or two of the 12 best governance best practices covered in Forrester surveys, it "was correlated with higher satisfaction with SOA," Randy says. "Even a little SOA governance leads to satisfaction."

Fix 7 -- Do more SOA governance. "If you're doing SOA right, SOA is far from dead," Randy says."And SOA governance will keep it on track."

If you're making incremental progress with SOA, then you're creating success with SOA. And there's a switch that happens. "All of a sudden you don't have to justify SOA.  "It becomes how to make SOA better is the justification, versus whether or do or not do SOA."