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| 11 | 2007 |
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| SOA: The Benefits and Challenges of Shared, Reusable Services |
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| While the concept of service-oriented architecture (SOA) has been around for quite some time, the recent popularity of Web 2.0 and XML have begun to put SOA back in the spotlight, and may even have the potential to garner it a position in the mainstream of business processes. Until recently, adopting or even defining SOA has been a challenge for businesses – not to mention the increased security risks, network degradation and other factors. However, rapid advancements in Web services have prompted a renewed interest in SOA and its potential to reduce long-term IT costs, increase flexibility and enable software and service reusability. |
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> The Benefits
> The Challenges
> The Proof
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"Sold on SOA," a ComputerWorld Executive Bulletin, defines it as "a business computing architecture that enables and delivers business functionality to its users (consumers) in the form of shared, reusable services… The new incarnation of SOA is enlivened by the industrywide agreement on a body of standards for Web services – messaging, interface descriptions, security, service registries and many more – that allow the deployment of shared, reusable services in a cross-platform implementation of SOA." It is this recent addition of Web services and SOA’s interoperability that has caught the eye of businesses and has motivated them to take a second look at its benefits.
1. Long-term cost savings: When implemented correctly and completely, the cost savings of SOA in the long term can be extensive. Once SOA has been implemented, growth and addition of services are based on the reuse of existing applications. In other words, without SOA, each new application or service must be developed from scratch – in many cases this equates to a substantial investment of time and money. With SOA, reusability is beneficial to the future of the company’s bottom line. While it’s difficult to determine the exact ROI, according to a recent article in Computer World, "SOA can help save up to 25% on application development when used over the entire development life cycle."
2. Flexibility/loose coupling: Because SOA strays away from past monolithic applications in which any modification typically required changes throughout the application, service-oriented architecture relies on many services that are loosely connected. The result is two-fold. Loose coupling makes changes faster and easier, which not only reduces IT costs, but also enables companies to get their product to market faster.
3. Interoperability: The popularity of Web services has been the driving force behind the interoperability of SOA, giving applications and services freedom from being restricted to specific operating systems or programming languages.
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While the benefits of flexible, reusable applications have the potential to positively impact the bottom line, maximize the use of applications, and enable a business to quickly react in a rapidly changing environment, there are several challenges and concerns as well. In fact, "about a quarter of the 273 respondents to a recent InformationWeek Research survey say their SOA and Web services projects fell short of expectations. Of those, 55% say SOA introduced more complexity into their IT environments, and 41% say it cost more than expected. Out of all respondents using SOA and Web services, a more 7% say the results exceeded expectations."
1. Complexity: SOA is not an off-the-shelf software application that you simply install and have up and running in a matter of minutes. It is a methodology for the way you conduct IT business and therefore, yes, it is more complex. As a result, it means constructing a business plan, conducting training, and slowly but steadily converting your existing infrastructure to SOA.
2. Costs: While SOA can offer substantial long-term cost savings, in the short term it can have several cost implications. One, network and security upgrades may be necessary to handle a system that connects multiple software components. Two, as with any new service or application, in order for it to be successful, the time and cost involved in education, training and governance as well as implementation must be factored in.
3. Network Degradation: SOA’s loose coupling and connecting of multiple services and applications may be beneficial for reusing or modifying, but it can also be taxing to network performance. In addition, any failure among these multiple services can take down the entire application, thus requiring increased monitoring of the network.
4. Security: One of the biggest concerns with SOA is security. SOA opens the doors not only to the use of multiple Web services and XML, but also to sharing access with colleagues, employees, partners, clients, and others. And, with the loose coupling of numerous services and applications, this means the task of insuring security just got a little more difficult.
While the challenges may seem daunting, SOA is not meant to be a short-term solution or a quick fix. It is an architecture designed to change the way business performs IT functions. And most importantly, its purpose is to enable businesses to run more efficiently by creating a flexible and reusable approach to technology services. It is this lure of being able to reuse pieces of existing applications in order to create a new service instead of continuously recreating the wheel that has prompted a renewed interest in the implementation of SOA.
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Looking for more information? The following are a listing of SOA resources, including white papers and webinars, to offer additional information and guides on service-oriented architecture. (All of the following white papers are free to download, although some may require registration.)
1. “Sold on SOA” [PDF] – This easy-to-read, in-depth white paper offers a comprehensive analysis of SOA, from defining it to implementing it.
2. “Best Practices on the Way to SOA” – An hour long webinar in which Paul Brown, the Principal Software Architect for Tibco, outlines 7 of the most common SOA best practices.
3. "Embracing SOA: The Benefits of Integration Independence" [PDF] – A guide to understanding the benefits and challenges of integrating SOA and recommendations for implementation.
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About The Brookfield Group
The Brookfield Group has become a leader in IT, ISP, ASP and web solutions by providing next level technology solutions managed by experts who give you peace of mind without the tech-talk. The company's services are customized to fit any enterprise-size businesses and include: IT project management; hosting solutions and maintenance; systems security and patches; telecommunications services, server and desktop setup, repair and applications; network infrastructure design; audio visual products; surveillance and security solutions; as well as a variety of other software, hardware, services and accessories. Located in Carmel, Indiana, more information about The Brookfield Group products and services is available at www.thebrookfieldgroup.com or by calling 317.524.6000.
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