There has been a lot of discussion on the success, or lack thereof, of SOA. A number of people have pointed out that the issues are more likely implementation shortcomings than problems with SOA itself (for example, More on SOA Decline and Avoiding SOA Disillusionment).
Since we have an upcoming webinar next week with SOA expert/blogger and Perficient chief technologist Eric Roch, I decided to review one of his recent takes on the topic in his "The SOA Blog." Eric provides some useful guidelines for those who are taking a second look at their SOA efforts in his post, Getting Started with SOA - Again? Eric advises us to start simple, tackle a business problem, and pick your first project carefully. He works off some advice from IBM. He suggests that process and connectivity efforts are two good ways to get restarted.
Eric adds, “The connectivity entry point is often driven by the purchase of new software packages that require integration. The process entry point is an opportunity to work with the business to improve business processes. Both of these entry points offer quick successes and ROI.” Eric adds to begin with BPM, and let that be a driver of SOA. So far, I agree.
As I have said before, getting the business teams to think in terms of optimizing, integrating and reusing processes, makes it easier for the IT side of the house to architect and manage their SOA around these vertical and horizontal processes. When interactions between groups, decision points and constraints are modeled successfully, it makes the case for technology that can support it. Eric then provides three more entry points in addition to process and connectivity. Supporting enhanced collaboration, better information access, or asset reuse are other likely starting points for SOA success. These are great suggestions that all can show the value of beginning together multiple services. With all of these, proper testing and validation is a prerequisite to SOA success.
We hope the above advice gives you some starting points for, uh... "un-re-disillusionizing" your SOA initiatives and getting some initial wins. We also hope you can join us March 31 (or afterward) for the webinar with me and Eric.
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