Why Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)?

Companies created IT Departments over 30 years ago. During these last 30+ years various programming styles and development languages have come and gone out of style. Do you remember BASIC & Fortran? And yes COBOL still exists! Many millions of lines of code run our world.

Today, within individual companies many of the original applications that were created all these years ago are still in use. They were written utilizing the various programming languages of the day and are still being painstakingly maintained across the company.

For example, XYZ Company put in an LMS system to run their education department. Then they created a book-printing unit to print the courseware. The courseware was going to be sent somewhere so they created an application to verify shipping address. Finally an application was created to bill for the course. This little example only has four applications. Now imagine this being duplicated by six different departments and ten different business units!

Company XYZ now maintains 240 applications that do basically the same thing in 60 locations. Couple this with the fact that 25 of the 50 who people wrote those programs have moved on and that the new people you brought in are not familiar with the old languages and not able to maintain and modify the codes... You have a mess!

How do we clean it up? What are our options? No business is going to waste the time and manpower needed to rewrite each and every application into the language of the day. So lets see if we can inventory ALL of the applications in use, consolidate all of these applications into one location, eliminate the duplicates, then we can turn around call them "services" and make them available for all 60 locations!

That is Business Driver #1 for Service Oriented Architecture. There are huge savings in manpower time, not having to update 240 different applications, but just 4!

In the next example, we have IT Support creating a report that generates key words for HR to use so that they can in turn create a position vacancy listing to forward to the "headhunters". The headhunters receive the vacancy listing and in return send resumes to HR. HR sends them on to IT Support. SOA says that we should loosely couple these applications together in such a way that when IT Support has a position to fill, they input the keywords and automatically the headhunters return resumes.

This is Business Driver #2 for SOA. Putting the smaller application pieces together into one longer business process to automate the entire process. Saving time and Money.

These two simple examples show what all the fuss is about! Companies that can save time are quicker to market; companies that can save money in doing so are more profitable.

Software is not required to implement SOA! The number one requirement is education, knowing how to simplify is. Take the time to learn about what types of applications can be consolidated, deleted, and/or modified to become a service. Companies who successfully implement SOA have taken the time to learn the philosophy of SOA before purchasing any software bundle.

Create a Center of Excellence consisting of 6-10 people from both sides of the business, IT & Operation Management. Teach them the proper terminology, so that they speak the same business language. Insure that they understand the business flow, and can document the business process. Teach them the philosophy of SOA from beginning to end. Not only what to consolidate, inventory, modify, and delete, but also how to. Start with one simple project to cut you teeth on, grow it from there. SOA is Simple reincarnated.

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