A report published last week by analyst firm Butler Group indicates that many companies are interested in deploying a service-oriented architecture (SOA), but remain confused about its definition, benefits and migration processes.
The report, Planning and Implementing SOA – Ensuring the Successful Deployment of a Service-Based Approach, bases its conclusions on the responses of 80 IT decision-makers. It found that eight percent have already deployed SOAs in a live environment, while 17 percent are testing the technology and 36 percent are undertaking other forms of evaluation.
Co-author and Butler Group business process management (BPM) practice director, Mike Thompson, said continuing vendor hype coupled with the lack of a strict definition are deterring most IT managers from taking the plunge. But other issues are also making IT chiefs wary.
“Security is also still clearly an issue that companies have to come to terms with. Another is how to translate the conceptual term into hard cash – at the end of the day, somebody has to make an investment in this and that investment needs to be repaid,” he said.
An agreed SOA standard is unlikely to emerge, however, though the design principles behind the concept should become clearer over time.
“Each vendor will promote its own approach: IBM has made a heavy investment in promoting WebSphere, for example, and you can certainly do SOA with that. But it is not the only way of doing it, and that is the key: there are any number of ways of building an SOA, depending on what suits the firm and the infrastructure it already has in place,” said Thompson.
One way of achieving an SOA-type implementation is to combine component-based software development with business process and rules management systems, for example, which has the benefit of allowing existing software components and platforms to be re-used.
Separate research by BPM vendor Software AG found that, of 150 IT directors from companies in all sectors, 34 percent said they were looking to use SOA to bring legacy systems up to date, while 29 percent planned to use other application modernisation methods.
“This survey shows that people no longer believe in the magic bullet of rip and replace; they are looking at the way they get value from existing applications,” said Tim Holyoake, a principal consultant with Software AG.
BPM systems can play a crucial role in helping companies to identify what their existing technology can do, where gaps in their software architecture exist, and where it may be sensible to take an SOA approach. BPM tools can also help IT managers decide where existing architectures can be supplemented in-house or through software procurement, added Holyoake.
Thompson argued that, because it requires a deep understanding of an organisation’s business process, SOA implementation is difficult to outsource.
“What is missing most are business analysis skills; the ability to model business processes based on SOA and understand them, and integrate legacy code bases into component parts that can be re-used,” he said.
