Although SOA has taken its share of knocks, both in the press and in popular IT lore, as being expensive, complex and cumbersome, it is very much alive, so says a report from Forrester Research.
SOA is very much alive, so says a report from Forrester Research.
Taking off from the
"SOA
is dead" discussions that occurred earlier this year, Randy Heffner, a
Forrester analyst, authored a new report issued May 11 titled "SOA IS Far
From Dead-But It Should Be Buried."
Indeed, in the report, Heffner says SOA should be "buried" inside
a larger architectural vision because SOA alone is not enough.
Said Heffner in the report:
"Sparked by a tinderbox of economic jitters and technology backlash, a
recent thread of industry discussion cries out, -SOA is dead!' Although many
have had fun with the discussion, it is in fact quite misguided. No prior
industry initiative for IT architecture has had an impact as positive and
broad-reaching as service-oriented architecture (SOA). But SOA's impact is only
part of the story: You have many more technology initiatives besides SOA. You
need a bigger architectural vision that encompasses SOA, business process
management, event processing, Web 2.0, and much more besides. Although SOA is
far from dead, it should be buried inside a larger vision."
Forrester's research bears out that SOA is alive and well. In fact, findings
from a Forrester survey of IT executives in North America
and Europe showed that 75 percent of these decision
makers said their organizations would be using SOA by the end of 2009. And
among current SOA users, 60 percent said they would be expanding their use of
SOA.
Yet, SOA has taken its share of knocks, both in the press and in popular IT
lore, as being expensive, complex and cumbersome. However, Heffner attributes
SOA's bad press to misconceptions and misguided strategies. Heffner said the
wrong ways to do SOA include misguidedly approaching SOA as merely a
technology; misguidedly thinking SOA is like objects and components;
misguidedly over-focusing on reuse; misguidedly focusing on a service library
rather than a service portfolio; and misguidedly treating SOA as a solution,
when really it is only an approach.
"These types of misconceptions and limited strategies give SOA a bad
name because their focus on technology separates business value and SOA,"
Heffner said. "These strategies portray SOA as a technology savior rather
than a tool (and a very important tool) in a business value tool box. Even
worse, when the difficulties occur that are a natural part of introducing
something new, a technology-focused model for SOA provides limited thought
processes and models for resolving those difficulties."
Moreover, Heffner's report said to provide the right perspective on how to
do SOA, Forrester's guidance for SOA has long focused on key notions including:
-
Treating SOA as a business design concept.
-
Using lightweight strategy to guide delivery of today's business benefits
(street-level strategy).
-
Doing integrated, simultaneous design of both business and technology
(concurrent business engineering).
-
Using a coherent business service portfolio management process to drive
reuse.
-
Approaching all aspects of SOA maturity with an evolutionary mind-set and
strategy.
-
Having a variety of strategic and tactical investment approaches for SOA.
SOA helps pave the way for many other technology initiatives, such as legacy
application modernization, dynamic business applications, business process
management, business activity monitoring, complex event processing, and
integrating business services and collaboration into business process flows,
said Heffner.
Getting to the heart of his thesis, Heffner said:
"As has been the case for the past three years, Forrester's survey data
from late 2008 argues that SOA is an important and valuable initiative for
enterprises to pursue and, therefore, for enterprise architects to lead. Recent
concerns about SOA are not new; they merely gained greater market attention
because of the economic situation and because the industry conversation is
finally beginning to place SOA in the broader context of other technology
trends and initiatives."
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