Steep learning curves on the journey to real SOA

"BEFORE YOU IMPLEMENT SOA, you need to know what you`re preparing for. You need to know that SOA is a business process and not a technology process and you need the appropriate management systems in place." This was the sound warning given by Nardus Breytenbach, chief enterprise architect at Transnet Group in his presentation at the 2008 ITWeb Enterprise SOA conference.

Breytenbach highlighted the importance of establishing foundations which will enable companies to deliver on their promises and gradually move through the SOA toolset. This, in turn, will eventually enable business processes. He emphasised that SOA is a complicated process which requires a business process centric approach, planning and key foundational components.

"The SOA promise is to increase the delight of your customers, and this is done by closing the gap between operations divisions and IT organisations and focusing on `business delight`. We have been looking at SOA for a while, but we have no services enabled yet. In order to get the full impact of SOA, we need to look at what we need to do before. Without these foundations things will become unmanageable," he said.

THE BUSINESS CASE

, business development manager at , believes that the first step to successful SOA implementation is business and IT alignment. "Business and IT need to talk the same language and for this they need to understand what the real business problem is and understand the actual organisation."

He says this alignment can be achieved through the development of a shared language, the creation of shared priorities by joint decision making processes and through external references from customers. "Don`t call it SOA," he says, "use the language that business is using. Make sure you tell them what it`s going to do for them. Business wants to hear about optimisation, innovation and mostly business results. If you focus on a key feature of SOA, such as agility, you communicate the values and benefits of SOA in effective business terminology."

Ruthven believes that shared priorities are created through joint decision making on the selection of the right business processes and this can only be successful by avoiding technical jargon and outlining immediate and long-term priorities. The most pivotal process in alignment, says Ruthven, is the joint decision making team.  "An SOA centre of excellence, which has a combined IT and business team, is the structure which controls the process. Decision rights are established within this body and high-value business processes are also defined here. It`s essential that it`s made up of people who can enforce these decisions, such as your CFO, to ensure the reliable re-use of your processes in your business," says Ruthven.

GOVERNE IS KEY

Following a successful business case is implementation of SOA, and in order for that to be successful, governance is key. Andrew Hately, senior technical member of IBM, notes that governance doesn`t actually restrict processes but rather gives SOA the flexibility it promises.  "SOA governance is key to successful implementation. There is a need for it, because the absence of formal processes creates a burden on implementation," he says.

Hately defines governance as the process which enforces standards, allows for the following of certain processes and offers more re-use of systems and service. "Governance is the establishment of a chain of responsibility, policies, communication processes and management of those processes. It provides direction by establishing principles, roles and responsibilities and guides decisions, methods and creates key foundational processes," he explains.

Standards are key, he emphasises. "Standards provide choice. They don`t limit choice in the future as a company is able to use services in new processes. The flexibility, by connecting internal departments with external partners, speed and agility can only benefit a company."

But in order for the benefits of governance to be experienced in SOA implementation, requirements need to be converted into best practice processes, warns Hately. "For governance to work, companies need to institutionalise governance best practices and standards compliance on an enterprise-wide scale and ensure that all standards which are adopted are in line with business objectives."

GETTING STARTED

Building an SOA enterprise system can be very challenging and the learning curve very steep. It`s a process that takes time and careful consideration of best practices for each specific company, says , IT operations manager at Matrix Vehicle Tracking.

"The challenges we faced when we started were quite big. We had multiple disparate applications running in our call centre environments. We were dependant on certain applications and the smallest change would have been complex and costly. We had capacity problems which could cause instability; we needed to think our changes through as our systems were quite inflexible and we had mixed deadlines which could make the process very complex," explains Pienaar.

When facing such challenges, a company needs to develop and adopt a strategy and go through a review process to determine their requirements, he advises. "We looked at our business processes, our existing applications and pain points. We saw the need to define a common language so that all our applications talked to each other and we began by implementing governance."

, CIO of PruHealth, which faced similar problems, spoke of the `harvesting phase`  e four year journey PruHealth took before he could confidently say that SOA had been implemented. "The business case took one year before it was fully received by business and there was still scepticism about the process. Don`t underestimate the learning curve. What was key for us was the establishment of the centre of excellence and getting architects to buy into the process," he said.

For Pienaar, the solution for the successful implementation lay in an enterprise service bus (ESB). "This way there were no protocol changes and we could use our existing applications. It also simplified the process because we could just put it in and it just made the applications talk directly to each other. We could now also monitor all system queues and performance."

Pienaar warns that these benefits can only be achieved through preparation and governance. "True SOA can only be achieved through a business system that enhances and doesn`t restrict business. Integration standards need to be adopted and IT and business need to be aligned. All of it needs to happen in a controlled environment with people accountable for the failures and efforts to rectify those failures. In the end, your business services will be re-usable, flexible and cater for growth," he says.



Tags: Soa