Enterprise SOA Landscape Design: Future Included

Enterprise SOA Landscape Design: Future Included By Martina Gruhn, Journalist, Munich, Germany

The Enterprise SOA Landscape Design consulting service shows companies how to mold their legacy IT landscapes into modern, service-oriented architectures. Designed by SAP Consulting and Fujitsu Siemens Computers, it takes account of both applications and hardware.

Service-oriented architectures (SOAs) today are seen as the key to heightening the responsiveness and agility of an IT landscape. These attributes are essential because, as experts agree, the requirements that corporate IT systems need to meet are growing at a blistering pace. Application systems and infrastructures should become more flexible to match the unremitting tempo of change in the business world.

Yet the reality is very different. Most company IT infrastructures have evolved over time to accommodate specific applications and are ill-suited to keeping step with changing business conditions and new processes. And there is another problem: Even if it wanted to, a company cannot renew an entire hardware and software landscape in one fell swoop. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to incrementally re-designing a disparate IT environment.

This is where the Enterprise SOA Landscape Design consulting offering comes into its own. From inventorying the existing stock of software and hardware to designing a target architecture, SAP Consulting and Fujitsu Siemens Computers guide users along a four-phase road map that leads them to a service-oriented IT future.

The concept for this offering, which alternates workshops with evaluation and analysis phases, was devised jointly by SAP and Fujitsu Siemens Computers. “This ensures that the software and hardware in the target designs we propose dovetail to the greatest extent possible,” explains Maik Schmalstich, an SAP Consulting lead.

The modularity and flexibility that the service oriented architecture SOA offers at the application level must be supported by virtualization and automation at the infrastructure level. Without a dynamic technical backbone, an IT infrastructure cannot achieve the agility it needs. A well-rounded SOA concept must include measures to make the IT hardware more dynamic. The new approach offered by the two IT partners consists of four phases:

Evaluation of the solution portfolio

Working with the customer, SAP architects analyze the company’s IT strategy and business environment. They gather information about strategic initiatives, the applications affected by these initiatives, and the existing solution landscape (SAP and non-SAP), and then report where improvements would be beneficial.

Analysis of the technical infrastructure

In this phase, experts from Fujitsu Siemens Computers examine the existing system landscape to determine its future requirements. They then hold a workshop to discuss aspects such as data migration, data backup, printing, data exchange, job control, process continuity, network and system administration, archiving, load profiles, and bottlenecks. They formally document the results in a workbook.

Design for the target landscape

Based on the results of the first two phases, the consultants draw up several possible design variants and compile the solution portfolio required for each. They analyze the alternatives and discuss possible synergies and solution-specific requirements. At a further workshop, the consultants explain the pros and cons of each option and recommend the design they consider most suitable.

Road map

Following a feasibility study (validation service) and risk analysis, the IT architects draw up a project schedule that plots the route to the new landscape and describes each milestone. In a final session, the consultants present the road map and highlight the critical success factors.

“This new offering combines our expertise with SAP’s to show customers exactly how they can put an enterprise SOA service oriented architecture in place,” concludes Dr. Dietmar Krauss, SAP Alliance Manager at Fujitsu Siemens Computers. He expects the average project to be completed in three to four weeks. “This model is aimed principally at midsize companies and corporations, all the way up to the top 100 German companies.“

Krauss attaches particular importance to involving users in every phase of landscape design. In the past, managers from customer data centers met with consultants from Fujitsu Siemens in one place, and SAP consultants talked with application managers in another. Now, joint workshops achieve a vital, but sometimes difficult feat: They get the people responsible for hardware, software, and specialist areas sitting around the same table. After all, the only way to find the best solution is to combine the knowledge and requirements of everyone involved.