SOA Successes out there? Good news, bad news

Service Oriented Architecture Articles : SOA Successes out there? Good news, bad news.

I urge you to check out this article in Tech Target by Michael Meehan covering a recent report from the Burton Group. In essence, SOA is going well, sometimes, but it is not going well all of the time, and people are the issue. We've heard this before (mainly here), but few are catching on and correcting problems within their own organizations.

Great data points to consider as you press forward with your SOA project.

The good news:

"According to Burton Group vice president and research director Anne Thomas Manes, some users had executed nearly perfectly in terms of doing SOA on the IT side, but the initiative had yielded no increased agility, quicker time to market or project savings because the business remained completely oblivious to the initiative. Yet the study also found that users who do break down artificial corporate barriers, install proper governance and involve the business have runaway success stories to tell. "

"'The successes we found are just incredibly inspiring,' Manes told attendees at last week's Burton Group Catalyst Conference.'"

Summary: Work through your issues, consider the business, drive systemic change, and you'll reach SOA nirvana. No tricks about that.

Also, note that changing out the executive team and altering the culture is necessary for success.

The bad news:

"Burton Group found a 50 percent complete failure rate in the 20 companies that took part in the study. Another 30 percent were considered neither successful nor wholly failed.

'Many of them had deployed multiple successful projects, but most of those projects were focused on just one integration problem,' Manes said. 'It was just a bunch of Web services. … The service is only built for one application and it's never going to be used again.'

She noted that such projects amount only to a less efficient method of doing EAI. Instead she recommended users focus projects around quality data, systems modernization or business process automation. "

"Manes listed numerous other failure factors during her presentation, including:

Lack of defined service models
Infrastructure focus
Governance only of SOAP-based systems, if that
Failure of developers to leverage the runtime governance in place
Initiatives led by and solely involving the app dev group
Road maps lacking specificity
Inability to measure ROI
Project-centric culture
An "I'm special" attitude"

Summary: SOA is not tactical. You need to consider the people, and you need to consider the business. SOA is holistic and systemic to the business. SOA is not a project, it's a journey. SOA is not integration, it's architecture. SOA is about business agility, not governance or other technology.

Great points from Anne and Burton. Also good validations of many of the points I've been making here. I urge you to check out that article.

Source: Service Oriented Architecture SOA articles at InfoWorld.com