Latest World News on Internet Business Money Market: SOA Advisor: Defining business services: SOA from a corporate perspective

SOA Advisor
September 13, 2007
___________________________________

ISSUE SPONSORED BY: IONA Technologies - Making Software Work Together

--------------------------------------------------------------------
FEATURED ARTICLE:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Defining business services: SOA from a corporate perspective
[by Robin Chen]

While SOA has been widely adopted, several organizations have yet to
fully understand how it can be fully leveraged to truly bridge the
gap between business and IT. From a business perspective, the focus
has always been on maximizing value for the organization. To
accomplish this, the organization relies on IT to strategically
automate business operations. However, the ultimate success of this
relationship often comes down to how an IT environment is designed,
staffed, and what resources are available to it. Furthermore, the
actual culture of an IT department can play an important part in
determining just how in synch it is (or wants to be) with the
business side.

The fall of the former AT&T Wireless is a recent reminder as to how
destructive a gap between IT and business can really be. A sharp
increase in customer-related issues due to the glitches in the CRM
implementation brought this cell phone service leader into a rapid
decline. It is common in the business community for there to be a
sense of helplessness when technologies and IT projects seem like
distant, disconnected initiatives. Many times, the business has no
choice but to submit to a path dictated by IT.

Though significant progress has been made through many innovative
technologies and evolutionary methodologies, this business-IT gap
still exists today. Service-oriented architecture as part of
service-oriented computing represents a sincere effort on the part of
the technology community to offer a framework capable of conquering
this gap. While successes have been reported, SOA adoption projects
are, for the most part, still in the early stages. Much more work is
ahead to for us to fully witness the strategic benefits to be had by
this platform. I very much believe that SOA's business-driven vision
will prevail and that all of the associated benefits (such as
increased agility, cost containment and measurability) are there for
the taking as part of a well-merged business-IT plateau.

Why SOA has become so popular

At the beginning of 2003 Gartner reported that SOA will become the
dominant enterprise architecture solution of the foreseeable future.
Indisputably, the concept of service-orientation and its associated
architectural paradigm have been widely accepted and adopted over the
past four years.

In 2006, Ovum surveyed 333 US IT decision-makers and found that 27
percent of large enterprises and 17 percent of medium-sized companies
have SOA operationally deployed in at least some areas of the IT
infrastructure. Compared to previous architectural paradigms such as
CORBA (which never really seemed to gain widespread momentum) and
EAI/BPM (which gained limited success within the past seven years),
SOA is the clear winner of any enterprise paradigm that has been
proposed to this day.

Many SOA professionals and SOA platform vendors have formulated
numerous explanations as well as marketing pitches for this
phenomenon. I consider it all due to a simple reason ? the magic word
of "service". A service is self-explanatory and brings with it a
connotation that naturally leads to visions of increasing business
value. One would expect an architectural model and platform based on
this fundamental concept to establish an environment that will better
support the business.

Read more about SOA from a corporate perspective here.
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2191472/6276287

:::::::::::::::::::::::::: ADVERTISEMENT ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

IONA Technologies - Making Software Work Together

New Approach to SOA: Distributed SOA Infrastructure
This white paper describes the challenges organizations face today
when designing, governing, managing and deploying a SOA which result
in substantial upfront costs, vendor lock-in and a linear approach to
deployment which doesn't conform to the true realities of building a
SOA. The paper details IONA's unique approach to SOA which brings
enterprises unprecedented design and deployment flexibility.
Get this white paper today:
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2191473/6276287

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

--------------------------------------------------------------------
PAST SOA ADVISOR ARTICLES:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
* Using Web services as distributed transactions and the role of XA
[by Frank Teti]
This tip looks at how to architect distributed transactions using
XA-style methods in addition to Web services standards and SOA
infrastructure.
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2191474/6276287

* 5 Most Common Mistakes in SOA Data Abstraction - Expert Podcast
[by David S. Linthicum]
This podcast with noted SOA expert David S. Linthicum will cover the
worst practices in SOA data abstraction, the mistakes users are most
likely to encounter if they aren't careful.
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2191475/6276287

* The SOA data integration lifecycle
[by Ed Tittel]
A key to data governance inside your SOA is understanding the data
integration lifecycle, which includes seven steps from access to
auditing.
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2191476/6276287

* XML to the rescue: Data governance in SOA
[by Ed Tittel]
Many SOA installations are running into performance issues because
they lack proper data governance. Ed Tittel explains how to use XML
to create a data services layer.
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2191477/6276287

Not a subscriber to the SOA Advisor? Sign up now.
"http://go.techtarget.com/r/2191478/6276287

--------------------------------------------------------------------
MORE ON THIS TOPIC:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
* Make way for 'Guerilla SOA'
[by Rich Seeley]
"Guerrilla SOA" is attracting the attention of analysts, who mostly
have a positive take on its potential to get small focused SOA
projects going, especially where corporate leadership for so-called
Big SOA is lacking.
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2191479/6276287

* The concrete abstraction of the business service
[by Jason Bloomberg]
Jason Bloomberg discusses implementations, interfaces, and
abstractions and the many different variations of what service really
means.
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2191480/6276287

* Burton cautions architects on SaaS
[by Rich Seeley]
SaaS may be the ultimate form of SOA but a new Burton Group study
cautions enterprise architects to proceed with care when considering
bringing remotely hosted applications into their IT environment.
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2191481/6276287

* BPM Learning Guide
This new SearchWebServices.com learning guide introduces you to
Business Process Management, BPM. In this BPM learning guide, you'll
find articles, tips, expert advice, white papers and more that will
explain how BPM fits into the world of Web services.
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2191482/6276287

--------------------------------------------------------------------
RELATED LINKS
--------------------------------------------------------------------
* The Economics of SOA: Case Study: Quantifying the Savings of a
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2191483/6276287

* The Rise of Open Source Service-Oriented Architecture
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2191484/6276287

* IONA Artix Advanced SOA Infrastructure Suite
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2191485/6276287

* IONA and AmberPoint Datasheet
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2191486/6276287

--------------------------------------------------------------------
REFER A COLLEAGUE
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Want to win a Blackberry? Refer two colleagues to the SOA Advisor.
Click here to enter.
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2191487/6276287

--------------------------------------------------------------------
SOA RESOURCES
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Case Study: Raymond James Yields ROI by Delivering Bond Data in
Real-Time
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2191488/6276287

Increasing the Return on IT in the Global 2000
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2191489/6276287

IONA Artix Advanced SOA Infrastructure Suite
http://go.techtarget.com/r/2191490/6276287

--------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTACT US:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Sales
For sales inquiries, please contact us at:
mailto:bmcgovern@techtarget.com

Editorial
For feedback about any of our articles or to send us your article
ideas, please contact us at:
mailto:mmeehan@techtarget.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------
ABOUT THIS E-NEWSLETTER
--------------------------------------------------------------------
This e-newsletter is published by SearchWebServices.com, a targeted
Web site from TechTarget, the most targeted IT media and events
company. TechTarget offers magazines, Web sites, e-newsletters,
Webcasts and conferences for enterprise IT professionals. Copyright
2007 TechTarget. All rights reserved.

____________________________________________________________________

To unsubscribe from "SOA Advisor":

Go to unsubscribe: http://SearchWebServices.techtarget.com/u?em=khari.amit.news%40blogger.com&uid=6276287&cid=603889&track=NL-451

Please note, unsubscribe requests may take up to 24 hours to process;
you may receive additional mailings during that time. A confirmation
e-mail will be sent when your request has been successfully
processed.