Ongoing technology integration
issues are the root of this struggle,
and it’s one that can’t be solved
quickly enough for most organizations,
says Ronald Schmelzer,
senior analyst at Zapthink, an IT
advisory and analysis firm based in
Waltham, Mass. “This problem is
robbing IT of the ability to be innovative,”
he says. “The IT department
has to return to its original goal,
which is facilitating the business by
helping it to be more agile.”
As companies begin thinking of
IT as a valued service provider to
the organization, executive viewpoints
about how to solve the problem
are evolving, too. “Smart CIOs
are no longer fooled by vendor
promises that tools and technology
alone will solve the problem,”
Schmelzer says. “They need to
apply some elbow grease in
rethinking the organization and its
assets, as well as its people. They
must throw themselves into the
harder problem of best practices.”

Interestingly, most enterprises
don’t need to buy much new software
to implement SOA. “Whatever
software and middleware you have,
you could move toward SOA,” says
Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at
Zapthink. “There’s plenty of good
software on the market that helps
companies embrace SOA. But
because SOA is architecture, you
can tackle a lot of the architectural
issues without going out and
buying a new product.”

Although the market for SOA
is young, the benefits can be
powerful. According to Schmelzer
of Zapthink, SOA offers four types
of expected return. Companies
can generate short-term tactical
decreases in integration expenses
by replacing old, difficult-tomanage
technology with new
architectural approaches that
minimize the use of brittle integration
middleware.

“This is a nobrainer,
a good short-term win
for SOA,” he says.
A second related benefit is tied
to reusability: SOA makes development
resources more productive
by reducing the number of cycles
it takes to build new capabilities.
Third, SOA delivers new opportunities
in the realm of increased business
agility, which helps businesses
do things that were previously
impossible or too costly. Finally,
SOA can help companies increase
visibility and reduce liability
through reusable services.

In addition, SOA offers intangible,
non-business benefits to
the enterprise. “We’re still in the
artisan days of IT,” says Schmelzer.
“Today, the quality of your solution
rests with the quality of your ‘blacksmith.’
We have to get away from
that. Fundamentally, in order for
IT to solve incrementally more
complicated problems, we have to
become more industrialized. There
must be expectations of quality,
agreed-upon methods for building
things, architecture goals, guidance,
regulations, and certification, as
well as an understanding of what
you will get when the project is
completed. Then we can start doing
more complicated things. It’s hard
to see how IT will evolve without
architecture. That’s why we’re so
passionate about SOA.”

Read more at: InfoWorld