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Four steps to SOA success:
How a phased rollout and the right approach to service-oriented architecture can ease the pain of transition

Service-oriented architecture, or SOA, is not a new concept but is currently under the spotlight in the corporate world. Essentially, SOA is sharing platform-independent services across a medium to create applications. It enables a company to run numerous systems together, without having to rip out old legacy applications to create a new, fully integrated network, which can be expensive.

The recent resurgence of the concept can be attributed to the growing need to connect software services to improve organizational efficiency and ensure a company is realizing the potential of its IT investments. The move towards SOA should be as simple as the concept itself.

But for many businesses looking to take advantage of this latest technology trend, the challenges can seem insurmountable. Many questions dominate the planning stages: Where do you start? What technology support will be needed? Are your systems even compatible? How will the services evolve?

Four steps are essential to achieving success with SOA. With a phased rollout and the right approach the transition can be eased:

1. Envision

A business needs to initially look at what it has—both in terms of physical setup and the processes that are in place—and then think about what it needs and where it is going. The goal of this action is to align business capabilities and technology processes to create a clearer picture of what is required of SOA.

A critical success factor of SOA is complete buy-in from the entire workforce—from the top of the hierarchy down to the "shop floor." If everyone understands what the system means for the business, everyone can use it to their benefit and that of the wider company.

SOA should be considered as a new way of thinking and not a simple rip-and-replace.

2. Plan

Once the vision has been decided on a business can start to plan a path for implementing SOA. This needs to be done with the ideal result in mind.

Planning should involve nearly all departments. Business owners have a vision of the capabilities that they have now and will have in the future. IT owners understand the current landscape and have input into consolidation and retirement plans. Application maintenance and IT Operations staff should be included from the outset and they generally have the best view of how the end-to-end IT process works in reality. Finally, the end users of the systems should be consulted to get a view on what customers want and need and how a consolidated process would gel into a usable user experience.

Spending time on this step is recommended so a business can establish a pattern of working that will create predictability for future projects and take into account elements of change in its industry.

3. Execute

The implementation of an SOA needs to be done at a slow and steady pace. Businesses that rush this step often make mistakes that lead to spiraling costs, processes not being addressed and functionality being included that businesses don’t actually need.

It is best to start with the implementation of a small, well-defined system to test the foundation architecture, development procedures and operational procedures. This system needs to be a mission-critical application in order to build credibility and get buy-in from the wider workforce when the benefits are realized. Once the foundation layer of the SOA has been implemented, processes can be migrated or added—gradually integrating the SOA into the wider architecture.

4. Feedback

A vital part of implementing SOA successfully is putting energy into the people and processes involved with operating the system.

An SOA is a new way of thinking and operating, and while an integrated architecture brings many benefits, it also requires attention and direction. This could be an extension of an existing central technology office or architecture group but someone needs to be assigned to analyze, monitor and review the architecture on an ongoing basis.

This is a step often forgotten by businesses and their SOAs have suffered because of it. An SOA needs to adapt and evolve with the business based on developing requirements and processes.

A service-orientated architecture is initially not a cheap solution, but in the long-run is more cost effective than putting in a new architecture on a common platform. When an effective SOA is up and running, the costs saved through efficiency and the utilization of legacy applications means that processes can be added on as necessary allowing the business to grow.