Writing about the potential for services-oriented architecture (SOA), I pointed out that SOA as an architecture of services is based on the premise that software components operate as modular components (building blocks) of a larger, immediately executing transaction (unit of work). Services are designed to perform reusable partial processes on behalf of a bigger transaction.
SOA is attractive because it enables reuse of logic and data in multiple contexts. At a fundamental level, the radical shift to SOA calls for a different mindset – a dramatically different one at that. The adoption of SOA shall signify itself to be an important development in the IT world. Software will be described as a portfolio of capabilities and possibilities instead of modularized applications. Data models will be standard-based and externalized to enable interworking between services, and data will be considered to be like any other form of "digital content" ever ready for exchange and transformation between systems.
I also higlighted the view that the actual goal of SOA isn’t interoperability; if that is all you want then sprinkle a few Web Service interfaces on your existing design and you will have opened up your application to all platforms - but you will not necessarily have benefited from SOA.
John Hagel gave a new perspective about SOA. Commenting on this perspective, I wrote that lasting value for business shall come out of enabling entirely new sets of business models - those that can be configured on the fly ( for example, integrating all eBay related operators in multiple ways), enabling lean, mean, and efficient best in class processes with well designed performance measures, and also by enhancing the ability of the business enterprise in leveraging emerging technologies like grid computing, applistructures, powerful convergence technologies - many of the solutions today are aligned to delivering solutions in the conventional way but these may change.
Article comments
1 - Wylie
The benefits of SOA are undoubtly great - once you get the momentum going. I would like to here from the audience about how much money actually needed to be spent to get the momentum going. That is to say, what does it cost to get the framework in place, and what was the starting costs of services needing to be migrated to this new architecture?