Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
and Integration

Beyond the buzz about SOA from trade magazines and industry analysts lies the opportunity for companies to realize true business and technology advantages. As enterprise architecture and modernization experts, Summa can help.

Although SOA is generally considered an IT architectural approach, it combines technology, methodology and a new IT mindset. Instead of force-fitting business components to rely on big, unwieldy, inflexible (and often, legacy) systems and establish procedures that suit the IT structure, SOA leaders establish a technology framework that is built from the start - or modernized - to serve the company's day-to-day business operations and needs. Plus, that architecture is designed not only to meet the needs of a snapshot of the business today, but its very structure can also re-use components to readily accommodate the ongoing needs, changes and growth that characterize business.

Organizations that successfully harness the efficiency gains, IT cost reductions and heightened IT agility afforded by SOA start by mapping out their SOA strategy and goals, identifying appropriate pilot projects, and embarking upon an evolutionary migration path.

While in many ways, SOA is just a more consumable and standardized practice for distributed systems and commercial software development and integration practices that have been maturing for the past 15 years, these characteristics distinguish SOA:

• Requires being built on open standards
• Aligns business with IT
• Integrates business functions and processes
• Enables agility, flexibility and responsiveness
• Sets framework for integrating legacy applications

Summa's technologists have faced these challenges throughout the evolution of distributed computing, from client-server into SOA. Summa has always focused on creating well-architected, planned and implemented enterprise applications built with shared, secure, robust and remotely accessible reusable components. Implementing SOA is not just the deployment of a technology or product, but includes the combination and alignment of business processes, enterprise architecture strategy, SOA specific best practices and establishing an SOA governance model.

SOA Services Summa Offers

• Helps companies' IT and business groups establish an SOA strategic path and roadmap.
• Educates companies' technical and non-technical personnel on benefits of SOA for their organization.
• Plans and executes SOA projects.
• Adapts pre-existing software designs for use in an SOA environment.
• Assesses the impact of SOA and a company's readiness for SOA.
• Delivers pilot programs to show SOA's business value.

• The Business Issues

  The successful realization of SOA is driven from a focus on business prioritization and IT alignment. It is critical to build a roadmap with an understanding of not only the technologies, but the business drivers and impact, contracts between systems, technology capabilities, robustness and security factors. A variety of related business issues drive the establishment of an SOA strategy and technologies:

  • The need for agility in adapting systems to quickly support new and changing business processes.
  • Systems that don't work well together, requiring a great deal of effort and cost to integrate.
  • The spread of duplicate data and business logic, causing unanticipated discrepancies, high maintenance costs, process errors, poor customer service and compliance concerns.
  • The need to incrementally leverage pieces of existing robust applications.
  • The need to leverage more off-the-shelf components and services to reduce costs and risks.

• The Questions

  Deciding to pursue an SOA strategy presents a set of questions, such as:

  • What is SOA and what does it mean to my business and IT capabilities?
  • What are the risks of implementing SOA incorrectly? What is the risk of not implementing an SOA strategy?
  • How can we respond with speed to customer demands, market opportunities or external threats?
  • How can my company automate processes and information flow between customers, partners and employees?
  • How can my organization extend the value of applications by reducing the cost and time of building and integrating new and existing applications?
  • How can my organization improve data and business logic consistency by eliminating redundant systems?
  • How do I reduce dependencies on proprietary technologies that have constrained me in the past?
  • How will SOA affect my organization in terms of skills, responsibilities and processes?
  • What is the strategic roadmap that provides the best balance of accomplishing near and long-term business objectives?

• The Solution

  At its core, SOA allows business application functions to be exposed as loosely coupled services to other applications (and vice versa), providing real time exchange of information using a standards-based approach. SOA extends applications to enable business interactions that were not possible earlier.

  Summa can help you determine the right integration strategy and implement technology, like middleware or web services, to make it possible. If you are looking for ways that SOA applies in your business, have a specific project in mind or need assistance with enabling your staff to implement an SOA strategy, contact us today to learn more about how Summa Technologies can help.