copyright © 2006, zapthink, llc 1 emerging trends in soa: rich, smart, mashed, and governed ronald...

Copyright © 2006, ZapThink, LLC 1

Emerging Trends in SOA:Rich, Smart, Mashed, and Governed

Ronald SchmelzerRonald Schmelzer

Senior AnalystSenior Analyst

ZapThink, LLCZapThink, LLC


The Problems of IT are The Problems of Business


Business Constant: Change

CHANGE

CompetitionCompetition

Changing Changing MarketplaceMarketplace

CustomeCustomer r DemandsDemands

Mergers & Mergers & AcquisitionsAcquisitions

Optimizing Optimizing ProcessesProcesses

New New TechnologieTechnologiess

Business Business PartnersPartners

A Business is Never A Business is Never STATICSTATIC


We’ve had IT challenges for years …


… but even after yesterday’s promises…


… we still have the same IT mess, only worse.


The Business Inflexibility Trap

• Inflexibility is the Mother of All Business Problems– If you’re flexible enough, you can solve all the other

problems

• Information Technology (IT) is an impediment to business change– It wasn’t supposed to be that way!


• Companies require Business Agility…

»Responding quickly to change, and

»Leveraging change for competitive advantage

J

Business Agility

Agility is the key to innovationAgility is the key to innovation


What do you Want your IT to Do Anyway?

• The Automation Paradox– The more we

automate, the more our remaining problems are difficult to automate

• Is IT about getting the technology to work together or to help the business meet its goals?

Who’s in control of IT, anyway?Who’s in control of IT, anyway?


Service Orientation:Light at the End of the Tunnel

• Service Orientation is a business approach• It’s not about connecting things, it’s about enabling processes• The core business motivation is business agility• Rather than “rip and replace” old systems – make them work

better together• We don’t want more middleware for our middleware


Level Set – What is SOA?

• SOA is architecture – a set of best practices for the organization and use of IT

• Abstracts software functionality as loosely-coupled, business-oriented Services

• Services can be composed into business processes (which are also Services) in a declarative manner

• As fundamental a change as mainframe to client/server or client/server to the Internet


What is a “Service”?

• Broad meaning: something providing a capability to another as needed– IT Services, like print services or

email services– Business Services, like accounting or

human resource management– Software-as-a-Service

• Narrower meaning: an abstraction of IT functionality or data– Web Services are one example– SOA starts with this kind of Service


The Benefits of SOA…

Reduced cost of integration

Improved value from legacy applications

Reuse leading to reduced redundancy

Greater visibility for governance & compliance

Increased reuse of software assets

Business agility


Key Areas of SOA Investment

• Reduction in integration expense– EAI replacement/EAI maintenance reduction– Legacy enablement/migration/rejuvenation

• Increase in reuse – Reduction in redundancy– Better customer visibility

• Increase in business agility– Improved competitiveness– Faster innovation

• Enablement of governance & compliance


Have We Been Here Before?

• Service-Oriented Architectures have been around a while

• CORBA (Common Object Request

Broker Architecture) and DCOM (Microsoft Distributed Component Object

Model) two familiar examples• What’s new this time?


How to Think Service-Oriented

• Service-Orientation is about change• IT must respond to change, empower users, and

enable innovation


SOA shifts the way we think

Traditional Distributed Computing

Service Oriented Architecture

Designed to last Designed to change

Tightly Coupled Loosely Coupled, Agile and Adaptive

Integrate Silos Compose Services

Code Oriented Metadata Oriented

Long development cycle Interactive and iterative development

Cost centered Business centered

Middleware makes it work Architecture makes it work

Favors Homogeneous Technology Favors Heterogeneous Technology


Revisiting the Definition of Application

• Original definition of application was what task a computer was applied to– Colossus at England’s

Bletchley Park was applied to breaking codes, so that was its application

• The rise of programmable digital computers associated the word application with computer program


SOA: Rethinking the Application

• Today, business users apply Services to solve business problems by building

Service-Oriented Business Apps (SOBAs)

• SOA abstracts existing capabilities– Breaks down existing application silos

• SOA puts greater power into the hands of business users– Requires tooling business users

are comfortable with

• SOA empowers IT governance– Creating, communicating, and managing policies more

important than ever


The Rise of the SOBA

• A Service-Oriented Business Application (SOBA) is a composite application composed of Services that implements a business process


Service-Oriented Process

• Business processes in the context of SOA• SOBAs as empowerment tool for the business

over process• Integration as a side effect of implementing

Service-Oriented Processes thru Service composition


The Services Tipping Point

• Until now, focus on building Services– SOA infrastructure– Legacy enablement– Identifying reusable

Services– Building loosely coupled

Services

• Now, focus moving to consuming Services– Finding the right Service for

the task at hand– Composing Services into

SOBAs– Supporting rich user

interfaces for Services and SOBAs


Web 2.0 vs. SOA

Web 2.0 SOA

Mashups

EnterpriseMashups

EnterpriseWeb 2.0


The Rise of the Mashup

• Mashup = a flexible composition of Services within a rich user interface environment

• In essence, a Mashup is a SOBA interface

Source: http://web2.wsj2.com


The Future of the Enterprise Mashup


A Closer Look at Service Composition

• Line-of-business users (analysts, process architects) can find, identify, understand, and assemble available Services

• They need a flexible tool that provides a visual metaphor appropriate to the task at hand– Process flowcharting tool?– Mind mapping tool?– Rules engine?– Spreadsheet?– Any/all of the above


Empower Business Users?

• The mashup: leveraging the Web to compose Services into ad hoc apps

• Without management and governance, will never be appropriate in an enterprise environment

• How to empower users in the spirit of the mashup, but maintain necessary control?

Governance the key to the “Enterprise Mashup”Governance the key to the “Enterprise Mashup”


Without Governance,Mashups are Dangerous

• Mashups enable unpredictable SOBAs

• Risks: – Confidentiality breaches– Unauthorized capabilities– Fraud


Flexibility, Empowerment & Control

• The old way: IT management maintains control, doles out limited capabilities to users

• The Service-Oriented way: IT empowers a wide range of business users to build and manage SOBAs

• Risk: business users will really muck things up!

• Solution: SOA governance – business user empowerment in the context of policy-based control


The SOA “Killer App”

• Part modeling tool– Coordinate representations of Services, processes, policies,

and implementation on an ongoing basis

• Part composition tool– Provide all the visual metaphors business

analysts require

• Part governance tool– Manage policies and the policy lifecycle

• Part management dashboard– Gives the business all the visibility it

requires

• Part consumption tool– Brings together various user interfaces as needed


In Summary

• SOA enables composition of Services into SOBAs – meeting the continuously changing needs of business.

• Enterprises want to “mashup” their IT to meet their changing consumption needs

• Without SOA, mashups are toys – tightly-coupled, UI-based integration, not agile

• Without governance, mashups are dangerous!

• The evolution that SOA and Enterprise Web 2.0 represents is an evolution in the enterprise application

Help SOA evolve!Help SOA evolve!


Thank You!

ZapThink is an industry analysis firm focused exclusively on Service-Oriented Architecture.

Ronald Schmelzer

[email protected]

Photos © Lisa Polucci

Read our new book, Service Orient or Be Doomed! How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business.

copyright © 2006, zapthink, llc 1 emerging trends in soa: rich, smart, mashed, and governed ronald...

Documents

business agilityrather

business approachits

business agilitycompanies

business agilityresponding

business processes

business changeit wasnt

print services

dataweb services