SOA 2006: State Of The Art.
Mahesh H. Dodani · The Journal of Object Technology · 2006
SOA GOES MAINSTREAM?"Service-oriented architecture is losing its aura of high-risk early adoption to become a mainstream IT model with a growing body of lessons learned."-http://www.eweek.com /article2/0,1759,2025155,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03129TX1K0000612As we have progressed through 2006, SOA has dug its heels into all aspects of software engineering and become entrenched as the main enabler of the holy grail of aligning IT to business, along with the ability to facilitate business innovation through a flexible and agile IT.By all accounts, SOA has been adopted as the enterprise architecture approach (e.g.see http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,39289,00.html):• Many of the largest companies in key industries including banking, insurance, automotive, retail, telecommunications, and healthcare have significant investments in SOA, and are able to innovate in their industries because of the flexibility and agility that is provided by their SOA-based IT implementation.• Several studies (e.g.http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/index.wss/ibvstudy/bcs/ a1025716?cntxt=a1000074) of the many companies that have invested in SOA have confirmed the business value and ROI that can be derived from SOA.A key finding of these studies is that companies do not describe what they were doing as "SOA projects"; instead, they were undertaking business-focused projects and were using the principles of SOA to support their need for being able to achieve strategic innovation capabilities.Several studies find that cost reduction is the initial justification for incorporating SOA practices into projects.However, as these projects progress, companies quickly realize that the primary value and benefit that can be derived is the greater flexibility which in turn can support greater innovation resulting in greater revenue.• From a technology perspective, SOA has also matured over this last year.As an example, an IBM technology-focused study of hundreds of companies' SOA implementations found that the top five results were improved customer satisfaction (e.g.77% increase in dealer satisfaction for whole-goods ordering processes), business operational savings (e.g.67% reduction of fees compared with paper-based system), increased competitiveness (e.g.online ordering will