Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2006/07/27/soa_reg_reader/

Insights from Reg readers on SOA

Findings from the latest reader study

By Team Register

Posted in On-Prem, 27th July 2006 11:55 GMT

Reg Reader Studies When we asked about Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in the last big reader research study, we weren't sure what kind of response we would get. We knew that in some quarters SOA had been discussed as mostly vendor hype, and we also suspected that stories of widespread adoption were probably a little exaggerated.

As it turns out, the uptake of SOA does appear to be relatively modest at this point in time, but that didn't stop us flushing out over 1,300 respondents who were keen to give us their views, one in 10 of which had extensive experience and in-depth expertise from actual implementations.

This got the Reg's number crunching team, aka Freeform Dynamics, all excited, so they disappeared into a darkened room with their Excel spreadsheets and pizza delivery menu and proceeded to analyse the results.

One of the things they found was that the consensus among those with knowledge and experience of SOA is that it is certainly not all vendor hype. Experienced adopters are able to discuss specific practicalities and tangible benefits in some detail.

Having said this, the general view is that SOA is not a radical new approach either. The best way to think about it is as an evolution of ideas and practices that have been around for a while - component-based development, distributed encapsulated services, mapping of IT services onto business processes, and so on.

The thing that's changed is that everything has been pulled together into a coherent set of principles that are now enabled by open standards and the right kind of tooling and middleware, all of which have been challenges in the past.

Honing in on the benefits, SOA savvy Reg readers confirmed the theory that the approach can boost the level of reuse and streamline both the development and the maintenance process. This translates to increased efficiency and cost savings.

However, those with experience put more emphasis on the ability of SOA to allow a more rapid and flexible response to changing requirements and new demands hitting IT from the business.

A major benefit was also highlighted with regard to communication between IT and the business. As "service speak" is a language much more familiar to business people than "IT speak", the adoption of SOA can ease the dialogue between the two camps, even allowing the relationship to move from the reactive request/response mindset to more of a proactive collaborative approach. Many readers provided anecdotal feedback to illustrate this.

But there are some significant challenges with SOA. Feedback suggests that implementation needs to be approached in the right way, otherwise SOA initiatives are likely to flounder and fail to deliver results.

There is nothing wrong getting your feet wet with a single discrete manageable project, in fact this is recommended, but it's a big mistake to start out with a purely tactical approach without thinking about where it is leading. This is because the benefits of SOA are cumulative, so the real payback tends to kick in several projects down the line in a coordinated initiative.

Related to this, experienced adopters also highlight the importance of senior management buy-in to make sure support and investment are forthcoming on a sustained basis, particularly in the early days when the groundwork is being done. This, however, brings another challenge into sharp focus, that of actually explaining what SOA is all about to business executives.

Fortunately, there are lots of Reg readers who have faced this problem and worked out ways to deal with it. Some of the tips they offer in this area, along with a full discussion of other findings from the research, are contained in the study report entitled "Service Oriented Architecture: Lessons from the Front Line", available from the Reg Research library here.

Apart from providing insight and guidance, this report also highlights one of the biggest challenges standing in the way of organisations taking advantage of SOA at the moment – limited knowledge and a degree of confusion. Less than a quarter of those participating in the study, for example, said the definition of SOA was completely clear to them.

It is arguable that some IT vendors haven't particularly helped here with their narrow definitions of SOA picking up on just those aspects that are relevant to their offerings. Natural though this is, it has led to IT professionals being hit with a range of stories that often don't gel together very well and sometimes even directly conflict with each other.

And it doesn't help when vendors and analysts come up with ludicrous hype-laden terms such as "SOA 2.0" – as if there wasn't enough confusion out there already.

The bottom line is that SOA really does appear to be delivering results in some organisations, so as one Reg reader put it, it's about "keeping the faith and avoiding the buzzword soup".

For those interested in learning more about the practicalities of SOA adoption, a couple of the analysts who designed and reported the Reg study will be delivering a web seminar that you can sign up to here.