The Government’s Incremental Move Towards SOA

This latest post on the SOA Network details how the latest report from Input, a leader in the authority of government business, discusses that the government’s growing adoption of SOA practices will fundamentally change how it delivers internal citizen-facing services. The federal market can benefit from increased agility and better IT alignment that SOA brings to the table.

Deniece Peterson, senior analyst at INPUT mentions:

"SOA shifts the concept of the application into a highly dynamic and fluid marketplace of plug-and-play services. A function previously performed by one vendor's application could now be completed by a number of discrete services provided by a multitude of providers. The standardized environment required to make this happen could severely impact the provider who relies heavily on proprietary elements for competitive advantage."

It is still early in the process to see a dramatic change in the federal SOA market as SOA solutions are slowly being integrated into the customer’s environment. The findings from Input can be found here, “Service-Oriented Architecture: Implications for Government and Industry”.

Supporting SOA

This article from Collaborative discusses funding of SOA. As the article states, before commencement of a project of this kind it is important for organizations to consider their investment principles, current assets, and option that they have for IT funding. Some other highlights included in this article is that to succeed with funding it is imperative for an SOA initiative to

align with one or more core investment principles, such as:

1. Enterprise Vision & Mission Alignment
2. Enterprise Mission Criticality
3. Enterprise Economy-of-Scale Value
4. Enterprise Risk Tolerance
5. Strategic Leadership Opportunity
6. Interoperability
7. Common Need
8. Technology Maturity

The paper also informs that the basic funding models include:

1. Project-based

2. Enterprise-based

3. IT-based

4. Charge-back

I found the overall article to be very helpful in providing a focus when discussing the need for funding of SOA projects and recommend it for reading.

Reasons Why People are Responsible for SOA Failure

Mike Kavis from Techworld posted this informative article on what makes SOA fail in businesses. In summary he provided these 10 reasons of why people are responsible for the failure:

1. Fail to explain SOA’s businesses value
2. They underestimate the impact of organizational change
3. They fail to secure strong executive sponsorship
4. They attempt to do SOA “on the cheap”
5. They lack the required skills to deliver SOA
6. They have poor project management
7. They think of SOA as a project instead of architecture
8. They underestimate the complexity of SOA
9. They fail to implement and adhere to SOA governance
10. They let vendors drive the architecture

It was interesting to see his opinion on what needs to change in the way in which people incorporate SOA into their respective organizations. What are your viewpoints on what makes SOA work in the workplace? Can you think of any improvements you would recommend for individuals within companies?