Information in SOA world is often considered only within the context of specific services and processes whilst the most awaited gains and benefits of SOA investment is business information availability throughout the organization and to its partners and regulators. When an organization embarks on SOA and integrates its internal systems across LOB’s it will soon discover that there are inconsistencies in its information that was not visible before as it was hidden within various silo applications and data sources.

I had attended a workshop on understanding IBM SOA technologies at IBM South Bank London a few months ago.  At the time I was also on a project where we were defining an enterprise SOA based landscape.  So it was quite a good timing with live practical experience on one side and IBM on the other. It proved a rich learning experience, combined with interactions with SOA practitioners from different streams, hands on labs and highly experienced IBM staff. In this post I’ll just focus on the Websphere stack of tools that we were exposed to, and my takeaway feelings about the set of products that we did hands on with.

Reflecting on my recent engagement within educational sector I touched and felt the SOA architectural challenges again. Going to the workshops to understand the requirements and business processes it was quite evident that the challenges for an SOA architect do not stop with solving only the technical sides of the SOA architecture. The architect must also coordinate and guide the enterprise’s collaboration between business processes, people, information, and technology to ensure the focus remains on achieving enterprise’s goals rather than anything else.
 

 I would like to begin by stating that the title above can be interpreted in multiple ways (yes it’s the word ‘Service’). Hopefully by the end of this blog you will be able to appreciate why I have stated so.
 
In most organisations the IT part has two sub-organisations: One responsible for design/develops the software (equivalent of a car manufacturing plant, at some level) and another which actually support the running software (equivalent of a car service station). The focus of this blog is on the latter.

Service design considerations for Cloud
In the first part I talked about how SOA and cloud computing converge. SOA does give us the ability to move around services to the cloud. However it might not be sufficient to design services the traditional way. Cloud brings with it a whole new way of doing things. Cloud enabled services should have the following consideration:
 

Within SOA space we have seen many definitions for what exactly SOA is, what problem it can solve and how. These varied and diversified definitions have been the main source for the confusion among both the business users and technical architects on what SOA is and how it can help. A group of smart experts and practitioners have acknowledged this issue and came together during 2009 to develop the SOA manifesto. The SOA manifesto consists of a set of core values and principles that can guide the SOA initiatives and programs on their SOA journey to make sure they do not go astray and keep them on the right path.

‘SOA Security’– How much is enough? – Good question, but meaningless without the context. It is a must to spend a while researching exiting security architecture to comprehend the context. In majority of the cases, the organization probably already has a pretty robust security system(s). The challenge with SOA is to figure out how to extend those existing security measures to those services that comprise SOA. Many SOA security solutions are designed to interconnect effectively with existing security functionality. At that point, the security risks might begin to look a bit more manageable and you can proceed with your plans.

Coming up with service categories seems at first an easy task but when you start thinking about it and discuss it with other architects, you will be dazzled on how many different definitions exist out there. It is not a matter of which one is right and which one is wrong but how we are going to agree on one set of definitions and terminology so we can talk with each other and using the same words (terminology) without having different meaning (unambiguous) for them.

by Murteza Salemi

The fundamental rethink approach required for implementing SOA initiative in an enterprise is that SOA program should be driven by business (business driven SOA) and not technology or vendor products. Furthermore, the initiative must target specific goals and offer ways of objectives measurement.