SOI before SOA
Services-oriented architecture (SOA) is one of the hottest topics in IT at present. For long term success, the infrastructure upon which SOA will rely must be in order before attempting to implement SOA solutions, writes Chris Bone, enterprise products manager at Fujitsu Siemens Computers
Management consultancy McKinsey recently forecast that 2007 will be characterised by an increasing migration to SOAs and the introduction of "lean" manufacturing principles in data centre operations. Research among US chief information officers indicates that 64 per cent of large organisations plan to implement SOAs in the coming year. This is a huge potential market for channel partners but the success of these projects will rely upon a strong foundation that partners will need to check is in place.
End users looking to exploit SOA as a set of building blocks that can adapt to changes in business process, will need to be able to dynamically adapt and modify the underlying infrastructure to meet workload requirements and deliver tight integration between the application and the underlying hardware.
Keen to realise savings, many organisations will attempt to move straight to SOA without having a services-oriented infrastructure (SOI) in place – the inevitable conclusion is that many, if not all, of these projects will fail to deliver on expectations in the short- to medium-term and may demand a complete reassessment of infrastructure and requirements. This will cost channel partners involved dearly so it is in their interest to firstly ensure a thorough review of the SOI.
Many directors and senior level managers are under the misconception that SOA will bring instant results and cost-savings. The hype around virtualization and SOA, has led to them being seen as talismanic solutions. However, consolidation is only the first step on the way to reducing total cost of ownership – without a flexible underlying infrastructure and tight integration you simply cannot deliver the full benefits of SOA.
The most prominent benefit an end user will notice is the closer alignment of IT resources with business requirements. They can reduce overall server count by as much as 50 per cent and increase server utilisation and availability. With a more dynamic infrastructure in place, IT organisations can respond faster to peaks in workload and reduce management overheads and costs. These are all opportunities for channel partners to deliver lucrative high service levels.
Indeed, SAP has publicly stated that "best run SAP applications require best run IT". SOA will be most effective when applied to the right environment and for any organisation looking to deploy SOA on a broad basis; a long hard look at their existing systems and server infrastructure is vital.