Service-Oriented Architecture Improves Digital Relations
by
Larry Schmidt
“The job of buildings is to improve human relations: architecture must ease them, not make them worse.”
Ralph Erskine
Award Winning Architect, 1914 - 2005
When one sees the word “architecture,” one quickly associates the term with a structure or building. Admiring a building, one quickly reviews its characteristics to determine an opinion on its architecture. One looks at the building’s presence on the street, how it fits in or “accents” the community, how well it stands up to the elements, how it is constructed and so on. If the building represents a corporate headquarters, often times the appearance of the building signifies the viability of that enterprise in its chosen industry. At a point in time, one might conclude that the building is the embodiment of a great architecture.
The information technology industry has borrowed the term “architecture” from the engineering industry. For the IT purist, architecture represents the “blue-prints” for developing and maintaining the information technology assets that encapsulate and automate the business policies for the enterprise. These assets are often constructed in such a means that only the people residing within the boundaries of the building can enjoy the business automation they provide.
We live in a world where the consumer has become very knowledgeable of the true value received when purchasing a product or service. Further, the consumer only has a limited tolerance for finding the service to purchase. In order to earn that business, the consumer must quickly discover meaningful information on the service, understand how that service satisfies their requirements and expectations, and rate how easy it is to do business with the enterprise. To gain that understanding, the consumer must be able to comprehend the enterprise’s value propositions. The consumer must rapidly gain an appreciation for the enterprise’s business policies and its’ procedures for doing business. To gain that understanding in an automated fashion, the enterprise must unlock the electronic door to their building and unleash their automated business policies.
Enter Service-Oriented Architecture. SOA represents a means for opening the door to the value the enterprise brings to the consumer. It is an architecture that speaks in the terms of the business and thrives on enabling services to be discovered and consumed by the constituents of the enterprise. It is a means for enabling electronic collaboration without human interaction at a time that is convenient for the consumer. With SOA, not only will doors be unlocked, they may never be closed again.
One may wonder why SOA is so popular today. There are many perspectives on this. First, from an IT perspective, SOA leverages the software qualities of many of the previous development paradigms. For example, it is an enablement of the distribute compute model typically leveraged by Client Server applications. It leverages encapsulation, information hiding and polymorphism typically associated with Objects. It borrows the best design elements of Component-Based Development. Second, from an industry perspective, standards have been built around the consumption and invocation of services. As standards emerge, technology options potentially simplify. Third, from a business perspective, it gets IT and business team members to work even more closely than before to build IT services that are recognized in business terms to “digitally” represent the enterprise. Both teams have equal “skin in the gam.”
There are many value propositions “to be admired” through the use of SOA. For the CEO focused on earnings per share, SOA offers a means to improve revenue (consumer discovery) while reducing costs (consumer self service). The CFO focused on meeting financial budgets and targets can reduce risks through incremental deployment of services. The CIO sees a direct alignment of business policy to enabling service, which simplifies the application portfolio he/she must manage. The CTO sees a means for taking advantage of new technologies which can be implemented “behind the scenes.” The enterprise can more easily grow through acquisition, and integration is simplified. Value chains can be shortened, and extended enterprises can more easily collaborate. Ultimately, consumers benefit through a reduction in the hassle factor, elimination of the “middle-man,” and the ability to do business on their schedule. It can provide the catalyst for “better value for money,” which starts the chain of competitive advantage.
If we think of these value propositions in terms of characteristics of a virtual building (enterprise), one too, might conclude that they are the embodiment of a great architecture.
With this said, I offer a new twist to Ralph Erskine’s quote.
“The job of the virtual enterprise is to improve digital relations. Service Oriented Architecture will ease them, not make them worse.”
