6 Reasons Why Enterprises should Adopt SOA
By Priyanka Akhouri
Mumbai, Nov 29, 2007

In an effort to increase growth and innovation for businesses around the globe, CIOs and enterprises are often caught in a dilemma on how to achieve this target. They're always on the look out for a flexible, standardized architecture to support the connection of various applications in a better and easier way.

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) can be a respite for enterprises. Here are 6 reasons why enterprises should adopt SOA.

Enables to reduce money and time

Reusing services with SOA allows you to tap into the services that already exist in your company. By building from your existing resources, you can streamline your business processes, ensure consistency throughout your company, and cut development time.

Elucidating on this, Naveen Gupta, VP (Technical Sales and Services) of IBM Software Group, India/ South Asia, said, "You can reduce any duplication of functionality in your services, and avail of the advantage of using the proven core applications the people in your company are familiar with, This for sure will save your time and money.

Helps adapt to changing market needs

Most of the entrepreneurs are of the opinion that SOA can help businesses develop and respond more quickly and cost-effectively to the changing market scenarios. It simplifies the interconnection to and the use of existing IT assets of a company.
According to Gupta, the process entry point allows enterprises to know what's happening in their business, allowing them to improve existing business models. SOA enables to transform business processes into reusable and flexible services -- allowing you to improve and optimize these new processes.

A recent survey on the adoption of SOA in Asia/Pacific conducted by IDC reveals that among the 100 organizations that adopted SOA, most have focused primarily on reworking business processes and adopting a common set of internal processes in order to optimize efficiencies.

Makes business process easy through connectivity

One reason why enterprises go for SOA-based solutions is that it allows to connecting systems, which is essential for them. Be it to developing new applications -- connect systems, workgroups, or geographically distributed subsidiaries; or teaming up with trading partners, SOA helps in mechanizing physical information and transfer of processes.

"Enterprises can take advantage of the connectivity entry point in order to effectively connect the infrastructure, integrating people, processes, and information in the company. One can even connect to external partners outside your firewall in a secure way," said Gupta.

According to IDC, SOA has been leveraged across a wide range of industries including banking, brokerage, insurance, and government sectors in Asia/Pacific.

Enables to build strong customer relationship

SOA focuses on the user experience to help generate innovation and greater collaboration. This enables consistent human and process interaction, thus improving business productivity.

By making SOA applications and services available to customers and suppliers, businesses can develop amicable relationships with their customers and suppliers. With this application enterprises can not only experience better collaboration, but also enhance their customer satisfaction.

Is reliable and helps in business expansion

SOA simplifies the process of management of distributed resources across multiple platforms. It's reliable, standard based, cost-effective, and requires less hardware.
It enables growth and expansion of a new generation of efficient applications to deal with a number of business concerns that are important and necessary for growth and competition.

According to Frost & Sullivan report, the emergence of enterprise integration and a need for flexible business processes will trigger IT adoption, and drive the demand for SOA as a feasible and popular option to achieve a workable IT infrastructure.

Increases business efficiency

You can simplify, automate, and track your business process efficiently with SOA. Enterprises and CIOs can share business processes in a secure manner -- externally and internally and also ensure data integrity. Furthermore, enterprises can effectively and proactively take business decisions.

SOA enables to leverage information in your company in a consistent and visible way. By providing this trusted information throughout all areas of business, one can empower all areas of the company to innovate, thus allowing it to compete more efficiently, stated Gupta.


Related links:
SOA Poised for Takeoff in Asia: Springboard
What exactly is SOA?
Enterprises Focus on SOA Testing Services