Six Steps to Implement SOA
By CXOtoday Staff
Mumbai, May 18, 2007

Torry Harris Business Solutions, a provider of services and solutions for mission-critical distributed enterprise computing and middleware, has chalked 6 steps for implementing Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) in a cost-effective manner.

By accessing the following elements, decision-makers can determine the right path to SOA implementation:

1. Identify the application sets that are impacted by the frequent business changes.

2. The user cases should be documented and included in the study of client based executables. This study will give a full view of the scope, and establish a narrower set of important milestones.

3. A server based application code has to be reviewed to identify and abstract business processes from application's functionality.

4. When business systems operate conditionally, a lot of tasks are lost. Separating processes from systems and making each discrete, will expose weaknesses. These considerations will determine the classes and types of products to be used in the enterprise architecture. Once this is done, the first sketch of the target architecture is made visible.

5. A registry and a repository that describes the service is necessary, so that incoming messages can find them. The SOA could initially be made available within the firewall, tested, and then subsequently made available through holes in the firewall that are opened specifically, with relevant security measures to allow access to nominated users.

6. Selecting the right offshore SOA partner. The selection of an SOA partner largely depends on whether SOA is purchased or custom made. Questions like, whether this is merely a vendor or a true business ally with domain-specific expertise, is there the visibility into the process, and is the support team accessible around the clock to meet the needs, should be asked.