One cannot help but notice the buzz around the concept
of the service oriented architecture (SOA). With so much industry
talk on the topic, it is a wonder how users ever managed
before.
Read: Getting more than integration from SOA.
And anyone without an SOA strategy may as well give up and go
home, because everyone else has got one.
The thing is, SOA is not a new concept. IT started out as a
service to business; network providers offer a service to connect
computers together; the chargeback scheme some IT directors use to
charge business departments for IT; and the whole concept of
utility-based computing relies on the premise of a service oriented
approach to IT. Moreover, operating systems, databases and
infrastructure middleware provide software architecture which
deliver services that applications can use. Sounds very much like
an SOA.
What has changed is that the IT industry has recognised the need
for standard procedures and protocols to define communications
between applications and service levels. Arguably, the suppliers
should be applauded for agreeing to work together in industry
alliances to define the required standards. But it has been the
industry which sold users proprietary systems that could not
readily communicate with each other. And now it is selling a
solution to the problem it created.
Ignore the hype. There is no need to use the latest and greatest
protocols to support an SOA. As Mark Saldanha, head of IT at Great
Ormond Street Hospital has found, it is possible to develop a
service oriented architecture without having to use web
services.
A quest for openness
There can few more damning critiques of IT project failure than
that presented by senior diplomat Norman Ling to the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office last year.
Foreign Office IT project pushes staff to 'wits
end'.
Looking at the lessons learnt from problems with the FCO's Prism
project to replace 30 legacy systems with a single Oracle ERP
package, Ling said the troubled implementation highlighted the
shortage of project and programme management skills at the FCO. He
also urged greater transparency and independent scrutiny of future
IT implementations.
Given the importance of Prism and the number of basic errors
made in its project management, it is particularly disappointing
that the FCO tried to keep private Ling's report. It makes the
determined efforts of the Foreign Affairs Committee to bring the
report into the light of day all the more laudable.