Organisations should beware of rushing into applying SOA
concepts
without first reorganising their IT departments to
cope.
According to a white paper by Diamond Management and
Technology
Consultants, companies need to take a two-phased approach to
the
transition if they are to ensure success.
Chris Curran, Diamond’s chief technology officer, explained, “A
company
can totally disrupt its operations if it races towards SOA
without
getting its IT organisation into shape first. Technology SOA is
the
essential foundation of the business-driven SOA, which has many
business
leaders excited. But shared services to help IT move data, respond
to
system errors, log activities and generate reports must be built
before
beginning business SOA.”
The first step involves working out how much it costs to deliver
existing
services and coming up with solid service level agreements to
support this.
It is also necessary to ensure that project managers are in place
to define
new requirements, handle any problems and risks and measure the
business
value of any initiative.
But it is also crucial to write a technology architecture plan
to identify
appropriate areas in which to create services and to hire
information architects
with experience in developing reusable software components. This
process can
take between two and three years, Curran warned.
He added, “It is also critically important that any company
planning a business
SOA initiative has clear mechanisms for funding shared IT assets.
The best
strategy can get stalled when various business units can’t resolve
who will
pay. A strong CEO who makes SOA a corporate priority and funds it
accordingly
can eliminate a lot of the in-fighting that goes on in setting
shared budgets.”
The second step towards SOA success involves ensuring that the
right structures
are in place to enable CIOs to communicate effectively with other
C-level
executives and their teams. The aim is to ensure that everyone
understands
the company’s IT priorities and that there is a regular forum for
both business
and IT leaders to resolve any issues.