SOA Results in Measurable Benefits

The SOA pilot program issues discussed in previous tutorials really don't represent technology hurdles. Instead, these hurdles encompass things like: justification for the project, internal politics and people's perceptions about potential SOA results and SOA risks associated with a given pilot program.

Perception of SOA Results is Major Hurdle

Perception of potential SOA results and risks represents one of the biggest hurdles associated with SOA pilot programs. Other questions that beset IT:

• Who is on board with the SOA pilot project?
• Who is not?
• What does the internal political landscape look like?
• What does IT need to do in order to come up with an ROI justification that will persuade the business to support the SOA?
• How to execute a SOA pilot successfully in order to determine if SOA really makes sense for the organization?
• Where does SOA make sense, and what functions ought to take priority?

Executing a "safe" pilot will often help IT to play with the technology, but it will probably not answer the toughest questions -- the kinds of questions that are best answered during a pilot. --Instead of being left for a "highly visible" pilot: say, a transaction-oriented project upon which all eyes are fixed.

Quantifying SOA Results

As IT begins the SOA pilot project the mindset should not be that SOA results should reduce service or application performance in any way. Instead IT needs to push itself to take on the tough things: to strive for quantitative SOA results. End users, customers, partners, sales channels should never have to suffer for the sake of the SOA. While people can be made to understand that there will be some inevitable hiccups during the transition -- which are a part of every pilot -- IT will learn from these mistakes and take corrective action. As always, however, the objective remains to deliver at least the same level of service, availability and reliability that were in force with legacy applications.

Aim High for SOA Results

And, of course, there's no point in moving to a SOA if the organization doesn't end up ahead of where it began; this means that IT ought to "aim high". Whether the SOA results sought are simply integration, or whether it's reducing time to market or cutting costs or promoting service reuse, key constituencies within the organization are going to be expecting big results from the SOA. So if IT doesn't aim high, and deliver positive, measurable SOA results, than nothing of value will have been accomplished.

Measure SOA Results

So it's important to measure SOA results: because you get what you measure. Start by measuring what and where the SOA is today:

• What is the user and IT experience today?
• How long does it take to get new features?
• How robust is the system?
• What is the rate and status of completion?

Acquire metrics around how the system runs today, and capture those benchmarks. Then IT will be able to share the data with the business and have the tools to show how SOA is improving business processes.

Do SOA Results Benefit the Business?

In the past, IT has been very good at telling the organization why it needs more software, more infrastructure. But in the current era, SOA is really forcing an alignment between business and IT -- happily, for all the right reasons. In this new era, IT needs to start talking to the business about how it can measure SOA results in useful ways: not just in terms IT understands. Reliability and robustness were mentioned above. Service-level agreements are relevant, too. But there are other important criteria: how are services being reused, for example? How many consumers are benefiting? Are other departments benefiting from shared services? And what about trust? The organization must be certain that shared services are safe to use in their business processes. These are just some of the sought-for benefits that SOA results in.

For More Information

Are your business stakeholders demanding SOA results? Find out to obtain and quantify the outcomes you need. Register to watch the free webinar, Implementing a Successful SOA Pilot