Service Oriented Architecture Field Guide for Executives

5.1. MEASURING THE APPROPRIATENESS OF SOA

Do You Need Application Integration?

Does your business use separate software applications for accounting, human resources, payroll, and other purposes? Do you have business processes that need to use more than one such software? For large-to-medium businesses, the answer to these questions is invariably yes. SOA is an excellent choice to integrate applications. In a few years, it may be the dominant approach as more and more enterprise application integration (EAI) vendors conform to SOA in their products.

If, however, your business or division uses a small number of applications or the level of interaction between the applications is minimal, SOA may not be a necessity.

Do You Want to Automate Interaction with Your Partners?

Automated interaction with your partners (customers, dealers, suppliers, and distributors) has many benefits. SOA emphasizes standardization. You and your partners can now adopt standards such as XML, SOAP, and Web Services to implement the interaction. This will make life easier for all parties. SOA also helps you abstract out partners. This will, for example, speed up the integration of a new customer or the replacement of a supplier.

If your business performs or intends to perform automated interaction with several external entities, SOA will be a compelling choice.

Do You Need Distributed Computing?

In SOA, applications interact with each other over the network. This type of programming leads to complex software ...