Jiri’s Notepad

Christopher Koch: The Starting Point for SOA:

The research I’m doing for a story shows that SOAs that begin as technology exercises are running into problems–just like EA did. There has to be a business story behind them to get them off the ground. Indeed, every new strategy needs a good story, an anecdote that clearly and simply demonstrates why you are doing something and how it benefits the business.The story that seems to be emerging across many early adopters of SOA is that the SOA begins life as a portal. Someone in IT or the business realizes that employees would be more effective if they could avoid having to dig into two or more separate systems to accomplish a task or a process. Or, it becomes clear that employees are avoiding a system because they only need a tiny piece of the functionality and the system requires that they understand much more than they need to know. The portal–whether it’s tailored to a particular employee’s work role or is simply a generic single interface into many different systems, jump starts the process that is behind SOA: abstraction of systems.