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How Do I Save My Architecture?
As a practitioner who has implemented enterprise transformation strategies successfully, let me share some knowledge. The key to a successful SOA implementation does not lie in throwing out existing legacy technology and bringing in the latest and greatest technology platform identified in a magic quadrant. If that happens as a consequence of the strategy, so be it. I have never seen it happen that the SOA strategy proved to be successful when it was based on just bringing in new technology. If the SOA strategy does not start at the level of the business architecture, you are not going to reap ROI. An SOA strategy is also not something that is implemented in weeks or months. It is a journey that takes a few years to reach SOA nirvana.

The key questions to ask are:

• What business issues and pain points do I have today?
• How do my business metrics and KPIs compare with my competition and industry benchmarks?
• What is my enterprise's vision and what are the strategic business areas that my company will be in over the next few years?

If your enterprise has zero business issues or pain points, which is quite impossible if you live in the same world as I do, please tell the CEO that you deserve a long vacation that lasts a few months and come back when the next set of terms are coined in IT. If you are like the rest of the world, then the business issues need to be defined and captured in a model, and later when the SOA strategy is implemented, translated into measurable and quantifiable observations.

As important as it is to advance top-down from the business architecture, it is equally important to take a "well-managed" path to an SOA strategy (see Figure 2). This path should broadly involve three steps:

• Renovation
• Integration
• Management

The maturity of a business in its SOA adoption increases as the enterprise becomes more agile and adaptive to its business issues. An enterprise will become adaptive and agile only when it embarks upon a managed path to SOA, taking the enterprise through stages of achieving SOA rather than a big bang approach targeted at bringing in new technologies that promise transformation of an enterprise architecture to SOA.

Advancing top-down from the business architecture layer will ensure that you are able to prioritize your business issues and then figure out what artifacts in your other layers will be impacted when you set out to solve your business pain points. Thus, instead of ripping out existing applications, functionality, technology platforms, and infrastructure in the pursuit of SOA nirvana, a managed path will be taken, which will ensure that the relevant portions of each architecture layer are transformed in your SOA quest. This will also allow an enterprise to selectively adopt new technologies that are relevant to the enterprise's needs.

There are still many issues to reflect upon in an SOA strategy. In large multinational enterprises, there are localized IT departments in addition to enterprise IT. Different business divisions have their own strategy and agenda. It is a challenge to even fathom what lies in an enterprise basement (Reference entry 2). Enterprises today have limited budgets, multiple and sometimes redundant applications and technologies, and constant demand from business for new features.

Unless, there is a "managed" SOA initiative, it is doomed to failure. A managed initiative will try to address achieving SOA in three steps: renovation, integration, and management, utilizing Business Domain Modeling and Business Event Processing so that we can save our architecture.

References

• "Operating Environment essentials for an on-demand breakthrough," March 2004, IBM
• "Red Rabbit Software: SOA The Right Way": www.redrabbitsoftware.com/services/psg
• Venkat, G. "Have You Checked Your Basement Lately? " JDJ Vol. 9, iss. 11. http://jdj.sys-con.com/read/46964.htm