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Service-Oriented Architectures in it

Service-Oriented Architectures in Computing

The rapid adoption of the Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) framework as a means to coordinate and synchronize the many information technology (it) systems, databases and legacy applications within an enterprise to support a common strategic vision is transforming businesses across industries today. SOAs are often designed to align, coordinate and synchronize all available it resources, process expertise, tacit and explicit knowledge in a business towards a common objective, often enabling these many information assets across diverse geographic locations (Drissen-Silva, Rabelo, 2009). The SOA framework has been shown to successfully unify enterprises across broad geographic distances, making the most critical information assets virtual in availabilbvil8ty, while making the business mode agile and capable to responding to change (Lewis, Morris, Simanta, Smith, 2011). SOA architectures and frameworks are also emerging as a core catalyst of making Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management (SCM), and Pricing Management systems stay tightly synchronized enough to drive up transaction accuracy and velocity within distributed order management systems (Li, Zhou, Peng, Li, Wang, Wu, Shao, 2010). The reliance on analytics is also revolutionizing SOA ar5chiarewctures in that the Return on Investment (ROI) of these investments, their value from a customer standpoint, and the agility and speed they deliver to internal processes can now be measured (Muller, Linders, Pires, 2010). The long-standing approach to defining business processes through Six Sigma and related improvement methodologies has also benefited from the increased use of analytics in defining SOA architecture performance and long-term value (Roser, Muller, Bauer, 2011).

With these concepts forming the foundation of this analysis, this paper analyzes how SOA architectures and frameworks are redefining how enterprises are completing globally. The greater the level of system and interprocess integration achieved within an SAO framework the more accuracy there is in the core strategies of order capture, distributed order management, pricing and service lifecycle management (SLM) across the entire organizations' value chain (Zo, Nazareth, Jain, 2010).

Assessing the current State of the Service-Oriented Architectures

The most critical success factor in the development of an effective SOA initiative is to create a compelling enough objective that can support strategies that will transform the core business model and make it more customer-centric and capable of delivering value (Lee, Shim, Kim, 2010). This focus on the strategic objective must be broad enough to ensure the tight integration of legacy, functional and existing strategic-level systems in the pursuit of the strategic objective. Best practices in this area of interprocess and system integration include heavy reliance on Business process Management (BPM) and Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) workflow analysis tools, and reliance on a variety of integration protocols including J2EE, REST-based APIs, and XML in addition to many others (Lee, Shim, Kim, 2010). With the increased emphasis on the ROI of SOA architectures and the increased emphasis on accountability of results these significant investments require, the focus of many SAO implementations is on streamlining customer-centric processes and systems (Lewis, Morris, Simanta, Smith, 2011). Prior to 2004, the focus of SOA architectural development was more on consolidation of ERP instances and the pursuit of reducing overall enterprise software maintenance costs (Hauser, Sigurdsson, Chudoba, 2010). This approach was successful in those industries where ERP systems dominated the organizational structures, such as process goods industries including steel and chemical production. SOA frameworks in these process-based industries delivered significant maintenance costs reductions by redefining process workflows and making better use of ERP systems that previously had been isolated in diverse divisions throughout companies in these industries (Drissen-Silva, Rabelo, 2009).

With a greater focus on accountability and performance of SOA architectures, there is much greater focus on how to translate investments in these frameworks into incremental sales and higher customer value over time (Dych, 2009). The SOA architecture's critical success factors have changed in the last three years away from purely being used for ERP consolidation to putting customers at the catalyst of all business model activities (Lee, Shim, Kim, 2010). This shift away from internal objectives to those centered on customers is also having a significant shift in how enterprises choose to deploy SOA frameworks globally as well. XML was initially found to be too slow in performance for managing the many integration connections in an SOA implementation to ensure real-time reporting of analytics (Shi, 2010). XML however is more stable as a means for translating content-based messaging that competing protocols including SOAP yet also has the overhead of being a syntax designed for contextual data definition over pure transaction support (Shi, 2010). The decision of which integration technology to rely on across the many database, enterprise, legacy and systems that had been isolated throughout any organization has a major effect on the performance and value of an SOA strategy (Lee, Shim, Kim, 2010). The decision to adopt the more streamlined approach to XML integration for mobile platforms that have J2EE thin client components has been successful in remote and distributed sales forces (Cobarzan, 2010). This use of XML as the delivery platform with J2EE components embedded within the data streams between systems and mobile clients shows potential to also support more robust remote devices including tablet PCs and enhanced smartphones. For many enterprises using SOA platforms today, this is the "last mile" approach to ensuring their investments in systems architecture and their alignment to corporate objectives is achieved. This illustrates how critical the pervasiveness of Web-based applications is for enterprises to get the most value from their SOA investments (Tansey, Stroulia, 2010). As many of the early adopters of SOA initiatives have widely distributed operations, many rely on distributed networks of resellers, dealers, distributors in addition to their geographically dispersed sales forces, Web-based applications in general, and Web Services specifically have become critical (Drissen-Silva, Rabelo, 2009). The next section of this analysis concentrates on Web Serves as an essential element in the development of an effective SOA framework that can be resilient enough to deal with system variations in performance while also supporting the core business model of the company to make it more agile and market-driven in the industries it competes in.

Service-Oriented Architectures and Web Services

SOA frameworks are most successful when they are based on a solid foundation of business objectives and purpose-built to enable high performance of critical business strategies (Lee, Shim, Kim, 2010). The reliance on analytics and business intelligence has also become a new key success factor, as enterprises look to measure their value of their SOA investments and see the ROI of these programs (Bohm, Etalle, et.al. 2010). For these two objectives to be attained there must be a scalable well-integrated core foundation of services-based components at the center of the SOA technical architecture. Figure 1, Anatomy of Web Services in an SOA Framework, shows an example of how business process definitions and services descriptions are coordinated to support business strategies and scale out across the supply chains and distribution channels of an enterprise.

Figure 1: Anatomy of Web Services in an SOA Framework

Source: (Alonso, Kuno, Casati, Machiraju, 2004)

All SOA frameworks vary slightly based on the objectives companies implementing them are trying to accomplish. Figure 1 however provides insights into the basic components of any successful Web Services strategy for fully capturing and monetizing the value of an SOA strategy. The reliance on Services Directory (UDDI) components as they relate to supporting Service Description (WSDL) and Messaging Protocols is also crucial. The UDDI functions in many workflows as a data dictionary would in a traditional relational database architecture (Alonso, Kuno, Casati, Machiraju, 2004). The heavy reliance on the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is specifically included as part of the messaging protocol to ensure a higher level of authentication and security as enterprise customers are demanding successively higher levels of security in their application platforms (Bohm, Etalle, et.al. 2010). The reliance on SOAP as the unifying technology to the standard definition languages to the left of the model and SAML-based security and Management layers is also critical for the stability of entire Web Service performance.

What the majority of enterprises concentrate on however is the Service Composition layer of the model where BPEL4WS (Business Process Execution for Web Services) resides. BPEL is a standard business process execution language that is pervasively used throughout the finance, insurance and process manufacturing industries to ensure a higher level of accuracy to workflows than would be possible with traditional process management tools (Alonso, Kuno, Casati, Machiraju, 2004). BPEL combined with Web Services is what provides information architects in companies with the ability to selectively design Web Service applications and scale them across the diverse supply chain networks, distribution channels, services organizations and in the case of multinational corporations, across their entire network of suppliers.

The use of Web Services to support transaction processing and distributed order management throughout businesses that have global operations is enabled by the UDDI Service Directory and integration to enterprise applications through the Standard Definition Language (XML integration is supported at this layer of the model). With Standard Definition language, Web Services can be configured to support ERP processes including distributed order management, a process that unifies the supply chains of companies and ensures responsive market forecasting data gets passed throughout the supplier network (Alonso, Kuno, Casati, Machiraju, 2004). Web Services in the context of an SOA framework are designed to be the catalyst of greater order accuracy and speed, further increasing performance of the entire company in the process. The collection of Web Services is meant to not replace the traditional and highly engrained ERP systems in a company; rather Web Services are meant to extend and enhance their performance and making them more agile over time (Alonso, Kuno, Casati, Machiraju, 2004). Theorists have suggested that the SOA framework is only as successful as the approaches taken to creating a unified Web Services strategy that creates a single system of record of customer data the entire company standardizes on (Kobielus, 2007). This concept of the system of record is defined as Master Data Management (MDM) and is the basis of analytics and Business Intelligence (BI), which are fueling more focus on measuring the value of SOA frameworks from a customer-driven standpoint as well (Lee, Shim, Kim, 2010).

The Communication Protocol layer that includes HTTP, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), SMTP and a variety of others is specifically used for defining integration-based connections to client-side applications that are delivered via Web browser and also as native applications (Alonso, Kuno, Casati, Machiraju, 2004). This layer of the Web Services Model in an SOA framework is also used for low-end process automation tasks including the uploading, downloading and movement of files throughout various locations on a network to make application processing more efficient. The HTTP protocol is used for managing the Web browser sessions and defining authentication to the Web through secured sockets on the Hypertext Protocol, running over TCP/IP in the majority of configurations globally (Alonso, Kuno, Casati, Machiraju, 2004).