SOA What?

I was asked recently to talk to some executives about Service Oriented Architecture. In doing some research for the conversation, I found that there was a lot of information about the technical aspects of SOA, but not so much about the business/technology crossover. So I decided to write a white paper: SOA What?

Click here to see it, and let me know what you think. I've also included a brief precis below.

Precis: Describing technology from a business perspective can be a challenge. It is much easier to talk about or justify technology when it supports an existing business process because it is relatively straightforward to frame the benefits in terms of return on investment, time saved, or dollars spent. It is much more difficult when the technology provides support for other components, guides the way systems are built and integrated, or attempts to insulate pieces of infrastructure or application that face very different rates of change. In many ways, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) falls into this second, intangible category. This paper attempts to demystify SOA by examining it from a business perspective. It presents some background and an executive definition, and then outlines some misconceptions before exploring the strategic business outcomes presented by SOA. It then looks at some of the headline business impacts, costs, and risks associated with SOA rollout, along with a real world example that highlights how SOA fits into and supports modern business architecture.

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