SOA Implementation Satisfaction
Reuse is Top Driver for SOA Adoption;
Hurwitz & Associates Sees Quality as Key
Carol Baroudi and
Dr. Fern Halper,
Partners
Hurwitz report
H
urwitz & Associates believes SOA is the most important architectural paradigm informing contemporary IT. In September and October 2006, Hurwitz & Associates conducted primary research to better understand why organizations are implementing SOA, how they are approaching their SOA implementations and how satisfied they are with their SOAdeployment. The study also examined what plans companies are putting in place for SOA quality. This independent research and analysis was sponsored by Mindreef, Inc., a provider of solutions that enable business analysts, architects, application developers, testers, operations, and support staff to build, deploy, and maintain software for service-oriented architectures.
Hurwitz & Associates surveyed ninety-nine IT executives from companies in North America and the UK with a size of greater than 250 employees who had expressed an interest in SOA or web services. Of this group, 66% have begun their SOA journey. Another 6 % are planning to implement SOA in the next year. The survey results presented in this paper are based on the experiences of the executives from the companies that have already begun their SOA implementation. More than 50% of the responding companies in this group have revenues of greater than $1billion.
The Hurwitz & Associates survey determined the top drivers for SOA adoption include the expectation of greater reuse of existing and newly-built software, business flexibility, ease of integration and speed of integration. These drivers are illustrated in figure 1, below.
Figure 1. Top Drivers for SOA Adoption
“...the top drivers for SOA adoption include the expectation of greater reuse of existing and newly-built software...”
Why SOA?
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Compliance
Speed Integration Ease Integration Business Flexibility Reuse
Although the market is still fairly immature, many organizations view all the drivers listed in Figure 1 as important and many are already realizing their expectations for these drivers with their SOA implementations. Of all the drivers, reuse stands out as the most important. In fact, 47% of respondents who had already implemented a SOA were satisfied with the level of reuse they were receiving, while 35% felt it was too soon to tell. The remaining19% was dissatisfied with the amount of reuse they were getting from their SOA. While on the surface customers express satisfaction with reuse, answers to other survey questions indicate that there are problems. Almost half of the respondents stated that a lack of planning and establishment of clear business goals have hampered their ability to reuse business services broadly across their organizations. Companies have also experienced problems because of the lack of a SOA governance process to formalize business rules and ensure internal standards.
As SOA takes center stage, Hurwitz & Associates believes that unless organizations pay attention to software quality and an overall formal SOA governance process, expectations for reuse will not be realized. According to our results, only 22% of those respondents that have implemented a SOA have some sort of quality plan in place. Organizations keen on reusing software components need to ensure that the components they intend to reuse have been designed for reuse, tested in a SOA environment, described and published in an easily searchable registry/repository and are compliant with policies, procedures and regulations that govern their use.
At the Heart of Reuse: The SOA Registry and Repository
The SOA registry is the place to store information that describes what each component does so that business analysts and programmers can select components and connect them together to create composite applications and build processes. The SOA registry also stores information about how each component connects to another; in other words, it documents the rules and descriptions associated with every given component.
It acts as the central reference point within a service oriented architecture containing all the components that the SOA supports. It defines the domain of the architecture.
“Organizations keen on reusing software
components need to ensure that the components they intend to reuse have been designed for reuse...”
Hurwitz report
The SOA registry provides the mechanism for publishing components. Publishing components is what makes them available for reuse. An additional “system of record” is needed to keep versioning records, policy definitions, and everything known about a component. That’s the function of the SOA repository.
Vendors blur the distinction between the registry and the repository and Hurwitz & Associates believes that the functionality of both is critical. Over time we believe they’ll converge, but organizations pursuing SOA need to ensure they cover both sets of function.
For this reason, Hurwitz & Associates was disconcerted by the nearly 50% of survey respondents that say they have no registry or repository solution in place or were using some sort of in-house solution. We feel strongly that for SOA longevity and scalability organizations need to formalize the organization of their services and believe that they should look for a standards-base product to provide these functions. In fact, the Hurwitz & Associates survey indicates that those companies that have a formal solution for both a registry and repository are more likely to have their expectations for reuse met than those that have no solution.
The deployment of SOA reminds us of the early years of ecommerce deployment. Early adopters had to build ecommerce components because none existed to acquire, but the company today that insists on building its own commerce engine is spending time, energy and focus on the wrong thing. We believe that companies need to pick a reliable standards-based registry/repository solution and let their vendor do the inevitable incremental development that will be required as SOA matures. Focus on creating your own business services. SOA is too big and too important for implementers to get caught in creating infrastructure.
When Is a Lifecycle Not a Lifecycle — Testing Composite Applications
Another reason Hurwitz & Associates believes quality is key in the quest of reuse lies in understanding the nature of reuse of services in a SOA.
Unlike stand-alone applications or even web-services that each have their
“SOA is too big and too important for implementers to get caught in creating infrastructure.”
own discrete lifecycle and can be tested thoroughly and be deployed with confidence, reusing services opens new dimensions of possibilities sourced in dynamic combinations of components in an environment where not all combinations will ever be tested. However, when services are intended to be reused in many situations in various combinations, unanticipated problems can occur. Testing of SOA environments is taking a quantum leap in complexity. Those who know what testing was like when you actually know the environment where the software will run can appreciate the leap testing must take to address an environment where the applications themselves are unpredictable combinations of business services.
Because SOA reflects an extensive ecosystem, successful SOA implementations are by nature collaborative. Different constituents will create and proffer services to be used by the whole. The organization will benefit from reuse only if they can successfully find the services they need and can rely on their integrity. The trust needed for SOA to attain widespread use will be built from the successful use of well-designed and tested services. The damage done by services that don’t behave as advertised is greatly magnified in a SOA environment and will ultimately prove disastrous.
Ensuring SOA Quality
Hurwitz & Associates has been watching SOA mature and come to the fore as the primary architectural paradigm for business computing. We understand that SOA is new to most organizations. However, we are greatly disturbed by the number of survey respondents that don’t yet have a formal approach to SOA quality. We fear that those 80% are headed for a train wreck.
Our analysis suggests that those respondents who had implemented a SOA environment in conjunction with a quality plan were more likely to be satisfied with their deployment than those respondents without a plan. Survey results indicate that 42% of respondents who implemented a SOA along with a quality plan were completely satisfied with the quality of their SOA, while only 7% were completely satisfied if they implemented a SOA without a quality plan in place. A registry and repository is not enough to ensure SOA quality. SOA governance is not enough. Hurwitz & Associates believes that creating a viable SOA initiative is contingent on the ability to ensure software quality and gain trust of all constituents. Without an articulated quality strategy rigorously enforced SOA will not scale and will not deliver on its promises.
“The trust needed for SOA to attain widespread use will be built from the successful use of well-designed and tested services.”
Hurwitz report
Carol Baroudi and Dr.. Fern Halper are Partners of Hurwitz & Associates. They can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].
About Hurwitz & Associates
Hurwitz & Associates is a consulting, research and analyst firm that focuses on the customer benefits derived when advanced and emerging software technologies are implemented to solve pragmatic business problems. The firm’s research concentrates on understanding the business value of software technologies, such as Service Oriented Architecture, security, information
management, and systems management. Additional information on Hurwitz & Associates can be found at www.hurwitz.com.
© Copyright 2006, Hurwitz & Associates. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. Hurwitz & Associates is the sole copyright owner of this publication.
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