 | Level: Intermediate Judith Myerson (jmyerson@bellatlantic.net), Systems Engineer and Architect
01 May 2008 Want to know how to adopt Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) in a
service-oriented enterprise (SOE)? In this article, regular developerWorks author
Judith Myerson focuses on issues related to transitioning to an SOE, transformation
initiatives, the impact of organizational changes, and implementing SOE while
avoiding the usual organizational pitfalls. Get suggestions on how to close the gaps
in the SOE.
Introduction
My article,
"SOA
services in a grid and netcentric world"
(developerWorks, Mar 2008), covered issues related to harnessing unused resources
for computer power that's too intensive for a stand-alone machine. I gave solution
examples, such as monitoring change in grid scale, and Global Information Grid
(GIG) and SOA testing methodology. What the article did not go into is that
you need to step up to the SOE for effective SOA governance as a way to ensure
successful implementation of SOA services in the grid.
In this article, you look at some organizational and managerial practices behind
the SOE as well as at governance and other incentives to get service providers and
consumers to collaborate in different service types in a grid. Then you find out
what's missing from the SOE and get some solutions to fill in the gaps in the
grid.
Recapping SOA
This recap focuses on the paradigm shift to the dynamic sharing of resources,
using GIG to achieve information superiority, and the value of a grid monitor to
harness unused resources.
Paradigm shift
Moving Web services that connect the applications and systems to the grid
represents a paradigm shift from the idea of a static queue of a stand-alone
machine's resources at one location to dynamically sharing resources of multiple
machines in parallel at any location. Because the load of resources can be
balanced in the grid with unused resources, grid computing is like an extreme form
of load balancing between SOA applications.
Global Information Grid
The GIG evolved in response to the need for an environment in which users can
access, share, collect, process, store, disseminate, and manage information on
demand from any location in the grid. The GIG aims to achieve information
superiority in a network-centric environment by enabling various systems and
messaging-based Web services to interoperate with each other in parallel. The GIG
lends itself to an SOA on the grid, carrying information on demand via Web
services because grid computing relies on an open set of standards and protocols,
including key SOA standards for Web services. GIG users can post and retrieve
information from Web services and make real-time decisions rather than relying on
historical information from multiple automated information systems applications.
Grid monitor
The problem with the grid is that Web services, normally loosely coupled, run
whether the resource is scarce or not. You need to ensure that the resources on
multiple workstations aren't wasted when they're in the grid.
One solution is to develop a grid monitor of how the unused resources of each
workstation are harnessed and shared by other workstations. If the system finds
that the unused resources on any workstation aren't properly harnessed, it should
send an alert to the grid and system administrators so they can look up details in
the logs for resolution. To keep up with the rapid change and short development
life cycles expected from the system builders of GIG and SOA, tests have to be
ready to conduct in timescales, ranging from machine-specific functional to grid
enterprise.
Step up to SOE
This section explains why you need SOE to govern SOA. In particular, it focuses
on the transition to SOE, transformation initiatives, and the impact of
organizational changes during the transition.
Transition to SOE
In making the transition to SOE, you need to govern SOA to ensure successful
implementation of complex relationships between Web services and SOA applications
in a grid. The more Web services are added to the SOA, the more complex the
relationships between them become, particularly when unused resources in multiple
workstations are harnessed in the grid. Associated with the SOE are organizational
changes that take place between the organizations within an enterprise. These
organizations must be loosely coupled based on the role of definitions of service
consumers, service providers, and service brokers, and the understanding of how
they are all related to one another.
If you don't govern SOA adoption, the organizational structure will remain
unchanged during the transition. The realization of an enterprise's SOA will be
less than satisfactory, and you won't achieve some or all objectives of SOE.
Transformation initiatives
You need to ensure the transition is based, in part, on the governance of SOA to
bring about the organizational transformation of the enterprise into the SOE. The
problem with governance is that there might be redundant governance models and
redundant resources and investments to achieve common objectives in an enterprise.
To reduce this redundancy, you need to focus on transformation initiatives that
result in more policy-enabled service-oriented organizations.
You must look at your IT investments to determine what you should use that will
result in the pooling of program funding to support enterprise services. You
should have in place a governance model that rewards incentives for the sharing of
resources at a lower cost and that doesn't allow redundant investments.
Impact of organizational changes
Businesses need to focus on the impact of organizational changes on business
capabilities in order to stay competitive in the market. Organizations should view
themselves as federations of capabilities (for example, business functions) that
allow collaboration with one another in an enterprise.
Given that governance models and IT investments aren't redundant, the business
capabilities of the enterprise can be transformed into a complex interaction
hierarchy of loosely coupled Web services to the greater extent and tightly
coupled Web services to the lesser extent. When SOA applications require an
enterprise to interact with another to provide common services, the hierarchies of
capabilities and resulting Web services become even more complex.
Work with an SOE
In this section, take a look at how a traditional enterprise compares with an SOE
framework. Let's also explore what you need to do to implement an SOE and what
pitfalls to avoid when adopting SOA as an organizational initiative in making the
transition to SOE.
Traditional enterprise
SOE differs from traditional enterprise in two ways:
- It's possible that you separate business needs (service consumption) from
fulfillment (service provision). Unlike the traditional enterprise, the same
business need can be fulfilled by multiple providers in the SOE.
- To enable benefits from SOA, you need to bring about organizational changes in
an enterprise, sharing services among the organizational units that make up the
SOE. I'm not talking about services specific to a unit or utility services used
by all organizational units to deliver centrally, as the traditional enterprise
does.
Implement SOE
In the transition to the SOE, you treat SOA adoption as an organizational change
initiative. After you get executive support for the transformation initiative, you
establish a program plan for SOA. Different organizational units might have
different ways of adopting SOA as an organizational initiative, so you need the
coordinating committee to adopt the SOA in a common way across the
organizational lines within the enterprise.
After the funds for the change initiative are approved, you build community
processes and collaborative platforms, then establish policies on SOA
governance. Next you develop a policy on developing, testing, and evaluating
services. You need to ensure that the unused resources can be harnessed by these
services. After determining that a set of services is working properly as
planned, you
establish service funding and charging mechanisms.
Avoid organizational pitfalls
Here are some of the pitfalls you need to avoid when working with the SOE:
- Avoid vendor proprietary service offerings. Interoperability problems can
negate organizational initiatives.
- Avoid the latest open standards that are known to be unstable. Unstable
standards may contribute to interoperability and resulting organizational
issues.
- Avoid running into resource overloads that can result in system crash. Know
the organizational and management constraints of SOA services.
- Avoid wasting unused resources when invoking or implementing Web services. Set
a policy on harnessing and controlling unused resources. Know when Web services
need to be tightly coupled to conserve scarce resources.
- Avoid waterfall development approach. Make sure a service life cycle
management (for example, life cycle incremental approach) can maintain multiple versions
of service.
What's missing from SOE
With the SOE, effective governance isn't just about control, policing, and
enforcement functions, it's also about providing essential services and sharing
them between the loosely coupled organizations of an enterprise and between the
enterprises. Governance has jurisdictional boundaries with programs as well as at the
enterprise level.
However, the current state of SOE doesn't address the issues of governance having
cross-jurisdictional boundaries in a grid. The issues come into play when Web
services, normally loosely coupled, run whether the resource is scarce or not. You
need governance with cross-jurisdictional boundaries to ensure that the resources on
multiple workstations aren't wasted when the services run in the grid.
Conclusion
You need a team of developers, system administrators, managers, and executives to
collaborate on adopting SOA in the SOE. You must plan ahead for establishing
governance policies and system requirements of developing and deploying SOA
services, while closing the gaps in the grid. Resolving these issues makes your job
of adopting SOA a lot easier.
You can use
IBM® Rational® Portfolio Manager
to provide insight into the optimization and investment funding, as well as
IBM
Rational Method Composer plug-in to
plan your implementation of the SOA governance framework and to amend the processes
when changes are identified. You can also use
IBM Rational ClearQuest®
and
IBM Rational Tester for SOA Quality
to increase productivity by reducing testing and defect-tracking time.
Resources Learn
- Check out
Judith
M.
Myerson's other articles
for information on how to work with Web services in
enterprise-wide SOAs.
- Read Judith's series,
Use SLAs in a Web services context
,
for details on service-level agreements.
- Check out the article
"Tight
coupling Web services in the SOA" (developerWorks, Jan 2008).
- Get more information about SOA governance.
- Read Judith's book,
The Complete Book of Middleware
,
which focuses on the essential principles and priorities of system design and
emphasizes the new requirements brought forward by the rise of e-commerce and
distributed integrated systems.
- Read
Enterprise
Systems Integration, Second Edition
to get the business insight and the technical
know-how to ensure successful systems integration.
- Bring your organization into the future with
RFID in the Supply
Chain
,
which explains business processes, operational and implementation problems, risks,
vulnerabilities, and security and privacy.
- IBM Redbooks®: Go into the nuts and bolts of developing a
service-level agreement.
- The SOA and Web services zone on IBM developerWorks hosts hundreds of informative articles and introductory, intermediate, and advanced tutorials on how to develop Web services
applications.
- Play in the IBM SOA Sandbox! Increase your SOA skills through practical, hands-on experience with the IBM SOA entry points.
- The IBM SOA Web site offers an overview of SOA and how IBM can help you get there.
- Stay current with developerWorks technical events and webcasts.
- Browse for books on these and other technical topics at the
Safari bookstore.
- Check out a quick Web services on demand demo.
Get products and technologies
- Innovate your next development project with
IBM trial software, available for download or on DVD.
Discuss
About the author | | | Judith M. Myerson is a systems architect and engineer. Her areas of interest
include middleware technologies, enterprise-wide systems, database technologies,
application development, network management, security, RFID technologies, and
project management. |
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