Embracing Service Oriented Architecture

Tom Morrison

Micro Focus

• Why do I want to consider SOA?

• A definition of SOA.

• SOA in the large enterprise, the small and medium enterprise, and for the ISV.

• Principals of SOA.

• What role does SOA play in bringing legacy applications to web and mobile?

• A small demonstration of a legacy application in mobile.

2

Overview

• Business drivers.

– Better business decision making.

– Improved employee productivity.

– Integration of supply chain and demand chain.

• IT drivers.

– Productivity improvements.

– Agile/flexible development enablement.

– Application deployment that is more manageable and secure.

3

Why do I want to consider SOA?

• A software organizing concept and methodology.

• “… a paradigm for organizing and utilizing distributed capabilities that may be under the control of different ownership domains.”

• The Problem is ‘The Reality of Control’.

• Concept of ‘Service’.

– Something (the ‘service’) doing work for, or on behalf of, something else (the ‘client’).

– Implementation details unimportant to the client (‘loose coupling’).

• SOA is not web services; SOA very often uses web services.

• SOA is something you do, not buy

4

Definition of SOA

• The key takeaway is that SOA is a methodology to align information technology (IT) with business needs.

• Executive leadership.

• Technology architectural leadership.

• Governance.

5

SOA in the Large Enterprise

• Integration needs are more limited than the large enterprise

• Distributed computing legacy tends to focus on a single, industry-specific application.

• Integration may be driven by desire or need to embed services into customers’ processes.

• Emphasis tends to be on B2B, starting with web services.

• Outward-looking integration raises the complexity of the IT operation beyond previous experience.

• SOA architectural fundamentals necessary to manage complexity, and cope with frequent, unpredictable change.

6

SOA in the Medium/Small Enterprise

• Loosen the knot.

• Enable continuous innovation.

• Reduce integration expense.

• Product lines better integrated.

• Become agile.

7

SOA in the ISV – Internal Benefit

• “Don’t be an integration headache.”

• Products become more attractive as customers’ IT environment becomes more complex.

• Meet custom requirements more quickly.

• Make your products more useful and more valuable whether or not the customers themselves are even interested in SOA.

8

SOA in the ISV – Customer Benefit

• Convergence of various types of services is disruptive

• Disruptive technologies create opportunity.

• Loosely coupled services provided by ISVs using a business model similar to Software-as-a-Service.

• Convergence of desktop and RIA: What piece of the application is where?

• Automated business process flows

• What else?

9

SOA in the ISV – Opportunities

• SOA is no longer the shiny new object.

• The problem of service definition.

– What is an ‘insured’?

– Is an ‘address’ an address?

• Alternatives to SOA.

10

What has become of SOA?

Demonstration

@microfocus or hashtag #devcon2013

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