EA

Reasons why SOA fails

Some days ago, a colleague of mine forwarded me an article titled Top 10 Reasons Why People are Making SOA Fail.

This article lists several points that must be considered in SOA initiatives. I really think they are very relevant, but the comments posted called my attention.

The major worries were about to explain SOA’s business value and the impact of organizational change.

It is a clear demonstration that SOA is being seen as a business issue instead of just an IT issue.

Questions that usually cause huge discussion, like vendors drive the architecture, was ignored. SOA governance, which is very important, was ignored too.

What I think could be analyzed more in-depth is the relationship between services and business functions.

I will discuss this issue on the next post.

ARTS: Standards for retail market

Who is developing products must pay attention to standards. Standards are essential to ensure interoperability among different vendors.

Organizations like Oasis and W3C have developed many generic standards. These standards are applicable to different markets.

The Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) of the National Retail Federation is a retailer-driven membership organization dedicated to creating an open environment where both retailers and technology vendors work together to create international retail technology standards.

ARTS developed standards for Data Model, Point of Sale (POS), Reuqests for Proposal (RFP) and XML.

ARTS XML committee has developed 15 XML schemas like Customer, Price and Inventory. Furthermore, ARTS released an XML Best Practices document.

ARTS announced at January, 2008, the release of the SOA Blueprint for Retail and associated SOA Best Practices technical reports.

“The Blueprint describes the infrastructure components, tools, models for business services and how ARTS standards can ensure success in companies’ SOA implementation. While SOA is a generic infrastructure strategy that can be implemented by any industry, the differentiator is in the business services (functions). The ARTS Blueprint is specific to retail, defining many SOA services by the retail functions Buy, Sell, Logistics and Administer.”

Retail technology vendors must follow closely the standard development at ARTS.

SOA and Enterprise Architecture

Some definitions of Enterprise Architecture (EA).

1. Enterprise Architecture is a complete expression of the enterprise; a master plan which “acts as a collaboration force” between aspects of business planning such as goals, visions, strategies and governance principles; aspects of business operations such as business terms, organization structures, processes and data; aspects of automation such as information systems and databases; and the enabling technological infrastructure of the business such as computers, operating systems and networks.

2. An enterprise architecture (EA) is a conceptual blueprint that defines the structure and operation of an organization.

3. The EA is:
What: The structure of an Enterprise and its blueprint describing.
How: How the Enterprise operates and the processes executed by.
Whom: People.
Which: The technology implementing processes.
Where: Showing the location of people and technology.
Why: To streamline, align, blueprint, strategically plan, and confer agility.
When: According to the Enterprise transformation plan to a target state.

4. Enterprise architecture is an agency-wide framework for incorporating business processes, information flows, applications, and infrastructure to support agency goals.

5. Enterprise architecture is the organizing logic for business processes and IT infrastructure.

EA is about describing business and mapping businees to IT systems. It is about guaranteeing that the systems really implement what users need. EA describes which system is responsible for each information asset.

Having an Enterprise Architecture is a key factor to a successful SOA initiative. Analyzing Enterprise Architecture helps to identify required services for the SOA infrastructure.

Assigning responsibility for the services is part of SOA Governance. EA also helps to do this.

If a company does not have an enterprise architecture, it is very recommended embracing SOA and EA together.