One of my colleagues recently described Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) implementations very well: “It is about saving our asses”. As you would know from reading my blog and my academic papers, I am a big SOA enthusiast. The problem is that many public agencies see SOA as a silver bullet that will create interoperability, low cost integration of legacy systems and make them agile as never before.
SOA is no silver bullet. We need “traditional” business modelling and enterprise architecture (EA) in any SOA implementation. Here are a couple of SOA/EA basics that I recently send to a public agency:
- SOA ensures the functional integration of a single system (typically via web-services)
- EA defines the overall blueprint – interoperability across the enterprise (identifies the portfolio of available and needed services + SOA guidelines)
- No EA: technical anarchy and chaos
- No SOA: difficult to create interoperability across silos and legacy systems
- Successful IT-organizations blend SOA and EA (bottom-up and top-down)
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Spelling out EA
Jon Udell is Spelling out SOA via Acronym Finder. Interesting exercise
On SOA, I also like Save Our Assess. EA is also: Earth Alliance Enforceable Agreement Endangerment Assessment Engagement Area Extended Arrangement Endless Ages Examining for Aph…