Making SOA a Reality for Federal Government Agencies

Melvin Greer Chief SOA Architect SOA Chief Architect Senior Research Engineer Lockheed Martin, IS&GS Making SOA a Reality for Federal Government Agencies

Key Issues

What are common SOA disorders and SOA Competency Center Drivers?

What is a SOA Competency Center, and how do different models compare?

What symptoms suggest use of a SOA Competency Center and what psychological behaviors are encouraged?

What Business outcomes drive SOA Competency Center development?

SOACC Drivers

The pressure is on for IT to deliver applications that can change on a dime - evolving as quickly as the business evolves even in the face of uncertain requirements.

Business expects IT to support Rapid Response to Change with Optimal Efficiency in Motion, Economy of Effort, Energy in Execution, and Efficacy of Impact

Common SOA Based Disorders

Technology Altar Syndrome:

Where IT sacrifices business focus on the technology altar; all focus is on technical purity and a single IT "truth" for the enterprise

Organization / Financial Disorder

Where organizational and financial systems impair enterprise thinking and development

NIH Dementia

Part of Control Phobia, impacts naming and reuse capability

NIH Dementia

Part of Control Phobia, impacts naming and reuse capability

SOA Governance Hypersensitivity

Deviant of enterprise policies, standards, and methods

What is a SOA Competency Center?

The SOA competency center unites a diverse set of skills coming from application development, architecture, operations, external vendors, business people, security, marketers and administration.

It is a federated environment geared up to make SOA based application development and integration as fast and smooth as possible.

By year-end 2008, approximately 67 percent of very large companies will have an SOACC, up from approximately 40 percent at the beginning of 2005. By 2010, more than 80 percent of very large companies and 50 percent of large companies will have a SOACC. - Gartner

SOACC Functional Capabilities

SOACC Models

SOACC Model Comparison

Symptoms suggesting you need a SOACC

Hundreds of services, but no one is looking for them or no one can find them

Behavioral Change Required

Service reuse rate is less than 5%

Impaired ability to estimate cost, time, resources for SOA projects

Impaired ability to estimate cost, time, resources for SOA projects

Orchestration and Choreography are theatre terms

SOACC’s encourage Behavioral change

Business focused approach to SOA

Creating a common language for SOA approach

Drive discovery and composition

Rightsize SOA Governance

SOA testing is a business issue

Develop pragmatic incremental targets

Side Effects and Interactions are not mild

Increased interaction with Business:

Learn a new language, get new measurement tools

Technical Complexity rises

Architecture, Application, Security, Infrastructure convergence

Scarcity of Qualified Resources

Retention, training, and workload balance

Scarcity of Qualified Resources

Retention, training, and workload balance

Build it and they will come

More work than you can manage

New business models

SOACC Management: Mental State for Success

Develop a Business Orientation

Listen with adaptation in mind (organizational / cultural)

Establish a technology convergence strategy

Determine key metrics to communicate

Business Outcomes

SOA and Business process management get to innovation

Deeper focus on governance from a business services perspective

Increase business growth, ability to move to adjacent markets, and increased productivity

The challenges are many, but the business value that the SOACC’s return, mainly in terms of quicker time to market and reduction in maintenance costs, guarantees that they are worth the hassle of building and operating them.

Thank You!