SOA/Web Services

Nemertes Research concluded in a recent report that, when internal IT systems are integrated, businesses tend to deploy Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) technology. A similar trend was evident for integration of internal systems and those from partners, suppliers and service providers.

 

The findings were enumerated in a study, Services-OrientedArchitecturesandApplications.

 

The study included insight from more than 52 IT executives from 50 companies, based on in-depth interviews. The study found that 40 percent of the reasons for adopting SOA by businesses were integration, complexity, consolidation and resilience.

 

SOA features like coupling among components and interface driven interaction allow IT executives to make their infrastructures simple and enable convenient and faster addition or replacement of components without disrupting existing IT systems, Nemertes said in its report.

 

Integrating a large number of interacting and interdependent systems results in the increase of resilience of services. This is a cost effective option besides being faster. Plus, maintenance and upgrades are also safer. SOA adoption is preferred by nearly 30 percent of  IT executives due to the resulting agility and flexibility in the systems.

 

“Agility that is doing new things quickly is ultimately about IT aligning itself with business goals,” explained John Burke, principal research analyst with Nemertes Research, in a statement. “Flexibility is closely related to agility, capturing the ideal not just of redirecting effort, but also of stretching to cover a wider range of services or functions.”

 

According to the study, faster integration of new systems and more reliable integration of systems were the enablers of agility and flexibility associated with SOA.

 

Nemertes Research found that 16 percent of IT executives found it convenient to reduce developmental efforts by code reuse. The reusing of codes written by others is convenient to use since it involves using components that are already tested and debugged—saving huge amounts of time and effort. It also allows for standardization due to consistent use for a longer period.

Preparation for the future seemed to be another reason for SOA adoption as companies are interested in getting ready to meet the challenges of new IT systems, Burke added.

 

 

SOA/WEB SERVICES