SOA Implementation Best Practices
The role of SOA is to provide an architectural approach that supports an organization’s ability to support ongoing business change in the face of a heterogeneous environment. However, since SOA does not introduce a new programming language or runtime environment, organizations must implement code that underpins and exposes a Service interface somehow. Since implementation matters to computers as much as architecture matters to people, it makes sense to consider the runtime environment of the implementation to be a good place to coordinate Service interactions.
When looking at the technology buying patterns in the world of SOA, there is one common thread. The influence of the larger SOA vendors is very much a force in the market today. Within this context, and given continued consolidation, confusion, and change in the SOA marketplace, organizations should make a careful evaluation of the various vendor offerings that support SOA implementations. The consolidation of SOA implementation capabilities has yielded a collection of vendors offering the new solution stack: the “SOA Platform”.
When comparing vendors, it is important to verify how their products and services address both parts of the lifecycle. If the vendor’s own products or services address the full lifecycle, what is their strategy for interoperating with other vendors whose products or services fill the gap? Are vendor platforms just an amalgam of acquired, partnered, and separately developed technologies, or do they represent a cohesive collection of agile SOA infrastructure that supports the widest range of SOA capabilities? This report aims to identify SOA platform vendors and help make the evaluation using the above criteria.