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• Burton Group found a 50% complete failure rate in the 20 companies that took part in their study in 2008. Another 30% were considered neither successful nor wholly failed.
• "Many of them had deployed multiple successful projects, but most of those projects were focused on just one integration problem,“. "It was just a bunch of Web services. … The service is only built for one application and it's never going to be used again."
• Such projects amount only to a less efficient method of doing EAI. Instead users focus projects around quality data, systems modernization or business process automation.
• "BPM and SOA are like the peanut butter and the chocolate in the commercial the way they go together,“.
• The Burton Group listed numerous other failure factors, including:
– Lack of defined service models
– Infrastructure focus
– Governance only of SOAP-based systems
– Failure of developers to leverage the runtime governance in place
– Initiatives led by and solely involving the application development group
– Roadmaps lacking specificity
– Inability to measure ROI
– Project-centric culture
– An "I'm special" attitude
Source: Burton Group, July 2008
"The attitude is I'm so special I can't use this service
• The Burton Group found that success came to SOA proponents who pay attention to the cultural shift that needs to take place within the business, cemented by good governance. The successful businesses had “incredibly inspiring” stories to tell.
• Here are the common denominators Burton Group found within the successful efforts:
– Business and IT reorganization, usually with a new CIO coming on board
– Sponsorship at the C-level or by the Board of Directors
– Agile/iterative Development Methodologies put into place
– Projects tied to and measured by Business Goals, not IT drivers
– Well-defined Funding and Maintenance models that balance the needs of service providers and consumers
– A simplified architecture, making it easier to access and manage quality data
Critical Succes Factors in Implementing Services Orientation
1. Not Measuring the Services Oriented Maturity• Organizations are at different levels of maturity in the adoption and incorporation of Services Orientation.
Some are just beginning to explore the world of SO while others have already experienced with web services
but that is not SO.
2. Building SOA like traditional Distributed Architecture• The number one obstacle organizations have been facing when attempting to achieve SOA is building
service-oriented solutions in the same manner in which traditional distributed solutions have been built, under
the pretence that SOA is actually being achieved.
3. Not Standardizing SOA• SOA, like any other architecture, requires the creation and enforcement of internal design standards for its
benefits to be truly realized. For example, if one project builds a service-oriented solution in isolation from
others, key aspects of its solution will not be in alignment with the neighbouring applications it may be
required to interoperate or share agnostic services with one day.
4. Not Creating a Transition Plan• The chances of a successful migration will be severely diminished without the use of a comprehensive
transition plan. Because the extent to which service endpoints are positioned within an enterprise can lead to
a redefinition of an environment‟s infrastructure, the affects of a poorly executed migration can be significant.
5. Not Starting with an XML Foundation Architecture• In the world of today‟s SOA, everything begins with Web services. That statement has become a mantra of
sorts within some organizations, but it is not entirely true. In the world of today‟s SOA, everything, in fact,
begins with XML. It is the standard from which multiple supplementary standards have evolved to form a de
Critical Succes Factors in Implementing Services Orientation, Cont.
6. Not Understanding SOA Performance Requirements• Loose coupling comes at a price. When implemented with Web services, SOA introduces layers of data
processing as well as the associated performance overhead imposed by these layers.
7. Not Building Services based on Business Semantics & Ontology's• Software services need to be based on agreed business semantics and ontology's otherwise services can‟t
be reused from a business perspective.
8. Not having a harmonized and clean Data / Information infrastructure• Key to the success of sharing data/information is the necessity to have a harmonized and clean data
infrastructure with responsible ownership and procedures in place to keep data clean and correct.
9. Not Understanding to find the right balance in Services Granularity• Stating that Services are the central part of SOA and SOE will probably not offend anybody. But methods to
identify Services at the right granularity are only slowly emerging. When talking about SOA the Services are
often seen as a task that will be require only a small effort – so small that we almost don‟t bother talking
about it. However making services small in functionality will deliver larger reusability but also a larger
maintenance and performance problems. Making services larger will deliver more functionality but less
reusability and less maintenance and performance problems, so depending on the generality versus
specificity of a service define the appropriate granularity.
10. Not Understanding the Quality of Services• One important missing requirement often seen in the context of Services Orientation is the management of
Quality of Services. Appropriate control of quality leads to the creation of quality products and services;
these, in turn, fulfill customer expectations and achieving customer satisfaction. Part of this thinking of QoS is
related to requirements about roll back of Services transaction sequences, Error handling, Security,
Authorization and Authentication, etc. Key issue in this context is also, how to check / control the behavior
and functionality of services that are delivered by third parties and how to test and guarantee their behavior.