Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)
The IBM Software Group's products provide the most comprehensive set of products for realizing SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) in your enterprise. While SOA's set of architectural patterns and design principles has become the de facto set of standards for inter- and intra-enterprise integration, a complex IT organization can't just "buy" SOA. SOA is not merely WSDLs in front of legacy applications.
Many technical articles and IT practitioners will say that SOA has been over-hyped and over-sold. It is true that a poorly planned SOA implementation can destabilize a carefully managed IT infrastructure. However, the root cause of these complaints is usually a lack of understanding that enterprise SOA implementation is a multi-faceted and multi-year undertaking. Despite any complaints about SOA, there has been no practical technical alternative proposed to SOA that has the possibility of delivering the agility and financials sufficient to meet rapidly changing business needs. One thing overlooked in the stampede to Cloud is that Cloud is based on SOA, and unless the enterprise 100% outsources the entire stack of platform, infrastructure, applications and business processes, the remaining integrations will be SOA-based and will need to be managed and implemented with SOA technologies.
HHG's view of a SOA Reference Implementation Model is below. While it is possible to achieve significant benefits from focusing on just one area of SOA, especially Governance, Middleware, Infrastructure or Development Tooling, the most business value comes from balancing implementation is each area in a holistic and iterative program. HHG has helped our customers with SOA implementations in all of the focus areas below. We highlight some of our specific successes with IBM Software Groups products across our Website.
SOA Implementation Reference Model
Necessary functions but difficult to realize holistically...
SOA BPM using IBM WebSphere®
The advantages of a SOA-enabled approach to BPM and EAI using IBM WebSphere® tools include:- Consistent role-based tooling that enables active business-line participation
- Speedier and more cost-effective implementation
- Easier prototyping and iterative development
- Improved business and IT flexibility
- Streamlined and efficient business operations and IT support
- More consistent workflows, business rules enforcement & automation for regulatory compliance
- Rapid response to emerging market opportunities, customers & partners
- Active real-time monitoring of business processes, enabling continuous improvement and optimization
IBM WebSphere is the leading tool set for developing reusable business processes and interpreting business rules on a SOA foundation. Through a combination of software, services, templates and modeling, WebSphere helps us help our clients understand, define, execute, and optimize their core business processes that generate enterprise value.
The WebSphere brand comprises a group of standards-based IBM products designed to analyze, design, integrate and operate business applications across multiple computing platforms using SOA technologies.
In particular, we have found IBM WebSphere products to include powerful and practical business rules support that easily integrates human tasks (customer-facing and internal) to the Web as well as to back-office activities, processes and systems. WebSphere implementations make it much easier to maintain and extend new integrations without deploying exotic technology or recoding legacy spaghetti-ware.