IBM WebSphere for 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 patterns and design principles have become the de facto set of standards for inter- and intra-enterprise integration, a complex IT organization cannot just "buy" SOA. SOA is not merely WSDLs in front of legacy applications.

Many technical articles and IT practitioners 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 complaints, 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.

API Management, which is an expedited path to value to externalize business function access for monetary gain, is also based on the construct of service orientation and SOA. Companies that have a solid SOA (infrastructure and service governance model) will find it significantly easier to implement an API Management strategy by extending their existing SOA and service governance models to embrace Web facing APIs.

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 in 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.