FeedBot
02-08-2006, 14:36
The SOA Revolution (http://www.line56.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=7099&KeyWords=soa++AND+revolution), an article by Tamida Vahidy at Line56.com (http://www.line56.com) in November 2005, contains a lot of interesting information; but what can we really take away from it?
Don't get me wrong. The article was derived from a report by AMR Research, which may be very good. But the article itself tends to raise more questions than it answers.
It prompted Polar Lake CEO Ronan Bradley to comment (http://www.integrationconsortium.org/icblog/?postid=85), What is incredibly revealing is that 36% of the *SOA* adopters find themselves "unable to reconfigure business processes as needed". Now where the SOA dream really falls apart: we learn that amongst organizations that have *not* adopted SOA, only 13% have difficulty with reconfiguration of business process. How can adopting SOA actually damage business agility?!?
AMR answers the question this way, according to Vahidy: AMR posits two reasons for this development: a limited deployment of business process management (BPM), "the orchestration layer used to reconfigure business processes... even among those who have deployed SOA, only 14% have deployed BPM," and the size, number and complexity of legacy systems, which make business processes "immensely difficult to service-enable."
But there's not really enough information in the article (again, I don't have access to the AMR Research report itself) to see whether that makes sense. We can't see how many variables were captured in the study, or what their variances were.
Perhaps smaller companies dominate those that haven't adopted SOA approaches, so their business processes are generally simpler and therefore easier to change. Perhaps, among SOA adopters, the SOA is too immature or too narrowly scoped to provide major companywide benefits, even though it's making a difference in certain business units. Perhaps the expectations for reconfigurable business processes are simply higher among type-A companies that are adopting SOA.
The two things I'd like to know most are (a) how many of the organizations surveyed saw an increase in flexibility as a result of SOA adoption, and (b) how many think that the effort was worth it or is likely to be worth it within a year? Without those two pieces of information, I think the report doesn't provide enough information to support Ronan's comment that the "SOA dream really falls apart". Not that the dream necessarily hangs together, mind you, but Ronan's conclusion is at least premature.
People often talk about "lies, damned lies, and statistics". Edward Tufte (http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/) makes a living showing that a "high-level" examination of statistics can be worse than having a lot of detail. This article, and the questions it raises, highlights that fact.
Jake Freivald
iWay Software (http://www.iwaysoftware.com)
Link To Original Article (http://www.integrationconsortium.org/icblog/?postid=102)
Don't get me wrong. The article was derived from a report by AMR Research, which may be very good. But the article itself tends to raise more questions than it answers.
It prompted Polar Lake CEO Ronan Bradley to comment (http://www.integrationconsortium.org/icblog/?postid=85), What is incredibly revealing is that 36% of the *SOA* adopters find themselves "unable to reconfigure business processes as needed". Now where the SOA dream really falls apart: we learn that amongst organizations that have *not* adopted SOA, only 13% have difficulty with reconfiguration of business process. How can adopting SOA actually damage business agility?!?
AMR answers the question this way, according to Vahidy: AMR posits two reasons for this development: a limited deployment of business process management (BPM), "the orchestration layer used to reconfigure business processes... even among those who have deployed SOA, only 14% have deployed BPM," and the size, number and complexity of legacy systems, which make business processes "immensely difficult to service-enable."
But there's not really enough information in the article (again, I don't have access to the AMR Research report itself) to see whether that makes sense. We can't see how many variables were captured in the study, or what their variances were.
Perhaps smaller companies dominate those that haven't adopted SOA approaches, so their business processes are generally simpler and therefore easier to change. Perhaps, among SOA adopters, the SOA is too immature or too narrowly scoped to provide major companywide benefits, even though it's making a difference in certain business units. Perhaps the expectations for reconfigurable business processes are simply higher among type-A companies that are adopting SOA.
The two things I'd like to know most are (a) how many of the organizations surveyed saw an increase in flexibility as a result of SOA adoption, and (b) how many think that the effort was worth it or is likely to be worth it within a year? Without those two pieces of information, I think the report doesn't provide enough information to support Ronan's comment that the "SOA dream really falls apart". Not that the dream necessarily hangs together, mind you, but Ronan's conclusion is at least premature.
People often talk about "lies, damned lies, and statistics". Edward Tufte (http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/) makes a living showing that a "high-level" examination of statistics can be worse than having a lot of detail. This article, and the questions it raises, highlights that fact.
Jake Freivald
iWay Software (http://www.iwaysoftware.com)
Link To Original Article (http://www.integrationconsortium.org/icblog/?postid=102)