SOA isnt dead

SOA isnt dead ! Whoever claims that - is doing a great disservice to the subject. A better idea - a better approach cant be killed by a headline and per definition. There is no alternative to it if you want to be agile and more efficient. "Cars are dead - because wheat for horses got cheaper."

SOA Enterprise Architects Views

SOA Enterprise Architects Views

To hire the right people is the key to successful SOA projects. You dont just need technical experts but to hire the right enterprise architects besides skills you ask so much more from these people in the context of politics, in the context of collaboration, in the context of migration and transformation.

HR have actually no clue where to look at besides comparing tickboxes on CVs as most HR people arent deeply enough in the business to look for the right attributes and indications to hire the right architects for greater solutions.

Enterprise Architects need a background in EA methodologies and knowledge in governance aspects that plain SOA practioners not automatically need to know and need to be aware of or are not envolved with.

So SOA and Enterprise Architecture are not equivalents.

No question that architects for both areas need a profound technical background around platforms and technologies but besides that there is the question who are the people
that have the softer skills, that can move into the business space, that are able to build trust and relationships with CEOs and CFOs as well as the CTO.

So you are looking for broad experienced people who have methodology knowledge in design and enterprise architecture. In terms of hiring the right experts people should be quite articulate written and verbally and should have broad technical background with hardware software and networks and added to all they have to understand business process choreography how to model manage organise and arrange all these services mapped to the technical layer.

Also architects should know more than one platform ( like Windows, Linux, Unix, Host-OSes, Closed and Open Source ) otherwise they are just specialists but not architects.

When talking about business transformation which is a high level activity the major goal of SOA is a substantially major transformation of the business towards more agility and
flexibility. Here when directly addressing IT departments with this the question comes up: Isnt this asked a little bit much, do IT Managers really have the overview the training and the support to actually transform the organisation.

SOA is more a community effort where CEO, targeted departments and IT should do that transformation as multiple owners of the business process changed by this newly created Governance Group.

Having High-Level Business Processes and breaking them down to Business Services using components of the technical infrastructure SOA needs a technical leadership visionary.
Not falling back into the thinking of point-to-point integration is so important and has to be monitored by these responsible managing individuals.

So the demands on the leadership skills are really high.

BPM

BPM - Business Process Management

To put it simply: BPM gives answers to the questions of who does what when and how in the corporation.

To be able to answer these questions is not only advantageous for the corporation itself but also improves the relationship with its customers.

Cut throat competition initiated by globalisation manifests itself via shorter technology cycles and puts extra pressure on businesses. The need for increased flexibility and rapid adaption to new market conditions is obvious and in the facilitation of this business processes play the vital part.

Changing petrol prices at gas stations or changing conditions in mobile phone contract offers within short timeframes require this flexibility in business processes to be able to implement the ability to act rapidly and compeditively in the open market.

Lower cost per minute in mobile communication means that previous higher prices should no longer appear on invoices. If something goes wrong and the company has already implemented a workflow management system around its BPM customer service can effectively explain and resolve customer complaints. The success of this depends on the Business Process being transparent and trackable at all times.

Using SOA in various services constitutes an overlying layer of Business Process Management which is a composition layer to orchestrate these solutions and services in a speedy and flexible way. This layer is constantly monitored and ensures maximum visibility and transparency.

Workflow management tools and human task management components are important factors here combined with a clear graphical user interface.

This way analysts and managers can model Business Processes on their computers in a graphical way without the need for programming skills like Java.

Using platforms such as IBM Process Server allows a separation of application logic and the logic of the Business Process and its management. Due to this separation processes can be standardised and are made more flexible and adaptable. The described separation through layers leads to this very flexibility as sudden changes in petrol prices can be implemented and adjusted independently from the existing applications.

One of the noticable trends is that customers are able to implement changes in their processes concurrently while running their business with no interruption of the process whatsoever.

Corporate Data Quality

Corporate Data Quality

In globalised companies there is a high demand for individualised services at different locations worldwide although these companies would prefer to offer standardised services as far as possible. In order to be successful in this area means to have a consistent basis of data.

Everybody in this networked environment of partners needs to have a common understanding of transferrable data, its formats and meanings and has a considerable interest to have these in high data quality.

Higher Data Quality requires a new understanding - an understanding that data is a capital good, as important as machines, people and all other capital goods that a company has and utilises.

Some of the mistakes that are being made when mismanaging Data Quality are e.g. Call Centers where employees, without bad intention but due to lack of awareness fill mandatory fields with
nonsensical information due to time pressure or simple misinformation. This could be e.g. wrong addresses, birth dates etc.
The agents are expected to input information in the shortest possible time, endeavouring to fulfill their KPI's. This has the unfortunate consequence for the company that it messes up the database, as double entries are created - therefore the usable correct entry can no longer be tracked.

Essentially high data quality is the backbone for developing successful new business models.

In order to serve customers in a holistic way, an insurance company for example wants to offer new services tailored to its clients. Therefore it needs to have all the different data and contract information associated with these customers available and accessible. These pieces of information are often stored in different technical information silos. It is paramount to have access to all relevant information when sales are being negotiated with these customers.

All existing contracts with that customer should be accessible, transparent and up to date. To be in the best position for negotiations, it is essential to have access to information with High Corporate Data Quality.

How do you get the support from CFOs and CEOs for campaigns to increase Corporate Data Quality ? First of all awareness of the question itself and its importance is essential.
There has to be an understanding on the highest management level of how important this issue is - particularly for successful business processes and their ROI.

Quite often an assessment can help to show how quality can be improved immediately, which values are still undiscovered or dormant in corporate data and could be productively utilized through successful data mining methodologies.

"I think - in a globalised world with internationally operating companies -

profit is no longer as important as revenue is -

as taxes can be changed and optimised anytime through relocation. "

Parameters for CFOs

The last years have brought a lot of change for CFOs. As of July 2002 the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was introduced by the American Government - this not only has an influence on American but also on globally active companies. Now a stronger focus is on reporting in companies. The major goals for the CEOs have changed to more profit oriented growth and innovation.

Some major trends in establishing this can be observed. First of all there has to be stability in the core business processes, so that finance reporting and financial control mechanisms and regulations are met and managed well, that data structures are consistent and that the integration of data is an important component to construct and set up future oriented tools for future prognosis and planning data.

The biggest challenges lie in the future oriented and future directed view of data. As in the past analysis tools just looked at data backwards in time, this new approach - of looking ahead is the new major focus.

It is very important in order to to achieve this to get an overall access and overview of KPIs and process control data over the whole enterprise.

To step forward in this direction there a lot of already existant tools available such as business process management (BPM), forecasting and budgeting tools.

Five simple factors are considered to be in highest demand:

* simple structures -
enterprises and companies that manage and control complexity best are also the best perfoming ones

* focus on growth -
here it is necessary that the financial sector of companies works closely together with other parts of these companies to analyse customer structures and to understand customer request better and find the best suited reaction and service for these.

* understand the core company performance -
have the monitoring and measurement of KPIs installed, functional and ready and the ability to manage these KPIs in tighly coupled timeframes and open the ecosystems for thriving decision making, governance and management.

* risk management -
establish processes and procedures that run more efficiently than before

* simplifying -
to simplify and standardise processes, etablish and integrate standardised data transfers and communication and to improve the focus on future oriented planning and management.

Open Source and SOA:

A very important architectural movement in the industry.

SOA requires innovation and it requires infrastructure on which it is going to live.

SOA provides a lot of answers to a lot of problems that people have and see for a while.

A risk reduction in terms of extending legacy systems.

SOA is a bit like mentality or fitness.
Using it with Open Source it integrates choice and risk reduction

instead of been locked in to a vendor-specific approach.

The level of IT integration in terms of business processes is always higher with internal providers compared to external providers – that’s the downside of outsourcing.