Understanding the Value of

Service-Oriented Architecture to

Maximize Business Results

August, 2009

Shawn Simon – Enterprise Architect,

Kimberly McCabe – Marketing Consultant

The evolution of the Internet has made it important for all

business stakeholders to understand the concept of Service-

Oriented Architecture. Software selection and technology

decision making should no longer be left to the IT department

alone. By gaining an understanding of Service-Oriented

Architecture, business people will be better able to obtain better

business results from their company's technology platforms. In

this white paper, we will explain how companies can achiever

higher Return on Investment from their current technologies and

software while reducing future technology costs, improve

Customer Relationship Management, and reduce business

threats such as software vendor "lock-in". Business managers

can maximize business results by being better enabled to

collaborate with their IT departments to by improving the

efficiency of information they capture and the utility of how such

information is utilized by departments across the organization.

At Oshyn, we’ve used Service-Oriented Architecture to improve

the integration and utility of existing business systems, examples

include:

� Automating systems

� Improving data capture and data value

� Improving time to market

� Enabling business to more quickly adapt to changing

business needs

� Improved ability to integrate systems following

mergers/acquisitions

� Integrating CSR to provide 360° continuous view of client

beginning with prospect inquiry

� Improving customer service by decreasing customer touch

points and improving interdepartmental client hand-off

� Improving financial transactions

� Improved regulatory compliance

Oshyn helps companies achieve better results by applying

extensive expertise that insures better performance to get the

best Return on Investment from their Content Management

Systems.

Schedule a Schedule a Schedule a Schedule a one one one one hour SOA consultationhour SOA consultationhour SOA consultationhour SOA consultation now now now now....

Call Oshyn at 888.483.1770 x173 or email us at

newbusiness@oshyn.com to schedule a FREE one hour

consultation to discussion your current business

situation and how SOA could be of benefit.

Understanding the Value of

Service-Oriented Architecture to

Maximize Business Results Table of Contents

Executive Summary 4

1.0 What is Service-Oriented Architecture? 5

1.1 SOA is NOT a Software Package. 6

2.0 SOA is a Strategy 6

2.1 Strategic Enabler 7

2.1 Connectivity: Every Technology Product 7

2.2 SOA Allows Selection of Best of Breed Solutions 8

2.3 SOA IT Governance: Standardization v. Customization 8

3.0 SOA Creates Integrated Cost-Efficiency 9

3.1 SOA vs. Not SOA 9

3.2 SOA Value-Add 10

4.0 Web 2.0 Increased the Importance of SOA 10

4.1 Increased Technology Product Implementation 11

4.2 Increased Capturing of Customer Data Online 11

4.3 Evolution of Technology: Disparate Systems and Repetitive Data 12

5.0 Conclusion 13

About Oshyn 14

About Shawn Simon 14

About Kimberly McCabe 14

Executive Summary

Globalization. Fast changing technologies. Emerging markets. These are just a

few of the pressures facing today's organizations. Wouldn’t it be nice if your

organization was prepared to adapt to these sometimes unpredictable

business risks? In a recent project, Oshyn integrated 32 systems and created

several new applications for one client to greatly improve their AGILITY. The

client was facing increased competition and rapidly changing expectations

from clients. They were facing the many business risks which grew from an ad

hoc approach to business process management and Information Systems.

The process of wholly integrating the enterprise began by developing a

concise end-to-end understanding of the numerous business needs,

limitations and opportunities. By combining the knowledge and expertise of

business users and business managers, Oshyn mapped an integration plan

that created a dynamic business organization while drastically reducing costs

and minimizing future business risks.

By the end of this whitepaper you will have an understanding as to why

Service Oriented Architecture is important to the future development of your

business IT systems, how to use the data you capture more efficiently, and

how to develop a more flexible technology environment for your organization.

1.0 What is Service-Oriented Architecture?

The opposite of Service-Oriented Architecture is one where the architecture is

built around the individual system or application, and is therefore by definition

centered around that single entity. It is not integrated and lives in a silo. It is

only integrated into the "architecture" which is the backbone of your

company's IT systems. Any application or software that you have can be

defined as a "service". So what are services? In technology speak; services

are software systems that interact with other systems across a network. Most

software today can be integrated in some way with other systems. By

grouping many systems or applications together as "services", a catalog of

options, features and functionality is created to maximize the utility of each

system or application. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) literally means that

the architecture is positioned around the services.

If you Google ‘‘SOA’’ or ‘‘Service-Oriented Architecture’’ you will quickly find

that some companies focus on selling certain aspects of SOA: governance,

software suites, Business Process Management (BPM) --- good SOA is all of

these. Business people should understand SOA so that they can understand

how to get maximum efficiency and utilization from technology to deliver better

results.

If you have ever been involved with the purchase of enterprise software or a

major systems upgrade in an organization, you could probably share a few war

stories. The integration process was often long, complicated, and particularly

frustrating for the non-technology business users. They couldn’t understand

why it was not feasible, according to their IT department, to purchase XYZ

software when it appeared to provide the best functionality for the best price.

Before SOA, companies tried to find ways to integrate their new software with

legacy systems, by building connections. They often found difficulties in

transitioning to newer systems because of the complexity of legacy systems. If

you remember Apollo 13 and the convoluted contraption which was the

‘‘solution’’ to getting Apollo 13 home --- integration was kind of like that, taking

inventory of available parts to find a solution --- no matter how difficult to

construct, deconstruct or replicate.

These complexities meant that the costs to upgrade were prohibitive --- but not

updating technology could be a business threat. You could say that the rapid

advancement in technology posed many problems to organizations trying to

keep technology costs under control, while being able to modernize their

technology for competitive business advantages.

In this whitepaper, we’ll look at some of the key components to how a

business can use SOA to build more efficient systems that will ultimately better

position the organization for better returns on technology investments, by

allowing you to leverage your previous investments and plan for more efficient

usage of IT services.

1.1 SOA is NOT a Software Package.

SOA is not something that can be bought ‘‘off the shelf’’. There are many off-

the-shelf products to improve the SOA integration process. However, SOA

begins with planning or defining which services or how services will be defined

or captured from within a larger system. For example, a customer marketing

engine could be used on the Web to better target products relevant to the

consumer’s profile. And that same engine could be leveraged by the CRM

used in the call center to better up-sell and cross-sell or even auto-pitch while

on the IVR. Why not modularize your email marketing campaign now to take

advantage of the engine to ensure higher responses from mass mailings? Then

all the customer’s touch points would share the same engine for a more

unified and consistent experience --- and if you decide to update the rules, you

change it only once.

Thus the integration of a SOA software alone will NOT guarantee a more

powerful IT system. However, the selection and proper integration of a SOA

based platform could be essential to a successful SOA implementation.

2.0 SOA is a Strategy

SOA is a strategy to best capitalize on your IT infrastructure by understanding

the nature of your organization's needs, current availability, future

requirements, and the ability to constantly make changes as needed.

Understanding the nature of connectivity in your business will lead to better

planning, capturing and utilization of data, improved ability to select desired

software solutions, etc. An important aspect of a SOA strategy is to have a

roadmap and an IT governance vision understood by management in technical

and non-technical positions.

When reading beyond this paper you might come across articles or blogs

which argue that SOA does not make an organization more agile or that it

further complicates the IT structure. What these voices are really arguing is

that, as with any process, improper execution or design can lead to

unexpected or unintended results that fail to meet the objective. SOA does

work when properly executed.

Typically, when we envision software and the solutions they are positioned to

satisfy a specific need in a niche within the enterprise. From marketing and

sales to IT, from operations to quality assurance, each has its own problems

and therefore its own unique solution, and technology vendors are quick to

offer promises to all. By understanding SOA each department can strategically

take an inventory of the problems they have and what the current systems

provide. They can plot out the redundancies and missing components. They

can look within the rest of the organization to see if the solution exists in other

IT assets or they can build new applications that capture information from

multiple services in the IT framework. Again, by understanding SOA, business

can understand how to maximize the utility of software purchases and existing