SOA by 2010?
Connecting state and local government leaders
Is it possible to have widespread adoption of SOA throughout corporations, government agencies and medium-sized businesses by 2010? A new SOA advocacy group thinks so.
Is it possible to have widespread adoption of Service Oriented Architecture throughout major corporations, government agencies and medium-sized businesses by 2010?
A new SOA advocacy group thinks so.
The SOA Consortium, established earlier this year, comprises end users, service providers and technology vendors who are committed to spurring broader adoption of SOA throughout businesses and government. The group's founding sponsors are BEA Systems, Cisco Systems, IBM and SAP AG. The group has 17 practitioner members, among them the American Red Cross, AT&T, the General Services Administration and Hewlett-Packard.
The SOA Consortium is managed by the Object Management Group but is a separate entity, said Jon Siegel, vice president of technology transfer at OMG. Siegel gave a presentation on the consortium at the third Service Oriented Architecture for E-Government Conference sponsored by the Federal CIO Council's SOA Community of Practice and the Mitre organization. The conference was held May 1-2 at Mitre headquarters in McLean, Va.
As many speakers at the conference pointed out, SOA is not a technology. It is an approach to business agility that enables higher interoperability and responsiveness within and between organizations.
The SOA Consortium is a time-based organization. 'At the end of 2010 it goes away,' Siegel said.
SOA is perceived by business executives as an information technology integration story, but it is really about business agility, Siegel noted. SOA Consortium founders and members think SOA practitioners need a vibrant community to drive local, business-driven SOA success.
'The audience that the SOA Consortium is addressing is not the programmers in the trenches. It's [those] at the highest level ' at the CEO/CIO/CTO level' who will take the message to the senior business executive, Siegel said. The group also wants to focus on the business and IT analyst and IT project manager community. It is expected that senior management will push the SOA message down to IT workers in the trenches.
The SOA Consortium has a three-pronged strategy:
- Promoting business-driven SOA ' This involves building awareness among senior-level executives on the cost, value, challenges and success factors of SOA. Vehicles for achieving this are CIO summits and case study forums.
- Generate business value from SOA ' This area focuses on providing business professionals with methods, models, tools and connections to resolve their business scenarios. This can be accomplished through thought and leadership conferences.
- Executing business-driven SOA ' The goal is to enable architects and senior development managers to sell, transition to, develop and support an SOA in practice. This can be achieved through practitioner workshops and open practitioner forums.
NEXT STORY: Word documents by phone