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By Jim McHugh
Vice President, Software Infrastructure Marketing
In previous issues of Integration Insights, we've looked at some of the ways in which service-oriented architectures (SOAs) are radically transforming the way business works. More and more companies are considering an SOA approach to their software infrastructures, but first they want to know what an SOA is really going to deliver from a business perspective.
In this issue, I'd like to help answer that by looking at the business value of SOA — and specifically of creating SOA-based composite applications.
But first, let me explain what I mean by "composite applications." A composite application is one that leverages existing applications, information stores, and business logic. It combines these resources to create a new application that will solve a business problem none of them could solve alone.
For example, in the last two issues of Integration Insights, we talked about achieving a single view of information across systems and applications. An SOA approach makes it possible to expose and access data from multiple sources and combine them into a single-view application.
This not only provides companies with a complete, consistent view of customer information across the company, it also provides a self-service option for customers to access their information — all in one place.
Lower Costs with Improved Compliance and Efficiency
By using an SOA approach to build composite applications, developers can create new business services without starting from scratch. They can more quickly create and deliver new products and services that support business goals. From a business perspective, composite applications offer the following benefits.
- Lower costs. When composite applications are used to automate business process-related tasks that are otherwise performed manually, fewer resources are needed to carry out those tasks. Those resources can be assigned to higher-value projects.
- Consistent compliance. A rules engine and a business process management (BPM) engine can be used together to automate compliance-related tasks — such as exception handling, monitoring, and management of business processes — and to reduce process latency.
- Improved business efficiencies. The automation capabilities of a BPM engine can be used to track the execution of multi-step processes to help ensure that they're done efficiently. You can also build a composite application to enable real-time process enhancement by automatically tracking process results.
So how exactly do SOA technology and techniques reduce the cost, time, effort, and risk associated with building composite applications?
- Reuse of services. Building composite applications in an SOA environment creates opportunities to reuse existing applications to develop new solutions. It also provides the opportunity to reuse the solutions that you build. For example, you may build a credit-check service to process new product purchases — and then reuse it to approve service calls.
- Isolated-component implementations. The SOA environment provides the ability to build an application out of isolated components. That means if 20 components are required to build an application, and one has to be changed, it won't be necessary to change another dozen related components for the application to work.
- Reduced development time and effort. SOA employs widely adopted standards for application-to-application communications, which speeds and simplifies the process of connecting applications and application components. SOA standards also affect the issues of data content, data formats, and data semantics. Strong standards for the data that passes between applications can keep the cost of application integration down.
Understanding the potential business value to be achieved with SOA-based composite applications is the first step to realizing that value; understanding exactly how to get there is equally important. In the next issue of Integration Insights, we'll look at best practices to help ensure you realize maximum business value.
Stay tuned, and always look to Integration Insights to continue to bring you important information about composite applications, SOA technology, ROI, and much more.
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