Study: SOA benefits come at a cost




Most reports from across the real estate finance business describe service-oriented architecture (SOA) as a strategic investment that yields numerous long-term benefits.

A recent report from research firm Gartner indicates that such successful investments could come at a cost.

Insights came from Gartner analysts who analyzed technology, organization and governance best practices for SOA initiatives at the Gartner Symposium / ITxpo 2007: Emerging Trends late April 26. “applications and business processes designed in 2007 and more than 80 percent by 2010.

SOA growing pains

SOA implies an IT architecture that uses “loosely coupled” services to support business processes and users. The idea is not new: Technologists have long envisioned an architecture through which network resources could be offered as standalone services that could be accessed without having to know the underlying platform implementation.

As SOA has been embraced across industries, the number of failed projects has increased, Gartner said, and companies have found that the benefits come at a cost. Software products for SOA have hit the market, he added, but they have sometimes proven immature, disappointing users with poor reliability, performance and productivity.

Specifically, SOA principles have been applied too rigidly, creating some unsatisfactory results as projects became too expensive and missed deadlines.

“Almost any technology that is taken too literally will be disruptive,” said Andrew Weiss, chief technology officer at Overture Technologies, a specialist in automated underwriting. Weiss, who also served as Senior Vice President of Advanced Technology at Fannie Mae for nearly a decade, commented on the report in an exclusive interview with Real Estate Technology News.

A purist, he explained, could insist that all IT transactions be done through web services. However, that may not be necessary; There may be other parts of the architecture where SOA is not appropriate. Tasks involving large volumes of reference data, for example, where an SOA approach may slow the application and require more network resources, could be better handled over a more traditional direct connection.

The compensations

Compared to traditional monolithic or client / server architectures, Gartner noted, SOA requires more careful application design and often means an outlay of IT funds for integration middleware.

Weiss noted, however, that much of that software can be purchased through open source channels, such as the Apache web server or the Tomcat Java application server.

The biggest potential problem, he said, will come from the interaction between legacy systems and new SOA-based applications. Older “service wrap” systems will be possible, but will require skill and knowledge, and perhaps some experimentation, Weiss said.

There could also be regional challenges. Large metropolitan areas along the US coasts may have more IT employees with SOA knowledge than cities in other parts of the country.

The challenge of testing

Gartner added to that list of pain points, arguing that testing, debugging, managing and securing a distributed SOA network can also be more complex and expensive than in older IT architectures.

“Testing is an interesting question,” Weiss said. “Testing costs may go up at first, but it can actually change the testing model and paradigm in a way that brings those testing costs back to at least previous levels, if not a little lower.”

For example, when working with monolithic architectures, lenders have to test almost end-to-end to detect any significant changes. With SOA, they can focus testing only on the part that is undergoing changes and do a fairly light end-to-end integration test.

Is there ROI?

Despite the falling cost of technology, the more widespread knowledge and availability of SOA services from systems integrators, in most cases it will be difficult to justify the incremental upfront cost of SOA compared to traditional architecture for a fast return on investment, opportunistically oriented. projects, Gartner said. Until 2008, the initial investment for large-scale service-oriented applications will be justifiable only for projects with a planned useful life of three years or more. But is that a significant statement in the world of mortgages?

“Almost all projects have a useful life of more than three years when you finish them,” Weiss said.

The ROI challenges Gartner cites could be related to integrating new technology with legacy systems.

“If you take an old world approach and try to force it into an SOA-based project, you are likely to have some conflicts,” Weiss said. “Does that call into question the value of SOA architecture or the appropriateness of other practices? I would suggest that the business value is there and has been demonstrated in various places and ways, but the CIO needs to recognize that they may need to modify their practices “.

CIOs can get real “business value,” echoed Gartner, because SOA helps them deliver more on a fixed budget situation, even as they work to keep up with endless business changes.

They should also see greater adaptability, faster deployment times, and lower costs for application development and integration.

The research analytics firm suggested that companies “aggressively invest” in SOA, as it is on the fast track to becoming the architectural foundation for nearly all new business-critical applications.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post