SOA speeds up application development and improves reusability of IT resources. But even though vendors paint a wonderful picture of SOA, adoption remains low. Here?s a look at the reasons why and possible solutions.

First promised with "EAI," then "web services." Now, the concept of getting loosely-coupled application components to work together and help cope with frequent business changes is known by the acronym SOA (service-oriented architecture).

Lots of discussion has been heard, far fewer implementations seen. According to an online survey conducted by the IDG Research Services Group early this year, 32 percent of the respondents do not know their company?s status in respect to SOA adoption (this online survey had 692 respondents from US firms with 500 employees or more). 21 percent of the respondents indicated the company is not considering or planning to deploy SOA.

The reasons? The survey indicated 46 percent stated lack of business justification as one of the major reasons for not implementing SOA. Lack of budget (37 percent) and expertise (32 percent) are other reasons for ignoring SOA.

Business requirements

Local companies face similar problems when considering SOA deployment.

"We have set our IT strategy towards applying SOA, but the actual implementation still depends on business requirements," said Frederick Wu, senior IT manager/development at the Housing Authority (HA). "We won?t be able to move forward with the implementation without business support and capital."

Very few IT shops plan and implement SOA for its own sake, said Wu. SOA enablement is often driven by business reasons and backed by a software architecture that?s been designed by the IT team.

As the architectural team leader, Wu said the organizations have set a five-year IT strategy plan to be SOA-enabled, starting with the adoption of Java in their newly developed applications. Nevertheless, the actual implementation of integrating these applications depends on business priorities and requirements.

This was how local brokerage firm CLSA managed to start its SOA project in 2001. The project aimed to create straight-through processing (STP) of trade orders. The system allows transactions to be entered only once--the information then proceeds automatically through different locations and applications in the entire transaction process. It avoids re-keying information, reduces input errors and shortens the time to completion.

However reaching this goal through SOA back in 2001 was a nascent idea and the technologies available were immature. To promote the concept and justify the project, CLSA?s IT shop identified the business benefit.

"We had business engaged all the time," said T Rajah, CIO of CLSA, at Gartner?s Application Development, Integration and Web services conference last year. "We convinced business (users that) the benefits to be gained by breaking projects down into simple, manageable, deliverable pieces where the benefits could quickly be seen, because our project was not based on the typical two- or six-year deliveries."

The system serves 17 CLSA offices around the world, each with its own different capabilities and requirements. The team realized it would take over two years to create the STP if traditional development methodologies were adopted, he said.

Besides, the firm was facing critical business issues, like compliance with ISO 15022 and introducing electronic brokerage to stay competitive. To convince management that the ROI of this project was attractive, Rajah?s team spent nine months consolidating, architecting and conceptualizing the project, then made a deal with the vendors, who would refund the investment if the project failed after six months.

Online self-assessments

For other local enterprises to explain and justify their SOA projects, vendors? latest offers on assessment services is an option, said Wu from HA. Free online self assessments currently provided by IBM and BEA aim to allow enterprises to understand their current status and entry point, said the companies.

Available since early this year, BEA?s self assessment tools built around BEA?s SOA domain methodology, which focuses on six areas of an SOA: architecture; building blocks; business strategy & process; costs & benefits; organizations & governance, and projects & applications. It provides a staring point for enterprise to find out whether the IT shop is mature enough and suitable to run SOA, said Vincent Jim, director, Asia Pacific Practices, BEA systems.

"The domain model is the thing that takes SOA from hype to something you can realize," said Jim. "The tool covers the six areas that you need to take (into) account."

A similar service has been available at IBM since June. Also available free online, IBM?s SOA self assessment tool consists of 16 questions covering four categories, process, architecture, applications and infrastructure assessment, said Ernest Lee, WebSphere brand executive, Greater China, IBM Software Group.

"Once a user completes the assessment, they receive four sets of recommendations," said Lee, "one for each category, ranked with calculated level of maturity."

For Wu from HA, the assessment serves more as a tool to convince business, rather than a tool for understanding. He said most IT shops have a good understanding of the IT infrastructure capability and maturity for SOA, and the assessment service is useful in confirming their view.

"Assessment services are useful as (they provide a) third-party comment. It supports the IT shop in convincing and explaining the idea to the business users," said Wu. "It gives business users more reason to spend the money."

Upfront investment

Upfront investment commitment is another major challenge for enterprises to deploy SOA, said Gartner.

"Although we expect SOA adoption to happen incrementally, organizations will still be forced to invest in substantial upfront costs," stated the research firm in its latest report "Benefits and Challenges of SOA in Business Terms", published in September 2005.

The report said one of the upfront investment costs is organization. SOA implies putting in place new, specific processes, meaning investment is needed to re-organize IT and businesses? roles. Business users will have to define and validate services, while developers might have to adopt new development methodologies.

"SOA efforts (that) underestimate the importance of organizational issues, like ownership of services, face a high risk of failure," said the Gartner report. "This is particularly true when the number of services is more than 50."

Other upfront investments required include the architecture, where new software development methodologies must be defined and enforced, and the underlying infrastructure supporting SOA must be designed with specific technologies selected. In addition, investment is required to purchase tools and technologies to service-enable established IT assets and manage the services.

Developing expertise

For Kerry Logistics, the local third-party logistics service company, the challenge is more fundamental.

"I understand the concept, but I don?t know how to start," said Wilson Lee, head of information technology, Kerry Logistics. "Even after the consultants explained the idea, I still have not figured out how to apply SOA in our environment."

The company is currently developing a Supply Chain Visibility (SCV) application, which aims to provide customers to track and trace their delivery. The service will first provide visibility by integrating the systems of various business units like operations in the warehouse, container terminals, air cargo terminals, and train cargo terminal.

The system will later enable logistics providers to integrate their applications with Kerry?s SCV, allowing customers who hire multiple providers visibility across the entire delivery process. Lee said the team is currently developing a set of standards to allow other logistics providers to easily integrate with Kerry?s SCV.

"SCV is our first priority in the next 12 months. But even when it?s developed, I still do not dare to claim we are SOA-enabled," said Lee. "The problem is we don?t have the time and expertise for an in-depth study on SOA."

It?s not only Kerry?s problem. Gartner said lack of SOA expertise and experience from the industry is a common problem for many enterprises.

"There are few, if any, mature SOA methodologies available," said the Gartner report. "In most cases, organizations will be forced to spend significant effort developing their own guidelines."

As governance and change management is still in its early phases, and best practices are not widely published, Gartner said that enterprises are forced to find their own way in managing and deploying SOA.

To help enterprises gain more SOA expertise, vendors are providing workshops. But BEA recently moved one step further by adding certification courses. Aiming to provide individuals with a keener understanding of BEA?s product, the SOA Enterprise Architecture Program is also useful for individuals planning for SOA implementation, said Terry Barrett, vice president of worldwide education and readiness of BEA.

Barrett said the program has been available since June and is expected to be available in three phases. The first phase, available now, mainly consists of tests of BEA?s product and the company?s SOA domain model. To be available within 12 months, Phase Two of the program will train individuals on mapping the company?s product with different enterprises scenarios. Phase Three of the program will certify individuals that are able to share actual experience on SOA implementation.

"Phase Three will be available at a later time, depending on the adoption of SOA in the market," he said. "In Asia Pacific, (Phase Three of) the program might be available in about 1.5 years."

Dealing with technology infancy

In addition, technology infancy is another challenge shared by many.

"SOA was in its infancy," said Rajah. "We knew that if we were to put in an SOA, we needed to have an infrastructure that could support it."

The first thing CLSA did was to define a road map and architecture. The road map identified how the system is virtually brought into the architecture and the delivery schedule of all the projects to build the various pieces, allowing the team to understand all the limitations and capabilities before the implementation.

"Our biggest risk was re-creating the knowledge that we already had," he said. "Our commission calculation system (used) for 20 markets is written in COBOL--it would have been a far bigger risk to rewrite it in Java."

By encapsulating the commission calculating system in an SOA infrastructure, the teams bore a lower risk. The risk is no longer from a technology point of view, but on the financial experience and domain capability of the vendor, said Rajah.

"We mitigated risk by having the chairman of the vendor become the executive sponsor of the product," he added.

The project was a critical success for the CLSA?s business, as its customers measure their service based on how quickly information is received after orders are placed. Before moving to SOA, the process took three hours, and the firm was ranked 23rd among global brokers.

"We encapsulated the processes as services, enabling STP. As soon as the trade is released, the client gets the information instantaneously. Today we are ranked number one 1," said Rajah.

The success is based on three critical factors: executive support; a strategic technical view and solid business requirements, concluded Rajah.