* Time to get educated about SOAs
If you haven’t read your copy yet, you’ll notice some changes to Network World: a new section called “Enterprise Computing,” and the renaming of the “Enterprise Application” section to “Application Services.”
John Dix, Network World editor-in-chief says the new Application Services section name reflects the fact that our readers are increasingly delivering applications as services to business process owners within organizations and that Web services and service-oriented architectures (SOA) are changing the game. We’re familiar with Web services, but what are SOAs?
An SOA is a way of connecting applications across an IP network. In effect, applications are treated as network services that can be linked together to create a single application. Services can be shared, reused and combined to create composite applications across a distributed network.
One industry analyst described SOA as the virtualization of applications – developers create interfaces for existing applications so that services can be shared among multiple clients. As well as reusing existing software, other advantages of SOA include simplified software upgrades, and reduced complexity when integrating applications with those of business partners.
SOA is worth taking note of as it may soon be making its way into your organization – if parts of it haven’t already. According Yankee Group, 75% of companies plan to invest in the technology and staffing necessary to enable an SOA in the next 12 months.
SOA isn’t new – it’s an old concept that is generating new buzz (in fact, those words were written by my colleague Network World Senior Editor John Fontana in one of his SOA stories published back in September 2003, so it’s been around a while already). It’s likely that you’ll be hearing a lot more about SOAs in the future so it’s worth brushing up on the buzz. And where best to start other than the pages of Network World. I’ve compiled a few stories that will get you started on your SOA education journey:
Start here for the definition of SOA and additional resources.
* Network World Encyclopedia: SOA
https://www.nwfusion.com/details/6187.html?def
* Resurrecting the distributed app model
https://www.nwfusion.com/buzz/2003/0929soa.html
This story by John Fontana defines SOAs, explains how they differ from Common Object Request Broker Architecture and Distributed Component Object Model, and describes what organizations have to think about before embarking on an SOA initiative.
* Service-oriented hype to meet hard realities
https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/110104soapart1.html
Fontana discusses the challenges IT shops face when introducing SOAs, and the protocols and technologies necessary to develop an SOA.
* Early adopters: SOA worth the effort
https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/110804soapart2.html
Fontana and Network World Senior Editor Ann Bednarz talk to early adopters of SOAs and find out what it took to implement and the paybacks they’re seeing.
* IBM steps into SOA
IBM is targeting SOA as a money earner. Earlier this month it announced the creation of a practice aimed at helping enterprises move to an SOA and in April, Big Blue unveiled its SOA product offerings.
IBM unfolds service-oriented architecture offerings
https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/0421ibmunfol.html
IBM unveils SOA management services
https://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/1104ibmsoa.html
* SOA opinions
Our columnists and newsletter authors who are industry analysts by day have also written reams about SOA. Here some highlights:
SOA and the death of platforms
Burton Group Senior Analyst James Kobielus argues that SOA is not what you hear being described by vendors.
https://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2004/090604kobielus.html
SOA is worth network redesign
Frank Dzubeck, president of Communications Network Architects, describes what’s required to migrate to SOA.
https://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2004/083004dzubeck.html
Get to know SOAs
Andreas M. Antonopoulos, principal research analyst at Nemertes Research, offers a primer on SOA.
https://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/datacenter/2004/1018datacenter1.html
We hope this is good to get you started. We’ll be sure to touch on SOAs again in this newsletter real soon.
