SOA Strategy A Comprehensive Yet Flexible Suite for a Pervasive Architecture

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1 A CNET WHITE PAPER SOA Strategy A Comprehensive Yet Flexible Suite for a Pervasive Architecture S. E. Slack 4/9/2008 A CNET white paper exploring the suite approach to SOA.

2 Executive Summary Software-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is on the mind of nearly every business today, especially those that rely heavily on the Web for customer interaction. But implementing SOA is considered tricky enough to require solid up-front planning and careful resource allocation. And once the decision is made to move in a SOA direction, perhaps the biggest challenge is deciding whether to piece components together from multiple vendors, or to bank on a suite approach that integrates products primarily from a single vendor. When SOA is properly implemented, businesses can respond relatively quickly and cost-effectively to changing market conditions and re-use resources in new and innovative ways. That s why it is so critical that the roadmap to SOA be realistic, cost-effective and planned in a way that anticipates both business and organizational opportunities and challenges to come. No single SOA component can fulfill the promise of SOA. Instead, a suite of SOA components must be used to create the ideal, agile business environment that every organization dreams of having. The question is, which suite? And which components of the suite are needed? And how do these new applications interface with existing Information Technology (IT) infrastructure? Most companies implementing SOA have realized that answering these important questions is a company-wide effort, best made by the formation of a SOA Center of Excellence. These multidepartment groups can best evaluate the business, technology, and human resources that will be necessary to transition to the modular nature of SOA. This paper looks at some of the advantages of implementing SOA with a suite strategy, and specifically focuses on the Oracle SOA Suite of products. Then by briefly highlighting the experiences of a major SOA installation, shows how the suite strategy paid off for one global customer. Kabel Duetschland (KDG), a German cable, Internet and telephony company, went with Oracle SOA Suite as it sought a new future: a company oriented on services instead of applications. KDG was and still is growing daily in a difficult European market. By 2005, the company knew it needed a What Are Oracle Real Application Clusters? way to manage its growth while increasing service quality. A key growth management goal for the Regardless of business model, every organization has challenges when it comes to company was superior agility the ability to add new services and communication channels on offering multiple products and services through multiple channels to a large customer base. demand while never losing sight of the customer. More and more organizations are turning to new approaches in business process management to solve these challenges. By using a suite of SOA applications, KDG was able to incrementally approach the massive change needed to its IT infrastructure while maintaining and even improving levels of customer service. SOA is clearly the smart way to bridge the gap between business processes and IT. Every portion of a SOA environment needs to seamlessly connect in order for the entire SOA approach to truly fulfill its potential benefits. Only a comprehensive SOA suite can do that.

3 The Need for Business Agility Diversity drives businesses of all sizes these days, whether it s diversity of product, service, or clientele. As businesses develop new product lines and service methods to meet ever-changing customer requirements, it s painfully obvious that any business without an agile business model and the up-todate technology to support it will be in dire straits from a profit perspective. More than ever before, customers expect instant service and outstanding products. There is little, if any, tolerance for mistakes or slow speed. The rapid pace of the Internet allows customers to get what they want, when they want it. Plus, the get it on your terms atmosphere of the Web wets customer appetites for more, more, more now, now, now. Increasing pressure is being placed on IT departments to deliver: agility, increased speed, reusable services, and organizational, cost-effective integration. Offering multiple products and services is the only way to satisfy ever-changing consumer demands. As a result, multiple-channel business models direct sales, e- commerce, face-to-face sales, etc are the norm rather than the exception. And with all that churn, agility is crucial for any business seeking healthy growth. Get Agility with SOA Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is fast-becoming the only way to get the kind of agility and growth modern commerce demands. SOA offers built-in business agility through the use of modular services that can be easily integrated and reused throughout an organization. This translates into a flexible, adaptable IT infrastructure that can turn on a dime to handle innovative products, new manufacturing processes, shifting markets, competitive pressures, and evolving customer needs. Through reuse and integration of applications, assets can be created from existing services rather than by building from the ground up every time a change is needed. In industries that involve constant change, consolidation, multiple business channels, and a need SOA is the delivery method being used more and more by businesses of all sizes. By reducing the complexity of the IT environment, and increasing the use of modular, easy-to-use business services, SOA helps organizations predict key changes and respond rapidly to them. Modular, open, extensible SOA leverages existing investments and places them throughout the organization as needed. That s agility at work. for customization, SOA can add substantial business value just in savings of time, money, and resources. For example, an improved ability to predict the need to bundle certain products based on customer feedback can get your organization s bundled products to market faster than the competition s products. Take a look at these standard SOA benefits:

4 Reduced risk the use of fewer yet reusable services offers greater control from a governance perspective and can reduce overall compliance risks. Lower integration costs because SOA services are standardized, they work together more effectively and can pull disparate applications into the mix quickly and easily. Lower maintenance costs the reusable services aspect of SOA reduces both the number and complexity of IT services. Reduced development time the reusable services aspect also lets services be more rapidly assembled into new, composite applications. High-quality services as services are reused, they become more and more tested and reliable. Some of these advantages and many of the benefits of SOA can be accomplished through multiple approaches. Tacking on new software to existing technology is one way. Writing custom interfaces to bridge previously non-compatible processes together is another. Piecing together off-the-shelf solutions from multiple vendors and their partners is a third. There is no clear right approach and every company has unique needs. That s why almost all vendors in the SOA market have a variety of products and solutions available. The key to success, then, is knowing which group of products and vendor experience is going to best address your particular needs so that time and resources are not lost reinventing success already achieved by others. The SOA Suite Advantage: Building Your Agile Business An agile business can see opportunities on the horizon, long before any real light breaks the surface. This kind of business handles competitive and consumer changes rapidly, effectively, and with an eye toward the future. It does it with a planned, structured IT infrastructure able to handle change without much planning and in a way that continues to layer on current successes. This infrastructure is designed to build service-oriented applications, deploy them in an integrated fashion throughout the organization, and manage services and human workflows all at the same time. That s a tall order for any single SOA component and frankly, no single SOA component can fill that order. Instead, a suite of SOA components must be used to create the ideal, agile business environment that every organization hopes to have. Typically, each piece in a SOA suite is designed to stand-alone or interlock with other applications to form a comprehensive SOA infrastructure. That makes it easy to jumpstart SOA in an organization where budget might limit SOA to incremental steps over a number of fiscal years or where legacy products require a more ad-hoc approach. The ultimate advantage of the suite approach, however, lies in the idea that each piece of the suite is a proven solution that integrates seamlessly and has been tested in the real world. A single suite of SOA components guaranteed to work together gives you a distinct focus for your SOA implementation along with a single source for support. Add a hot-pluggable, best-of-breed approach to each component in the suite, along with the idea that individual components can be purchased as needed, and you ve got an SOA suite that s a proven solution for mission critical systems. It s all about mitigating risk.

5 The Oracle SOA Suite: Built to Work with Legacy Systems In the ultimate SOA environment, ease of use should be assured. The Oracle SOA Suite, for example, fits that bill because it s a single-vendor with a single-deployment method for each product, common management tools, end-to-end security, and unified metadata management. It s built to easily integrate with existing Oracle products and to also interface with the most popular third-party business software products in use. The diversity of existing Oracle customers and software solutions requires a democratic approach to SOA that gives customers many options and, more importantly, provides support and integration services well beyond initial installation. Oracle s SOA Suite represents a common process framework, and is comprised of eight products that can be purchased separately, or as a complete package. It s a unique suite: it provides a set of integrated capabilities messaging, data integration, service discovery, orchestration / BPM, activity monitoring, Web services management and security, business rules, services directory and development tool, and a service enabled portal even as it provides support for existing middleware technologies such as third party J2EE application servers, development tools, and message queues and ESBs. And, because Oracle s SOA Suite products are hot-pluggable, they work with a wide assortment of existing servers and can adapt to more than 300 packaged applications. If you re trying to work with legacy systems and mainframes including Tuxedo, CICS, and VSAM Oracle SOA Suite can do it for you. Plus, Oracle uses WSIF bindings to work natively with Java, EJB, JMS, and JCA services. Extend, evolve, move up or down it doesn t matter where your business goes, because Oracle SOA Suite products go with you. You won t need to replace existing investments, or continually make new ones. Source: Oracle Service-Oriented Architecture Suite Best-of-Breed SOA Tools and Middleware, October 2007.

6 Some of the products in the suite can even be used outside the SOA concept, such as in Web applications, or a la carte. Not everyone needs every component, of course, but Oracle is so convinced in the power of the suite that the purchase of the Oracle Suite license gives you access to all components. As components are used together, the suite becomes a synergistic IT toolset that: Provides integrated design-time tools Has in-built support for a 2-layer BPM architecture (both at design-time and runtime) Supports loose coupling, virtual endpoint abstraction via Oracle Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) Supports business rules driven decision points Provides unique extract, load and transform (EL-T) capabilities Provides real-time visibility into processes and services via Oracle Business Activity Monitoring Optimizes the reuse of existing assets Perhaps one of the most appealing aspects of Oracle SOA Suite is the simplicity with which it can be deployed: It is the only complete SOA platform that provides a one-click install. Oracle SOA Suite includes the following: Oracle BPEL Process Manager (enables your business processes to be comprehensively modeled, automated, and monitored) Oracle Business Activity Monitoring (interactive, real-time dashboards and proactive alerts for monitoring business processes and services) Oracle Business Rules (which includes a Web-based Rule Author so business users can easily specify and modify business rules) Oracle Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) (the low-cost integration platform for greater IT flexibility and responsiveness) Oracle Data Integrator (ODI) (unique extract, load and transform (EL-T) data integration capabilities) Oracle Web-Services Manager (software solution for managing the operations of Web services and the interactions between these services. JDeveloper 10g ( complete integrated developer environment based on Java)

7 Should you take incremental steps or use the silo approach with SOA? A unique combination of business and IT benefits is what makes SOA the perfect approach to create business-aligned IT services that can flexibly fulfill business processes and goals. When everything works seamlessly to keep your organization ahead of the competition, you can spend a lot more time discovering new ways to respond better and faster to customer demands. If that sounds like where you want your business to be, then it s worth taking a longer look at SOA. And not just any SOA approach, by the way. Too often, organizations attempt SOA by taking one small area of the business and giving it a try, without considering the more holistic needs of the organization. While SOA certainly can be done in incremental steps (and often should be), it s not a wise move to use the silo planning approach with it. Incremental steps, yes. Silo approach, no. With an incremental approach, the organization makes a commitment to SOA and allows it to begin permeating every nook and cranny of the organization. Small steps might be taken, but the steps are always in a forward motion, and always with a holistic idea of where the organization is going. With a silo approach to SOA, the attitude is more of a Let s try it in this corner and see if it works method. This approach is nearly always disastrous. Why? Because SOA was never designed to work on its own... it was always designed to work throughout and organization, to integrate all applications over time into a single, harmonious infrastructure that lowers the total overall cost of IT ownership. Investing in SOA is a longterm investment, and one that can start small and build. But stop building on that investment before the organization is truly integrated, and the widespread benefits of SOA disappear. Kabel Deutschland (KDG): A new strategic playground required a fresh approach to IT Kabel Deutschland (KDG) is the largest cable operator in Europe s biggest television market, with more than 10 million homes served. In addition, the company offers Internet and telephony services to many customers the goal is to reach 90 percent of its customers with all three services by early Kabel Deutschland (KDG) operates cable networks in 13 German states with the help of about 2,700 employees. The company operates the networks, markets cable connections, and provides comprehensive services for all aspects of cable connectivity. In the 12 months ending March 31, 2007, Kabel Deutschland reported total revenue of approximately EUR 1.1 billion.

8 New products increasingly add to KDG s revenues and continued growth is expected in the coming years, particularly in the area of the Internet and telephony. To manage that growth, external partners had to be integrated into KDG s systems, and a focus on increased service quality was required. KDG looked to Oracle SOA Suite for the future it sought: a company oriented on services instead of applications. With a suite like Oracle s, KDG could outsource every service transparently and eliminate the reliance of consumers on specific service providers. These two technical changes alone meant that KDG s sourcing strategy could be finely honed in every area of the company, and that dependency on vendors could be reduced both key business benefits for KDG. The flexible integration of different systems, technologies, and data offered by SOA Suite gave KDG another business advantage: a best-of-breed application selection strategy. KDG chose what it needed from the suite, implemented pieces as needed, and wound up with three major, qualitative benefits from its SOA Suite implementation: A reliable, flexible interface that substantially reduced maintenance costs. A standardized intermediary (ESB) that increased quality of service through consistent, accurate data. Status transparency via process insight where previously none had been. Additional benefits from the implementation include reduced time-to-market savings and an enterprise view of development and operations costs, which led to additional savings. As with many large organizations, KDG had to make sense of its investment on two levels that of a corporate parent, but also on an individual division basis. By licensing the Oracle SOA Suite, KDG can use various components where it needs and when it needs, without having to go through the evaluation and acquisition process over and over again. Products that may make sense for one division of the company may not be necessary in another. Resources can be quickly allocated to testing and researching suite components in ways that do not put the entire organization at risk. Custom interface requirements are few and once done can be deployed in multiple locations. Not only did KDG benefit from the best practices of Oracle s global customer base, but is now in a position to document and deploy its own best practices across various divisions and business processes, fully knowing that the results will be consistent, predictable, and easy to support. Some companies prefer to avoid large single-vendor licensing for fear the service and support may not be as responsive as it is in a multi-vendor competitive situation. KDG had the opposite experience and has found that the suite approach means less finger pointing between vendors and more direct access to problem solving when necessary.

9 Why KDG Chose Oracle So what prompted KDG to go with an SOA approach in the first place? The desire to change its IT delivery approach from an application-driven delivery method to one that was service-oriented: reusable, easy to integrate, offered lowered costs, and provided higher overall quality. KDG chose Oracle SOA Suite because it offered a complete set of SOA service infrastructure components that worked seamlessly together. The unique grid architecture approach of Oracle SOA Suite also gave KDG the advanced scalability, reliability, and performance capabilities it needed to expand service availability throughout its organization. This gave KDG the strategic, business-critical foundation it needed as it looked to the future. Adding new products and expanding territory isn t a simple application game, no matter which industry you re in. For KDG, Oracle SOA Suite offered the ability to expand and evolve right along with its products and target markets. Comprehensive, Upgradeable, Unbeatable The benefits to SOA implementation are numerous, with agility at the top of the list. While SOA applications can certainly be used on a stand-alone basis, the single-vendor, comprehensive suite package approach offers a more holistic method to help organizations create an integrated SOA development and management approach. It also helps clearly define responsibility over integration and support issues. Oracle SOA Suite is comprehensive, upgradeable, easy-to-use and proven solution that is compatible with almost any existing IT infrastructure. Because its components can be rolled out incrementally and are hot-pluggable, you can leverage existing IT investments while still achieving advanced scalability and performance. Combine that with a flexible licensing model and the fact that some suite products can even be used outside the SOA concept, and the decision to use Oracle SOA Suite becomes compelling.

10 For More Information To learn more about Oracle s SOA Suite can help your organization move to an IT infrastructure that can rapidly respond to your organization s changing business requirements, visit or call ORACLE1. Developers: Take advantage of the SOA QuickStart Guide to get an easy introduction to the entire suite in less than an hour. You can even download the suit e and start playing with it if you like. Visit for downloads, tutorials, and a developer s guide. Copyright 2008 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. CNET and the CNET logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of CNET Networks, Inc. or its subsidiaries worldwide. Other names and brands mentioned may be claimed as the property, trademarks, or registered trademarks of others.