Patrick F. Carey Bernard W. Gleason. May 2005

Transcription

1 Solving the Integration Issue - Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Transforming and modernizing the administration of your institution and taking cost out of the system Abstract For decades, colleges and universities have been pursuing the elusive goal of streamlining business practices by tying applications together. Many institutions have achieved a degree of success by implementing a set of applications from a single vendor, but customized interfaces with external applications have proven to be expensive to create and maintain. Integration remains a major issue. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a modern application framework that leverages the power of Internet technologies to meet the growing requirements for greater flexibility and for the creation of new business models that will support secure and seamless inter-processing with disparate internal and external resources. SOA is more than technology; it is a design philosophy that treats integration as the primary design principle rather than as an afterthought. With SOA, business functions are created as reusable component services for the purpose of being joined together and choreographed to generate new and innovative business processing models. This paper is designed to provide institutional decisionmakers with a non-technical introduction to the concepts and technology of service-oriented architectures and the important role that SOA will play in providing colleges and universities with the agility and flexibility they are seeking. Patrick F. Carey Bernard W. Gleason May 2005 Executive White Paper Series Executive White Papers provide valuable insights into the innovative application of technology to solve business problems that are confronting colleges and universities. The papers should serve as a helpful resource to aid Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) and Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in discussions with institutional Chief Information Officers (CIOs) in the exploration of new methods and processes for reducing administrative costs.

2 Executive Summary Institutions want better options for improving services and reducing costs College and university decision-makers are seeking innovative methods for reducing costs, and more and better options for improving services. Institutions want the ability to add functionality quickly and cheaply based on business processing needs and without being constrained by technology or the proprietary nature of installed application software. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a strategy and architecture for solving the integration issue Today s business and learning applications need to be modernized to meet tomorrow s requirements for communications with an extended community of customers and interactions with a varied array of business partners. The sweet spot will be the elimination of pain points that colleges and universities experience today in trying to get business processes to work together. The answer lies in the creation of new breed of open applications enabled by the adoption of a service-oriented architecture (SOA), which is both a strategy and a flexible and scalable technical framework for supporting open standards and open application interfaces. Open applications that are built on an open architecture promise to be significantly less expensive to implement and to operate. Building business processes from reusable components reduces costs The architecture is called service-oriented because applications, and functions within applications, appear on the network as a loosely coupled set of services. A service in SOA is an application or function with well-defined interfaces that is packaged as a reusable component for use in a business process. Simply stated, in an SOA, business processes appear as a set of separate components that can be joined and choreographed to create composite applications and processes. SOA allows you to protect investments in existing applications Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems and legacy systems are tightly coupled, and integration with applications outside the software suite is often difficult and/or expensive. However, these applications can play in an SOA, protecting institutional investments and permitting new functionality to be added incrementally without disrupting normal services or replacing major portions of existing systems. SOA is the key to IBM s On Demand strategy By expressing a point-of-view regarding SOA, IBM is assisting CIOs, who are faced with the challenge of creating a new vision and explaining the strategic benefits of SOA. The adoption of SOA-enabled business processes is important if institutions hope to solve lingering integration issues, gain independence from the constraints of proprietary software, and attain cost reductions. Solving the Integration Issue - Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) 1

3 Vision of SOA Since the emergence of the Internet and the Web, the education industry has been in the midst of a transformation of business and learning processes. Institutions started by creating information Web sites; progressed to providing secure access to sensitive information and internal transactions; and now stand at the next threshold integration with external resources and business partners to create new, dynamic business processes. Chasms to cross - security and integration standards Best Practices will ignite momentum Next challenge managing serviceoriented business models The exhibit above depicts the technical and business progression toward new, innovative business processes. As technology barriers of security and proprietary software interfaces are overcome, higher education will experience operational benefits, similar to those being realized in the manufacturing sector with supply-chain management. As business needs arise, colleges and universities will be empowered to reshape business practices on a piecemeal basis and in a secure and integrated manner without being constrained by installed software or locked-in by a single provider. The likely scenario involves both the adoption of a new technology approach based on SOA that will lead to the enablement of new business processing models. Best practices that demonstrate efficiencies, improved services and/or reduced costs will drive the value proposition and will escalate the momentum to make all applications SOA-compliant. The next generation of applications and business processes, based on SOA, will extend traditional application boundaries and management practices, but will also generate new issues and requirements for managing complex transactions, business relationships and processing models. The next logical target in the continuum is likely to be the universal adoption of software standards and rules for managing SOA business models by all providers and service partners. Solving the Integration Issue - Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) 2

4 SOA - Design Strategy and Architecture SOA is more than technology; it is also a design philosophy for reshaping business models and business processes. The framework is called a service-oriented architecture because every function and application appears on the network as a loosely coupled service. SOA is a solution to integration issue Return on investment is elusive Open Standards Extending Web and Internet to solve integration issue SOA based on Web services By contrast, functions and applications within traditional application software suites are tightly integrated utilizing proprietary interfaces and connections. Adding or replacing functions, or interconnecting with other internal and external applications is not easy and can be very expensive. Even institutions that have implemented an enterprise suite of administrative software are likely to have only seen a limited return on investment. That is largely due to continuing difficulties in attaining processing efficiencies through end-to-end integration with applications of an extended community of customers, business partners, government agencies and other institutions. The adoption of open architectures and open standards is required to eliminate the integration barriers that exist today: Lack of open standards for connecting applications Cost of creating and maintaining customized formats Incompatibilities between disparate computing platforms Absence of trust definitions for secure communications Reliance on proprietary software from a single vendor In our daily lives we have come to rely on the Internet and Web as a primary means of searching for information, communicating (e.g., ), and conducting personal business (e.g., airline reservations). Fortunately, the solution to the integration issue lies in extending the same basic technology while retaining the convenience provided by the Web and the Internet. With SOA, integration is managed at the middleware level, not within each application, and the integration is addressed by a set of technical standards that form the basis for Web services: Web services definitions language (WSDL) for discovery Internet protocols (e.g.,tcp/ip) for transport extensible mark-up language (XML) for content formatting Messaging format (e.g., SOAP) for transmission Business processing execution language (BPEL) for process orchestration Web security interoperability (WS-I) for security Solving the Integration Issue - Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) 3

5 SOA Logical Solution to Known Problems Campus executives are apt to have little interest in the value of technologies underlying SOA; they are focused on solutions for solving real business problems. However, colleges and universities operate within hierarchical structures, which inhibit horizontal integration of data and processes; often resulting in duplication of functions within each unit. The good news is that campus executives recognize the problem and that there should be common methods to streamline processes that all institutions of higher education should be willing to adopt. SOA solving data synchronization SOA using external validation SOA orchestrating external business processes SOA Integration at middleware level IBM champion of SOA For example, every college has probably implemented a learning management system (LMS) and each has had to deal with the inefficiencies and duplication of data required to synchronize the LMS with the student information system (SIS). This form of unnecessary complexity and cost, repeats itself over and over. In the Human Resources (HR) office the validation of information, such as a job applicant s degree, is commonly a manual process. It would make more sense if the HR ERP system could automatically validate the degree with an outside agency or institution at the point of entry of the data into the HR system. Today when credit card information is supplied to purchase airline tickets over the Web, an external process validates the transaction and orchestrates payment processing. Many other common services should be hosted externally utilizing open interfaces, and should be easy and cost-effective to implement. The fundamental concept of SOA is that integration occurs at a middleware level, not within individual applications, as exists today. If both internal and external applications become compliant with SOA requirements for Web services and security, new solutions to a multitude of issues, such as the ones listed above, will result in improved customer service and enormous savings. Institutions may be slow to build out their SOA technology platforms, waiting for existing application software providers to alter their products suites to be SOA-compliant. In addition, colleges and universities are not likely to be successful in independently establishing partnership agreements with external providers. IBM can provide the required technology but IBM can also play a keystone role i.e., champion the adoption of open technologies, such as SOA, within the higher education community, and build a partnership network of external service providers. Solving the Integration Issue - Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) 4

6 SOA - Traditional Application Software Providers What impact will service-oriented architectures (SOA) have on the established base of administrative application software and the product and business strategies of software providers? All future applications will be based on an open architecture Application providers must balance corporate strategies with customer demands Customer resistance to continuous upgrades The uncertainty created by the recent mergers of major providers of administrative application software has left many campus executives with the unsettling feeling of being locked in without good options. The good news is that all of the application software providers, including the major ERP vendors, recognize the wave of the future and are pursuing SOA product strategies. The less encouraging news is that the migration process could be long and expensive for institutions of higher education. The vendors are being challenged to blend together code from acquired application products while simultaneously attempting to move the installed base to a modern, open architecture. Most colleges and universities place a high value on software stability and sustainability, and feel comfortable dealing with a single established application software provider. However, these customers may be reluctant to expend effort to upgrade software and to pay arbitrary increases in licensing fees for the sole purpose of moving to a new open architecture. Open source enterprise applications - the next plateau In the short run, what is apt to emerge are strategies such as creating an SOA layer that is independent of existing ERP and legacy applications. Following this approach, colleges and universities may be able to make functional improvements sooner and on an incremental basis without the prerequisite of first having to reinstall a vendor s complete application suite. Of late there has been considerable interest in open source applications, such as SAKAI (course management) and Kuali (financials), which are being developed as collaborative, community efforts by groups of colleges and universities. Community source projects are being designed from the outset to be SOA-compliant, ensuring that new, best-of-breed functionality can be adopted quickly to meet changing business needs. Institutions should investigate the product strategy of their current provider of administrative software and evaluate the vendor s directions and timing against the potential technical and financial advantages of alternative strategic directions e.g., separate SOA integration middleware platform, or adoption of community source software. Solving the Integration Issue - Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) 5

7 Authors Patrick F. Carey IBM Business Consulting Services Higher Education Industry Leader Bernard W. Gleason CIO Emeritus, Boston College Open Information IBM is committed to the free exchange of information in sponsoring this series of papers. Each paper represents the point of view of the authors and can be freely distributed and content be reused with accreditation but without the expressed permission of the authors or IBM. IBM s Vision Aligned with Higher Education IBM gets it! Colleges and universities need to streamline existing business and learning systems if they hope to improve services and to reduce costs through seamless integration with an extended community of customers, colleagues and business partners. SOA provides the technology solution that is also a key to IBM s own vision of On Demand business. With an SOA in place, colleges and universities can examine every business function, determine what makes the most sense operationally and fiscally to support as a service, and then wisely implement the proper approach. SOA is a paradigm shift -- the point of integration is moving from applications to middleware and the boundaries of participation are being extended. IBM isn t in the application software business, but we have crafted a vision and a strategy to assist higher education customers in the transition to the next generation of open applications and dynamic business processes. IBM is positioned to take a leadership role within the higher education sector and publishing a SOA technical reference architecture that is customized for higher education. New business processes, based on a common architecture, will be assembled from component services, and institutions will be free to implement and/or replace functionality based on quality of service and competitive pricing, and without being subjected to the limitations imposed by proprietary application software today. IBM has chosen to promote an open approach open standards, open source, open architectures like SOA and open communities in development of application software. By adopting a SOA, colleges and universities will be taking an important first step along an open path to attaining the flexibility, interoperability and cost reductions they are seeking. Solving the Integration Issue - Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) 6