Services Oriented Architecture - SOA Solutions

SOA is a complex topic - it covers more than just application architecture, more than governance, more than the SOA product stacks - it essentially represents a new way to view Information Technology capability development and support. First and foremost, Services Oriented Architecture is a design paradigm, but one that must also support runtime performance engineering. Many view SOA as the cornerstone or foundation for complete transformation of their IT environments, and while it isn't primarily designed to support that, we've added to SOA where necessary in order to help organizations utilize it as a 'Transformation agent' and a foundation for holisitc enterprise management.

This is one example of how we manage the (SOA) service inventory discovery process in lockstep with Legacy Migration...

We understand that the most important aspect of SOA is how it applies to your enterprise, and how it might solve your problems. No two SOA solutions are exactly alike - our consulting experts will help you determine what's needed and when. The right way to introduce change and achieve transformation is the way that will work best for your environment - and that's something we can help you understand and realize.

We are SOA Experts & Thought Leaders

In many ways, SOA is much like enterprise integration - it comprises a number of different but related skills, activities and technologies. Our service offering recognizes that fact and the following list of SOA Capabilities and Deliverables will help you understand exactly what we can to help you make SOA a success in your organization. Not every engagement requires all of these capabilities or deliverables - the precise mix of activities and output is assessed on a per project basis.

Capabilities

SOA Strategy
SOA Infrastructure Design
SOA Cost Estimation
SOA Requirements Engineering
SOA Inventory Design
SOA Outreach
SOA Application Design
SOA Data Layer / Tier Design
SOA EA Reconciliation
SOA + MDM Design
SOA Governance Rulesets
SOA Business Design - BPMN
SOA Business Logic - BPEL
Semantic Modeling
Community of Interest (COI) Management
Federation Design (Data, ESB, Enclaves)
SOA Performance Engineering
Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)
SOA Contract & SLA Development
Legacy Migration Planning
Legacy + SOA Integration or Wrapping
Software as a Service SaaS Design and Integration

Deliverables

SOA Roadmaps & Conops
Datacenter Design & Configuration artifacts
WBS, Business Case
Automated Requirements Solution
Blueprints, SOA Patterns
Web 2.0 Portal [wikis, blogs etc.]
UML & other design notation
ERD & other design notation
Semantic Mapping across Artifacts
Metadata design & solution configuration
Contracts, WS-Policy, WSDLs, Rules Engine
BPMN artifacts in various tools
BPEL Logic in various tools
OWL, RDF
Data Dictionaries, charters, wikis
Design configuration
Design documentation & test plans
Assessments, design specifications
Reports, XML output
Reports, requirements, designs, testing
Reports, requirements, designs, testing
Reports, requirements, designs, testing

What is SOA, Really ?

Many of you are probably wondering why or how SOA has become the hottest topic of conversation in IT for the past several years?

The reason why it is at the top of the buzzword list is due to its relationship to integration. The promise of SOA is the possibility of ready-made, largely COTS-deployable integration infrastructures.

Like all great ideas, the reality often takes time to catch up to the potential. SOA has not met all of its associated expectations to date due mainly to the fact that it isn't an all encompassing solution (even though many beleive that it is).

More importantly, most enterprises cannot afford to transform their entire infrastructure instantly and the prospect of SOA + legacy architectures is a bit more daunting than creating something new from scratch.

Servics Oriented Integration - SOI

SOI is Semantech's consulting practice dedicating to coordinating the full spectrum of enterprise integration issues around a SOA foundation including:

IT Infrastructure Management
Semantics

Read More About SOI here»

SOA Specializations

There are number of related but distinct technologies that make up the practice of SOA, those include the following areas of specialization:

BPEL - Business Process Execution Language. This represents the business architecture tier for most SOA solutions - process flow logic is captured here and used to 'orchestrate' service execution and compositions.

MDM - Master Data Management. This is a COTS-based solution to coordinating metadata across numerous data source systems. It is especially important within SOA projects to have a strong metadata management backbone behind all other structures.

ESB - Enterprise Service Bus. This is the data transport hub for all SOA message traffic - ESBs have their roots in middleware and EAI solution architectures.

EA - Enterprise Architecture. Most SOA projects are by nature enterprise endeavors, as such often times the SOA architecture ends up becoming the actual EA. Other times though the official EA and the SOA must be reconciled.