SOA Benefits

SOA Benefits

In architectural terms, a modern architectural design should be Service Oriented, loosely coupled, driven by events, able to support both integration and assembly, aligned with valuable life cycle support processes, and able to leverage existing infrastructure and applications.

When it comes to Service Oriented Architecture, it tends to offer a variety of different advantages over more traditional methods of distributing computing. These include offering business services across several platforms; providing location independence; providing authentication as well as authorization support on ever tier; a loosely coupled approach; and dynamic search and connectivity to other services. At the same time, it allows that services do not have to be located on a particular system or network.

Some of the short term benefits of Service Oriented Architecture implementation include an enhancement of reliability; a reduction of hardware acquisition costs; an acceleration of movement towards standards based servers and application consolidation; the leveraging of existing development skills; and the providing of a data bridge that connects previously incompatible forms of technology.

There are also numerous long-term benefits of Service Oriented Architecture implementation. These include the creation of a self healing infrastructure that effectively reduces management costs; the proven ability to build composite applications; the access to truly real time decision making applications; the resulting compilation of a unified taxonomy of data across an enterprise, which includes both partners and customers; and a whole lot more.

From the perspective of Business Value, the advantages of Service Oriented Architecture include the ability to meet customer demands at a much faster pace than ever before; a reduction of costs previously associated with the maintenance and acquisition of key technological needs; the management of business functionality at a physically closer location to the business units; a reduction in reliance on pricey custom development; and a leverage of existing investments in the technological sector.

SOAP

Simple Object Access Protocol, or SOAP based web services have evolved as the most common SOA implementation. There are, however, non-web service implementations that exist that provide similar benefits. Service Oriented Architecture’s protocol independence thus means that consumers can communicate with the service in a variety of ways.