Understanding the Value of

Service-Oriented Architecture to
Maximize Business Results
August, 2009

Shawn Simon – Enterprise Architect,

Kimberly McCabe – Marketing Consultant

The evolution of the Internet has made it important for all

business stakeholders to understand the concept of Service-
Oriented Architecture. Software selection and technology
decision making should no longer be left to the IT department
alone. By gaining an understanding of Service-Oriented
Architecture, business people will be better able to obtain better
business results from their company's technology platforms. In
this white paper, we will explain how companies can achiever
higher Return on Investment from their current technologies and
software while reducing future technology costs, improve
Customer Relationship Management, and reduce business
threats such as software vendor "lock-in". Business managers
can maximize business results by being better enabled to
collaborate with their IT departments to by improving the
efficiency of information they capture and the utility of how such
information is utilized by departments across the organization.

At Oshyn, we’ve used Service-Oriented Architecture to improve

the integration and utility of existing business systems, examples
include:

Automating systems

Improving data capture and data value

Improving time to market

Enabling business to more quickly adapt to changing
business needs

Improved ability to integrate systems following
mergers/acquisitions

Integrating CSR to provide 360° continuous view of client
beginning with prospect inquiry

Improving customer service by decreasing customer touch
points and improving interdepartmental client hand-off

Improving financial transactions

Improved regulatory compliance

Oshyn helps companies achieve better results by applying

extensive expertise that insures better performance to get the
best Return on Investment from their Content Management
Systems.

Schedule a one hour SOA consultation now.

now .
Call Oshyn at 888.483.1770 x173 or email us at
newbusiness@oshyn.com to schedule a FREE one hour
consultation to discussion your current business
situation and how SOA could be of benefit.
 Understanding the Value of
Service-Oriented Architecture to
Maximize Business Results
Table of Contents
Executive Summary 4
1.0 What is Service-Oriented Architecture? 5
1.1 SOA is NOT a Software Package. 6
2.0 SOA is a Strategy 6
2.1 Strategic Enabler 7
2.1 Connectivity: Every Technology Product 7
2.2 SOA Allows Selection of Best of Breed Solutions 8
2.3 SOA IT Governance: Standardization v. Customization 8
3.0 SOA Creates Integrated Cost-Efficiency 9
3.1 SOA vs. Not SOA 9
3.2 SOA Value-Add 10
4.0 Web 2.0 Increased the Importance of SOA 10
4.1 Increased Technology Product Implementation 11
4.2 Increased Capturing of Customer Data Online 11
4.3 Evolution of Technology: Disparate Systems and Repetitive Data 12
5.0 Conclusion 13
About Oshyn 14
About Shawn Simon 14
About Kimberly McCabe 14
 Executive Summary
Globalization. Fast changing technologies. Emerging markets. These are just a
few of the pressures facing today's organizations. Wouldn’t it be nice if your
organization was prepared to adapt to these sometimes unpredictable
business risks? In a recent project, Oshyn integrated 32 systems and created
several new applications for one client to greatly improve their AGILITY. The
client was facing increased competition and rapidly changing expectations
from clients. They were facing the many business risks which grew from an ad
hoc approach to business process management and Information Systems.
The process of wholly integrating the enterprise began by developing a
concise end-to-end understanding of the numerous business needs,
limitations and opportunities. By combining the knowledge and expertise of
business users and business managers, Oshyn mapped an integration plan
that created a dynamic business organization while drastically reducing costs
and minimizing future business risks.
By the end of this whitepaper you will have an understanding as to why
Service Oriented Architecture is important to the future development of your
business IT systems, how to use the data you capture more efficiently, and
how to develop a more flexible technology environment for your organization.
 1.0 What is Service-Oriented Architecture?
The opposite of Service-Oriented Architecture is one where the architecture is
built around the individual system or application, and is therefore by definition
centered around that single entity. It is not integrated and lives in a silo. It is
only integrated into the "architecture" which is the backbone of your
company's IT systems. Any application or software that you have can be
defined as a "service". So what are services? In technology speak; services
are software systems that interact with other systems across a network. Most
software today can be integrated in some way with other systems. By
grouping many systems or applications together as "services", a catalog of
options, features and functionality is created to maximize the utility of each
system or application. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) literally means that
the architecture is positioned around the services.
If you Google ‘‘SOA’’ or ‘‘Service-Oriented Architecture’’ you will quickly find
that some companies focus on selling certain aspects of SOA: governance,
software suites, Business Process Management (BPM) --- good SOA is all of
these. Business people should understand SOA so that they can understand
how to get maximum efficiency and utilization from technology to deliver better
results.
If you have ever been involved with the purchase of enterprise software or a
major systems upgrade in an organization, you could probably share a few war
stories. The integration process was often long, complicated, and particularly
frustrating for the non-technology business users. They couldn’t understand
why it was not feasible, according to their IT department, to purchase XYZ
software when it appeared to provide the best functionality for the best price.
Before SOA, companies tried to find ways to integrate their new software with
legacy systems, by building connections. They often found difficulties in
transitioning to newer systems because of the complexity of legacy systems. If
you remember Apollo 13 and the convoluted contraption which was the
‘‘solution’’ to getting Apollo 13 home --- integration was kind of like that, taking
inventory of available parts to find a solution --- no matter how difficult to
construct, deconstruct or replicate.
These complexities meant that the costs to upgrade were prohibitive --- but not
updating technology could be a business threat. You could say that the rapid
advancement in technology posed many problems to organizations trying to
keep technology costs under control, while being able to modernize their
technology for competitive business advantages.
In this whitepaper, we’ll look at some of the key components to how a
business can use SOA to build more efficient systems that will ultimately better
position the organization for better returns on technology investments, by
allowing you to leverage your previous investments and plan for more efficient
usage of IT services.
 1.1 SOA is NOT a Software Package.
SOA is not something that can be bought ‘‘off the shelf’’. There are many off-
the-shelf products to improve the SOA integration process. However, SOA
begins with planning or defining which services or how services will be defined
or captured from within a larger system. For example, a customer marketing
engine could be used on the Web to better target products relevant to the
consumer’s profile. And that same engine could be leveraged by the CRM
used in the call center to better up-sell and cross-sell or even auto-pitch while
on the IVR. Why not modularize your email marketing campaign now to take
advantage of the engine to ensure higher responses from mass mailings? Then
all the customer’s touch points would share the same engine for a more
unified and consistent experience --- and if you decide to update the rules, you
change it only once.
Thus the integration of a SOA software alone will NOT guarantee a more
powerful IT system. However, the selection and proper integration of a SOA
based platform could be essential to a successful SOA implementation.

2.0 SOA is a Strategy

SOA is a strategy to best capitalize on your IT infrastructure by understanding
the nature of your organization's needs, current availability, future
requirements, and the ability to constantly make changes as needed.
Understanding the nature of connectivity in your business will lead to better
planning, capturing and utilization of data, improved ability to select desired
software solutions, etc. An important aspect of a SOA strategy is to have a
roadmap and an IT governance vision understood by management in technical
and non-technical positions.
When reading beyond this paper you might come across articles or blogs
which argue that SOA does not make an organization more agile or that it
further complicates the IT structure. What these voices are really arguing is
that, as with any process, improper execution or design can lead to
unexpected or unintended results that fail to meet the objective. SOA does
work when properly executed.
Typically, when we envision software and the solutions they are positioned to
satisfy a specific need in a niche within the enterprise. From marketing and
sales to IT, from operations to quality assurance, each has its own problems
and therefore its own unique solution, and technology vendors are quick to
offer promises to all. By understanding SOA each department can strategically
take an inventory of the problems they have and what the current systems
provide. They can plot out the redundancies and missing components. They
can look within the rest of the organization to see if the solution exists in other
IT assets or they can build new applications that capture information from
multiple services in the IT framework. Again, by understanding SOA, business
can understand how to maximize the utility of software purchases and existing