Chapter 12. The Organizational SOA Roadmap

This chapter describes the organizational aspects of introducing an SOA on the enterprise level. We take a close look at the political aspects of SOAs, such as the obstacles that block their successful adoption in an enterprise, and strategies and tactics to overcome these obstacles. Because every enterprise is unique, there is no universal guide to cover all eventualities in the course of an SOA introduction. However, certain patterns have emerged that are sufficiently widespread for us to discuss on a generic level. This chapter discusses these patterns and illustrates them with real-world examples of successful and unsuccessful attempts to establish enterprise-wide standards.

It should be noted that much of this chapter's content is not SOA-specific but concerns the general challenge of introducing new methodologies, or processes, at the enterprise level. The presentation in this chapter will, therefore, oscillate between SOA-specific aspects and generic aspects.

We start by providing a generic overview of the main stakeholders involved in managing an organization's IT infrastructure in Section 12.1. Because these stakeholders are relevant for all aspects of an IT strategy, they are also the main actors involved in the introduction of an SOA. Consequently, Section 12.2 looks at the role that each of the different stakeholders plays in the implementation of the roadmap to the service-enabled enterprise. We discuss pillars for success in Section 12.3. Later, in Section 12.4, we describe an ideal world for the introduction of an SOA, while in Section 12.5, we provide some real-world examples of the introduction of SOAsdemonstrating both success and failure. In Section 12.6, we conclude with a series of recommendations for introducing an SOA into the enterprise.