White paper - A Social Oriented Architecture (SOA)

www.encanvas.com

A SOCIAL ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE

JUNE 2009

WHITE PAPER

2 © 2009 Encanvas Inc.

ENCANVAS WHITE PAPER | A Social Oriented Architecture

Contents

OVERVIEW ................................................................................................................................. 3

FROM SOA TO ‘SOA’ ............................................................................................................. 5

ARCHITECTURAL LAYERS .................................................................................................... 5

EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES ............................................................................................... 9

BUILDING BLOCKS ............................................................................................................... 12

FOCUSING ON ‘IT DESIGN’ WITHOUT ‘ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN’ ............... 20

STATES OF SOA IMPLEMENTATION ............................................................................. 21

THE JOURNEY ........................................................................................................................ 22

OBSERVATIONS .................................................................................................................... 25



OVERVIEW

In the face of near-constant changes to market conditions, the design of

the enterprise is itself changing. Today, business agility - the ability to

adapt to market conditions - is recognized as an important competitive

differentiator. But hampering business agility, and therefore growth, is

the ability of information systems to adapt in line with organizational

information demands.

Enterprise information management systems represent huge investments by

companies to optimize their business processes and leverage their corporate

information assets. They take a long time to get right, and they’re not so easy

to change.

For business managers, exploiting the knowledge they’ve already acquired is

hampered by the complexity of IT systems architectures made up of many

disparate data repositories originally designed to serve operating silos and

peculiar business processes. And providing knowledge workers with the new

applications needed to respond to the business situations they face is inhibited

not just by corporate capacity but by the high cost of change and the need to

repeatedly invest in shrink-wrapped software or fund high-risk software

developments.

The consequence on businesses is that talented managers lack the insights

and optimized processes they need to adapt and respond to new market

situations, opportunities and competitive threats.



One approach to creating so-called AGILE IT is to adopt a services-oriented

architecture.

The underlying ethos of this approach is to enable ‘information consumers’ to

serve themselves with the new applications and views of information they

demand through composite applications to harvest pre-structured data feeds

from disparate back-office systems and public sources. The holy grail is to

completely remove the frictional cost of transforming IT systems and one of

the major ingredients to make this possible is to remove the complexity (and

therefore IT skills) required of today’s business analysts and software

applications developers.

But the focus of attention towards serving of data can disguise the real

purpose and rewards of doing so. It doesn’t answer the questions ‘Serve who?

And Why?’

This paper argues that the orientation of business information systems design

should be on the creation, support and nurturing of social communities where

people can consume applications and information on their own terms; acting

within a secure and live environment. It calls on business and IT leaders is to

acknowledge the pivotal role that communities play in organizations and the

criticality of producing information systems engineered to create, support and

nurture a socially oriented ‘secure and live’ online working environment - not

for philanthropic or reasons of experimental curiosity - but for clearly defined

business reasons that have a solid ROI.

ABOUT THIS DOCUMENT

This document is intended for business and IT leaders and provides an

overview of the ‘must-do-wells’ and critical success factors surrounding the

move from traditional enterprise IT platforms to a modern Social Oriented

Architecture.



FROM SOA TO ‘SOA’

Socially Oriented Architecture (SOA) defines the use of information services to support

business requirements. As such SOA utilizes a combination of existing and new

enabling technologies. A “service” may encapsulate an entire business process, or

embody one or more aspects of an existing business process. XML-based Web

Services are a popular way to expose these services within and across enterprises, but

are by no means the only way to realize an SOA vision.

Thought leaders of SOA see it not as yet another technology hype-curve, but as a

fundamental shift in the persona of enterprise information management architecture

away from a state where all data is ‘owned’ by the enterprise - and IT professionals are

responsible for the security, provisioning and management of all data consumed by

the enterprise - to a state where information workers, as consumers of ‘information

services’, are provided with the tools and competencies to serve themselves with the

information that matters most to them through systems shaped by themselves for

their own purposes operating within a regimented corporate computing environment

protecting the best interests of the enterprise.

Seen through this broader definition, SOA is not a move from one enterprise

computing architecture to another, but the definitive technology enabler to transition

organizational design from an inflexible top-down command and control system to

something more agile and innovative. For this reason, SOA is progressively reaching

into the boardroom as a key competitive differentiator; pulling through in its wake

new innovations in IT that include cloud computing, business social networking,

enterprise mashups, business intelligence and master data management.

ARCHITECTURAL LAYERS

The principle building blocks and technologies of a Socially Oriented Architecture fall

into four main architectural layers. These are:

Data management (the ‘data’ layer)

Orchestration and administration of services (the ‘orchestration’ layer)

Portals and user interface (the ‘consumer’ layer)

Platform and security (the ‘platform governance’ layer)

Under each segment the author summarizes associated technologies and services

described in more detail in the next section.

1. Data management

Organizations grow their data structures in a haphazard way; progressively acquiring

isolated software applications to serve specific business processes. The result is a

cacophony of disparate data silos with self-serving data structures. These isolated



systems will contain data items that exist in other systems – such as account or

customer names and addresses – to be re-keyed into multiple databases because

systems are expected to operate in isolation of other systems.

In the 20th century, a prescribed solution to this problem was to build an enterprise-

wide system that presented a single version of the truth; what became popularly

known as enterprise resource planning systems. The excessive cost of customizing

these mammoth IT systems meant that homemade ‘quick-fix’ and ‘bridging’

applications would soon be needed around these monolithic systems to serve

changing business needs until they weren’t presenting a ‘single version of the truth’

any more.

An evolving information working environment is demanding new thinking in

approaches to enterprise data management:

The source of data is changing. Up to 60% of business critical data is thought to exist

on the hard drives and in the heads of workers. And information workers today want

to access other data that falls beyond the limits of core systems in a digital world

where more information is available outside of the enterprise than within it – not just

available public data services accessible over the web but also partner sites, the social

networking sites that customers, colleagues and professional bodies use, third party

list brokers, expert knowledge and information service providers such as Hoovers,

research and analyst firms such as IDC and Gartner. Harvesting all of this knowledge

and combining it safely with corporate data has the potential to transform the

workplace. Nevertheless the road to achieving value from this new data rich

environment presents entirely new challenges to IT leaders.

Most workers today are computer literature and accustomed to serving themselves

with information from consumer sites. They also expect to be able to leverage their

social networks at work while information services (like Google search) are trusted

more by information workers than corporate systems to find the insights they need.

To achieve their role objectives, many information workers need to access resources

outside of their organization – such as online services (like online contact information

sources, image libraries, websites of professional bodies, support websites etc).

The idea of a single internally managed system to serve business information needs –

the panacea vision of many IT leaders in the 20th century – is regarded today as a 20th

century perspective.



Technologies to consider:

Relational Database Management

Extract Transform and Load (ETL)

Data Interrogation and Data Quality Analysis

Transformational services and competencies:

Master data management design

Data cleansing and transformation

2. Designing, orchestrating and administering services

Web Services is a term used to describe data flows usually formed by transforming

hybrid data structures into a common Web Services Description Language (WSDL)

format. This is a file format based loosely around XML. While there are a number of

tools and templates for creating Web Services, the bigger challenge is to appreciate

what data items consuming applications are likely to require. It’s actually been possible

to acquire data from a mix of computer systems and file formats for several years now

using Open Database Compliant (ODBC) connectors and middleware tools that

provide feeds of XML and .CSV file formats from disparate systems but the issues IT

leaders have faced using these traditional methods come in two forms:

1. Knowing how data is structured and what data exists

A great many computer systems are so old, or the information about them so

coveted by their suppliers, that IT leaders are unable to know what data or data

structures exist until they scratch the surface on a new project.

2. Managing the demand of future data consumption traffic on core systems

With the potential of hundreds, maybe thousands, of new requests to consume

information from core back-office systems, IT leaders face the risk that information

consumers will make so many database queries that the performance of the

response platform becomes unsustainably poor.


Cloud service and administration platform

SOA library management


Pre-templated Web Services (sometimes available for specific systems or

industries)



3. Portals and user interface

The web browser has become the defacto user interface of choice. In previous years,

the programmatic limitations of the Hypertext Modelling Language (HTML) used by

browsers to present pages of information meant that the possibilities of UI design

were constrained, but with recent advances in data interchange technologies such as

XML and AJAX, it is now possible for Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) to serve user

experiences to Web portals that rival installed desktop software. Use of portals as the

user interface for business applications as part of a client-server architecture has many

advantages for organizations:

Installation of software applications is removed.

Applications can be viewed on any device with a browser – mobile phone or

device, PC, laptop, games console or television!

More robust and easier to manage security frameworks can be installed that

reduces the risk of data loss including the removed risk of computers being

physically stolen.

Data archival and backup procedures are easier to maintain.

Deploying applications on Web Server platforms that present applications to

users via Web browsers makes it possible to remove the overheads of

operating hosting platforms.

Traditional enterprise portal architectures were modelled on a legacy idea of ‘IT stacks’

built by expert computer professionals. The advent of socially oriented computing

means that new adaptive Rich Internet Applications born out of innovations in web

technology platforms (so called ‘Web 2.0’ technologies) are now making their way

progressively into organizations.


Enterprise mashups portal/composite applications and BPM platform

Social operating system

Business intelligence

Geo-spatial mapping


Iterative applications design and re-engineering

Systems integration

AppStore design and deployment



4. Platform and security

SOA harnesses a series of by now well-understood methods, processes and

technologies into a coherent information management architecture for the enterprise.

Whilst the solution is not a ‘black-box’ that an organization can simply procure and

install, it is a finite technology structure. For business enterprises, this platform must be

able to meet stringent business continuity, security and governance expectations in

order for it to be considered.


Web Portal architecture


Platform deployment

Integrating with existing access control systems and Single Sign On

Establishing a data governance regime

EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

Four technologies are set to make a huge impact on the possibilities of socially-

oriented computing:

Data Quality Management Software

Software tools like Datanomic are presenting affordable ways for companies to first

make sense of their data structures and secondly to cleanse data through powerful

normalization algorithms that take much of the drudgery out of organizing content in

readiness for services-oriented computing.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is an emerging computing model by which users can gain access to

their preferred portfolio of information services from anywhere, through any

connected device that uses an Internet browser. The term cloud is used as a metaphor

for the Internet to suggest a ‘digital cloud’ that’s everywhere that can provide

information services to web-connected users who are able to access their information

resources from anywhere at any time of the day. One third of all new IT investment will

go on cloud-based technologies by 2013’ – so says IT market analysts IDC.

The three main categories of cloud computing technology are:

1. The virtualized hardware and operating systems platforms

2. Platform administration services

3. Application design and deployment services



These enormous virtualization platforms are so vast that only the very largest

computer vendors are able to compete in this market, running countless server farms

the size of aircraft hangers in multiple locations around the world to provide localized

data management services, backup and redundancy. As might be expected the same

familiar list of vendors also provide platform administration services (i.e. the

technology to operate the core platforms and enable customers to upload their

platform applications, manage their server utilization and data storage etc.). Buyers

gain more variety and choice when it comes to applications design and deployment

services with many of the Enterprise Mashup Portal platforms now supporting

modules to design and deploy applications from the desktop without requiring

additional tools for orchestration or content management.

The technology of cloud computing is set to have a major impact on business because

it enables the complete outsourcing of the hardware, operating systems and data

storage platforms required to support business applications. This lessens the need for

businesses to invest in IT infrastructure, employ their own IT support staff and means

they can cut energy usage. Key vendors in cloud computing include IBM, Amazon,

Microsoft, Oracle (who recently acquired Sun Microsystems) and Google.

Enterprise Mashup Portals (that produce ‘composite’ situational applications)

This new genre of software gives business people the tools they need to develop new

insights and act on new business opportunities without depending on IT professionals

to deliver all of their information needs. Mashups bring together existing information

services and then provide design tools to enable non-technical authors to build new

applications and views. Most early mashup software applications were simple Web

applications designed for stand-alone use, but the next generation enterprise mashup

portals represent a fundamental new ‘information consumption’ technology layer in

enterprise information management engineered to produce new portals and

applications time and again without technical complexity. The ease of use matched

with functional completeness of these new Enterprise Mashup Portal Platforms means

they have the potential to displace the role of traditional enterprise content

management and portal suites businesses use today. Key vendors in this space include

Encanvas, Serena, Interneer and JackBe.

Social Operating Systems

A social operating system provides systematic management and facilitation of human

relationships and interactions. The most well known example of a fledgling social

operating system is Facebook. Increasingly people of all ages around the world are

using platforms like Facebook to connect to friends, colleagues and business prospects

to forge relationships. Having established relationship ties, users can exploit the rich



features of these platforms to share knowledge, participate in special interest groups

and store their rich media files and documents.

Key capabilities of social operating systems are outlined in the diagram below.

We’ve yet to reach the stage in technology development where social operating

systems are fully complete but vendors like Apple, Facebook, Google, Encanvas, Jive,

Cisco and IBM are busy building their platforms to make social operating systems

deliver all of the functionality users want from their workspace in a single place. Your

SOS portal is likely to be the ‘place where you go to work’ in future. This technology is

maturing fast:

Google is able to offer a pretty complete suite of services that includes online versions

of the desktop tools people use today (word processors, spreadsheets etc.), news-

services, file and knowledge management tools, live-web chat, mapping and

collaboration tools. In 2009, Google started to expose its new Google Wave

communications technology for live communications and collaboration on the Web;

the technology earmarked to replace email. Google is busy creating an operating

systems environment that provides easy to use developer tools so that third party

developers have more possibilities to harness their platform.



Facebook is the No.1 social networking site and is currently working on its meta-

tagging of video and rich content so that it becomes much easier for people to

manage and share their files. They have a rapidly growing AppStore of third party

applications.

Encanvas is the youngest of the companies in this space but its Integrated Software

Platform provides a uniquely scalable portal architecture to grow innovation using

structured building blocks without the traditional challenges of platform version

control, security and custom programming that its rivals suffer from. The pace at which

Encanvas can bring on new innovations is therefore impressive and in just 18-months

the company has developed mashups, mapping, business intelligence and forms

capture design capabilities that give it credentials as one of the most technically

complete services-oriented technology platforms. In 2010 the company launches its

rival to Google Wave (Encanvas Squork) and a new portfolio of data visualization

design elements.

BUILDING BLOCKS

Overview

The illustration below provides a simplistic overview of a Socially Oriented Architecture

presenting the main architectural layers and technology componentry.

Each component is described in more detail in this section presented in reverse order

to the diagram (i.e. starting from the data platform outwards).

•Web Portal Architecture (includes security framework and data

governance)

Platform Governance Layer

•Social operating system

•Enterprise mashups/composite applications and BPM platform

•Business intelligence

•Geo-spatial mapping

Consumer Layer

•Cloud services and administration platform

•SOA library management services

Orchestration Layer

•Data interrogation and data quality analysis

•Extract, Transform & Load

•Relational Database Management

Data Layer



Technology

The technology building blocks of SOA are:

Relational database management

Extract transform and load (ETL)

Data interrogation and data quality analysis


Enterprise mashups/composite applications and BPM platform



Geo-spatial mapping

Web portal architecture

Cloud services and administration platform

Relational Database Management

The foundation of SOA is a well-organized data model that can only be achieved

through the use of relational databases that describe the relationships between items

of data and organize data in such as way that relationships between data items can be

exposed. There are a wide variety of relational database products available today

(some are free or Open Source) but it makes sense to standardize on one. Porting

from one relational database system to another is not an insignificant challenge – and

most cloud computing platforms will prescribe the relational database platforms

they’re able to support. Without an open industry standard database format, selection

of a relational database management system is an important decision for

organizations of any size.

Extract Transform and Load (ETL)

The process of moving data out of one data source into another is complicated by the

variety of data formats and structures in play. It is also complicated by impurities in the

quality of data (data quality remains one of the most common reasons for project

failure). Another technical challenge emerges when transformations need to be

applied to data to get it into the right format, or when formulas or conditions need to

be applied prior to moving the data (such as currency changes, situations when data

fields need to be aggregated or accrued over a period). To assist IT professionals in

solving these issues, Extract, Transform and Load software tools have been developed

that automate transitions and cleanse data as it is moved from one data structure to

another. ETL tools play a key role in SOA transformation projects.



Data Interrogation and Data Quality Analysis

Software tools exist today that enable the interrogation of data to expose the data

assets and relationship ties that exist. This enables IT professionals to gain an

appreciation of third party or legacy systems where knowledge of structures and

understanding of the quality of data is weak. Having understood the weaknesses in

data quality, some of the more sophisticated data analysis tools will offer cleansing

and normalization tools (similar to ETL products) that facilitate data transformations

and the creation of Web Services.


Creating individual Web Services is one thing but encouraging the re-use of services is

another. There are a number of ways to achieve the goal of re-use of services but the

decision whether to build applications or information services first is a chicken and egg

argument (i.e. one has no value without the other). SOA libraries provide the glue that

bind users to the information services available to them. Dependent on the privileges

of the user, the level of accessibility to information services may need to vary. There

are only a few ‘shrink-wrapped’ SOA library tools, though more are now emerging

through demand for simpler creation and administration of web services.

Enterprise mashups portals/composite applications and BPM platform

Enterprise mashup portal software is Rich Internet Applications (RIA) design,

deployment and run-time platforms purpose-built to mashup and ‘consume’ web

services. It gives users the ability to create their own composite applications that

combine web services to produce new views of information and better ways of

working with it (some platforms include capabilities to capture data too). More

popular tools make it easy for non-technical people to build and deploy their

applications; though the presumption in most cases is that IT will continue to manage

the administration and governance of platforms. Enterprise Mashups software is set to

supersede traditional enterprise portal platforms because it enables users and user

groups to fashion their own personalized portals in response to new business

situations unlike existing technologies that require IT assistance at every stage of the

applications life-cycle (The other likely possibility is that current enterprise portal

platforms will morph to embrace the qualities of mashup platforms).


Social operating systems lever Rich Internet Applications Web 2.0 technology

platforms to provide a computing environment where people can grow and support

their social interactions on the Web. Once a consumer-oriented activity, social

networking has become business-centric over recent years and is set to grow in



popularity as organizations begin to realize the business benefits of harnessing talent

and social relationship ties within and beyond their enterprise. SOS’s take the form of a

live online collaborative space where people can profile themselves and their interests,

contact friends, colleagues (people known to them). Then users lever a mixed bag of

Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, web-chat, blogs, crowd-sourcing tools, AppStores, content

management and document sharing tools etc. to fashion an engaging workspace to

facilitate data access, data transfer, communications, document sharing etc. via an

online browser.

Unlike traditional enterprise portals, the emphasis of social operating systems is on the

individualism and interests of the user. Every aspect of the information management

architecture is geared towards bringing value to the information consumer. For

businesses, this change in systems ideology also comes from the learning lessons of

attempts to implement enterprise knowledge management systems over the past 20

years; the recognition that deployments are only successful when IT brings value to the

individual first and the organization second.


The scope of business intelligence technologies has changed over time. Once a

mechanism to drill-down through known data sets and create new data views to

produce reports, dashboards and graphical perspectives of insights, business

intelligence software has also become more of a self-service component in enterprise

information management. Business intelligence today is more about gathering insights

to aid workers in seeking answers to new questions rather than providing evidence to

answer questions already well understood (most business applications today provide

quite suitable reporting tools today to support this need).

In an information consumer-centric world, users across the enterprise expect the

ability to serve themselves with insights, tapping into pockets of data held across the

enterprise and enriching it with a broader portfolio of resources from known third

parties and public sources. Instead of being served-up pre-defined views of data they

expect to enjoy more versatile analysis and enquiry tools that give them the ability to

build ‘personalized views’ and create their own ‘what if’ scenarios.

The delivery of insights has been broadened to wider communities of individuals

beyond the borders of the enterprise as partners and customers expect to be able to

share insights in their secure workspace environments. Rather than being seen as a

discrete process, it has become an attribute of modern workspace portals and SOA

oriented data mashup technologies are proving useful in this area to provide the self-

service, federated views that people want.



Geo-spatial mapping

Organizations have come to realize the business benefits of being able to capture,

analyze and view corporate information assets on maps. Whether the subject is the

location of customers, assets, events, resources or real estate, having the ability to

make sense and organize insights through map views now performs a key role in

enterprise information management. Once considered almost a black art, enterprise

mashup technologies have made geo-spatial technologies accessible to all, without

requiring specialist competencies in computing or geo-spatial intelligence. Enterprise

mashup platforms like Encanvas treat geo-spatial data assets and mapping resources

like any other data item and release organizations from the need to procure specialist

talent and software simply to capture, analyze and present data on maps.

Cloud services and administration platform

The ability to publish applications to third party hosted Web environments has

enormous potential to reduce the cost of IT to both large and small organizations.

Cloud computing describes the latest genre of hosted technology platforms that

enable processor power, memory and infrastructure to be shared (i.e. the co-

habitation of a server environment by multiple clients at the same time) where the

ability to scale and grow resources to serve peaks and troughs of demand is well

catered for by the technology architecture. For organizations seeking to deploy their

business applications to a virtualized Web Server environment, the ability to design,

rapidly deploy and govern the operation of portal spaces becomes a key priority.

Enterprise Mashup Portal Platforms like Encanvas simplify these processes by

providing a single, integrated technology architecture that supports all stages of this

life-cycle (through to on-going operational management of cloud deployed

applications) without requiring deep technical competencies or use of a myriad of

third party software tools.

Web portal architecture

The demands placed on the technical architecture of Web Portal architectures used for

business are complex and demand an enormous investment in development. For this

reason only a small number of enterprise portal platforms exist that can discharge the

full gamut of technical capabilities. An even of these platforms can offer Web 2.0

features such as enterprise mashups and social operating systems capabilities

demanded of a modern ‘consumer-centric’ services-oriented architecture. Key

capability areas include:



Scalability

It’s critical that enterprise-computing platforms have the ability to scale to meet

changing business needs for information. Traditional approaches to enterprise

computing have focused on acquiring shrink-wrapped software to serve every key

business process or line-of-business area and this complexity has created growth

inflexibility. Services-oriented architectures create more commonality in the platform

components used to design, deploy and operate business applications and when

properly architected, this formalization of platform components provides the ability for

IT systems to scale. Enterprise Portal Platforms must demonstrate their ability to

support massively scaling portal architectures for the establishment of hundreds if not

thousands of unique user and group portals, many of which, in future, are likely to be

designed and deployed by users themselves.

Version control

Managing versions of software platforms is a major headache for both software

vendors and buyers. The traditional approach to introducing new features in a

software platform has been to gather up a series of new feature requests and supply a

new version level to all customers. New enterprise mashup portal platforms remove

this restriction on both supplier and user by providing a ‘toolkit’ to enable

organizations to produce as many different mashup portals and applications as they

like based on a common architecture – so it is the building blocks used to develop

applications become common rather than the higher level presentation of forms,

structures of databases etc.

Security

As a topic, security covers the protection of an enterprise computing environment and

the business critical processes it serves. The business requirement to extend networks

and processes beyond the traditional boundaries of the enterprise (and therefore over

the Firewall) means that concepts of security good practice have moved away from

protecting the silos of data, to protecting corporate systems and data assets by

guarding access to web spaces and the data they consume. Therefore, SOA is in the

front-line of corporate security. Security professionals are now thinking in terms of

‘inclusive security’ (i.e. Managing the components of a security model – the users and

their privileges, messages transferred, items of data etc.) rather than some form of

impenetrable security outer shell for the enterprise.

Key areas of security provisioning include:

User Identity Management and Access Control

Knowing who users are and setting access privileges.



Data governance and security

Establishing a distributed ownership and accountability for the protection of

data that extends beyond the IT department and providing tools for data risk

assessment.

Systems and networks security

Ensuring the Web Portal platform architecture used is protecting systems,

networks and data from external attack.

Message transport security

Preventing messages and transferred files from being intercepted.

Document-level security and rights management

Securing the confidentiality and retaining the intellectual property of files

being shared (and through their onward journey if distributed by third parties).

Transformational Services

The transformational services of SOA are:



Pre-templated Web Services (sometimes available for specific systems or

industries)


Systems integration

AppStore design and deployment

Platform deployment

Integrating with existing access control systems and Single Sign On (SSO)



Master Data Management describes a framework for organizing data so that every

associated data component is held only once (and its most appropriate location) in the

data model. For example, any data associated with members of staff should perhaps

exist in a ‘People’ database while any data associated with Customers appears in a

‘Customer’ database. Why is this important? Well, by way of example, it’s not

uncommon to find data about members of staff to appear in data tables found in

email, HR, project management, workforce management, calendar management,

document management, CRM, social networking and home-grown systems and

spreadsheets. The consequences of this dispersed data structure are:

The organization is unable to realize the full knowledge it holds on its people.



Members of staff spend too much time keying data into computers that they

already hold elsewhere in the data architecture.

The organization lacks a single-version of the truth that can cause different

(potentially false or inaccurate) views of its people to exist.

For services-oriented computing to function correctly it’s important that a

master data management approach is applied to data modelling in order to

prevent information consumers from obtaining conflicting views of data and

drawing the wrong conclusions from them.


Sometimes seen to be the lowest level of the IT food chain, getting data quality right

can involve a great deal of effort to produce a result business stakeholders already

assumed was in place! But (honoring the ‘garbage in, garbage out adage’, failing to

solve data quality issues early in an IT project can easily result in its failure. Fortunately

there are specialist service providers and toolkits available today to minimize the cost

of transforming, cleansing and normalizing data.

Pre-templated Web Services (sometimes available for specific systems or industries)

For some industries and business processes, experience in previous SOA projects mean

that vendors are able to supply off-the-shelf Web Services templates (sometimes

entire libraries). Whilst it’s unlikely these solutions will solve every business need, they

can be used to cut the cost of implementations and provide a start-point for service

provisioning.


Gone are the days when software needed to be created by large teams adopting a

waterfall project management model. Today’s agile development tools mean that Web

Services can be designed as part of iterative software development projects that

enable business and IT people to work together in a workshop environment to shape

right-first-time information management solutions. Using products like Encanvas that

show on-screen WYSIWYG results and that remove coding or scripting competencies,

it becomes easier to embed skilled business analysts (with the ability to build SOA

solutions) into process improvement teams.

Systems integration

The enterprise mashup capabilities of modern SOA systems mean that acquiring data

held in different file formats and data sources is no longer as complicated as it used to

be. Still, Web Services perform a major role in enabling this consumer-centric

accessibility to corporate data and formalizing approaches to data source access.



Design and deployment of custom AppStores

Organizations today have the potential to create a library of mashup applications that

provide users with ready-to-use tools they can select for use in their workspaces in

much the same way that iPhone users do. A services-oriented approach encourages

the repeated use of applications and information sources through creative solutions

like self-service AppStores.

Platform deployment

Specifying platform requirements and managing the design and deployment of a Web

Portal hosting environment are services available now from IT services companies and

systems integrators. Suppliers of cloud computing platforms will also typically offer

tools and affiliates able to assist in creating a suitable hosting platform. Platforms like

Encanvas fully manage the deployment and orchestration of portal sites on both cloud

and in-premises hosted platforms and require very little IT skills or resources to

commission.

Integrating with existing Access Control systems and Single Sign On

For organizations already operating a directory of users, it’s possible to integrate these

existing user identity management systems with new enterprise mashup portal

platforms. The most common system used by companies today is Active Directory

(recommended by Microsoft). New service-oriented portal platforms can also integrate

via Single-Sign-On so users need only login once to their Intranet or Extranet portal

platform.


In most organizations today it’s assumed that the IT department is the watchdog of

the enterprise and is responsible for data security. The move towards self-service

computing is placing more pressure on line of business areas to take more

accountability for the security of data related to their business disciplines. For this

reason, some modern enterprise mashup portal platforms like Encanvas provide

administrative cockpits to enable line of business managers to govern the exposure of

their data to Web Service libraries and require designers to specifically request for

permission to access data (which is logged). They also provide data visualization tools

to make sense of large volumes of data usage traffic and expose potential areas of risk

through usage behaviors.

FOCUSING ON ‘IT DESIGN’ WITHOUT ‘ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN’

It’s a big mistake to attempt to design and deploy a services-oriented computing

approach without a parallel project geared at re-engineering organizational behaviors.

Whilst social operating systems themselves can change the attitudes and behaviors of

staff, it’s unusual for a change in management approach to happen by itself.



Technology can be a great enabler but unless managers across the enterprise

encourage a culture of curiosity, the advantages of SOA as a competitive differentiator

are likely to be consumed by departmental politics and people who show highly

charged negativity towards ‘change’.

STATES OF SOA IMPLEMENTATION

Whilst many organizations are well on the way to building a socially oriented

architecture (although they may not be fully aware of the fact), others have yet to start.

Of those that have made the first tentative steps into transforming their information

worker environment, some continue to employ traditional ‘IT stack’ portal and content

management technologies and have yet to make the transformation to consumer

centric ‘Web 2.0’ technology platforms (the broad term used to describe Enterprise

Mashups, Composite Applications, Agile Business Intelligence and Social Operating

Systems).

The key states of SOA implementation are illustrated below.

Accepting the business case for SOA

Organizations coming to terms with enterprise agility

challenges and the need for services-oriented computing

(readiness assessment)

Requirements analysis and definition

Detailed analysis of business needs and technology challenges

Partner selection

Choosing the best-fit project support and technology partners

Implementation and rollout

Implementation of web services and composite applications.

Formation of MDM architecture, Web Services library and

AppsStore

Technology selection

Agreeing on the technology strategy for enterprise (mashup)

portals and enterprise social operating system



THE JOURNEY

The roadmap for implementing a socially oriented architecture will depend largely on

the activities of organization, the degree of knowledge working that takes place and

the extent to which information needs to be accessed and re-used but a typical

example is described below (based on deployment examples in financial services,

government and the transport industry).

ACCEPTING THE BUSINESS CASE FOR SOCIALLY ORIENTED COMPUTING

Work out if you need SOA

Although it’s highly likely that a socially oriented architecture is the way forward, just

because your organization wants to harness its information assets isn’t a reason to

invest millions in SOA. Modern enterprise mashup platforms are capable of acquiring

and serving information assets from back-systems with or without Web Services. But if

your organization relies on the knowledge, creativity and innovation of its people and

you’re organization has silos of data held in back-office systems then SOA is probably

for you.

REQUIREMENTS ANALYSIS AND DEFINITION

Scrutinize what processes really matter and where information systems underperform

It sounds almost too obvious to be worthy of stating but SOA projects that start with a

clear view of targeted business outcomes and the potential impact of the process

improvements they’re expected to influence are more likely to succeed. Many SOA

projects start with an IT focus and remain solidly bound to the Technology

department. Creating a clear picture of the quick-wins and opportunities of SOA

demands that SOA projects start through discussions with line of business

stakeholders and senior managers committed to developing better ways of working.

Model your architecture

Fail to plan, plan to fail. Whilst much of the technical development of services-oriented

solutions demands an iterative applications development approach, a well thought out

master data management roadmap is essential to the success of SOA projects.

Identify the first projects and quick-wins

Any readiness assessment exercise should identify the most worthy and addressable

business processes that can be improved (and return cashable efficiency savings or

competitive advantage) through the implementation of a serviced-oriented approach.

Check for data quality

It’s a good idea to audit data quality at an early stage in the project and consider

enrichment possibilities.



PARTNER SELECTION

Systems integration and Web Service development

The key partner role is to steer the SOA transformation project. Sometimes, it is better

to have two partners engaged:

An existing systems integrator to manage data sourcing, data quality and

cleansing. This organization should possess a clear appreciation of the data

structures that exist and knowledge of how to create a Web Services library.

Ideally this organization should have access to templated Web Services

examples for the industry

An SOA practitioner with experience in creating Web Services and working

with enterprise mashup and social networking applications.

IMPLEMENTATION AND ROLLOUT

Get started on your first mashup applications (probably using ‘live feeds’)

It normally makes sense to start SOA projects by developing some quick-win solutions

with line-of-business managers. This not only achieves ‘buy-in’ with business

stakeholders but also rapidly proves the economic worth of SOA. To minimize the

complexity of projects, its better to start with automated uploads from core systems

rather than architecting web services immediately. This approach ensures that the data

requirements of the consuming applications are adequately served before a great deal

of effort is invested to source data in a more formal way.

Iterate, build and document the first set of applications

The design of applications using iterative applications development tools like

Encanvas, Cordys, Magic Software, Serena and JackBe dramatically reduces costs and

increases the likelihood of right-first-time systems but it doesn’t remove the necessity

for well documented help files and structured project management.

User Acceptance Testing (UAT) / tuning / iteration

The nature of iterative applications design is that innovation becomes more possible

(and is more affordable because ‘learning lessons’ are more easily resolved). Another

impact of iterative design is that expectations grow from stakeholders to build better

applications with richer functionality owning to the fact that they can realize the

potential impact ‘best-fit’ solutions can have on their business processes. This normally

means that first-cut systems will probably go through any number of iterations – but

this isn’t a problem as the time and cost involved in creating the best-fit solution is a

fraction of traditional custom applications development (or shrink wrapped software)

costs. Prior to final ‘go live’ on new applications, it may be appropriate to re-visit the



data architecture and integration to create more resilient data connectors and perhaps

build a ‘return loop’ to update or enrich back-office systems.

Agree the Master Data Management architecture

Probably as a parallel process to the design and deployment of applications, systems

architects will need to formulate a clearer view of the master data management

framework of the enterprise.

Go live on first projects

The first projects ‘go live’.

TECHNOLOGY SELECTION

Enterprise Mashup Portals / Composite Applications & BPM / Social Operating System

/ Agile Business Intelligence…

It may appear odd to be considering technology at this late stage in the

implementation! This is made possible by the number of software vendors prepared to

provide free software for evaluation periods which means the software used to

prototype and trial applications doesn’t have to be what the organization ends up

with.

Perhaps the most important strategic technology decision is which enterprise portal

platform and social operating system to run with. While many of the traditional players

in enterprise computing – IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, SAP –have portal offerings and are

likely to re-build their platform architectures to embrace socially oriented computing,

the new-kids from the Web 2.0 world with their social operating systems features such

as Apple, Google, Encanvas, Facebook, Jive and JackBe – are quickly establishing

themselves as aggressively priced technology providers well placed to create secure

and live online community spaces.

ASSESSMENT

The purpose of the assessment stage is to review performance of the project. For

example, has the project delivered on its targeted outcomes? Is the resulting

environment as good as it could be? Where has the project or the resulting

information management platform underperformed?

Prove the ROI and get the endorsements

It’s an important element of the ASSESSMENT phase to measure the business impact

of the first phase of projects. An aspect of ROI not to miss is the productivity

enablement of key workers made possible by the implementation of socially oriented

computing.



OBSERVATIONS

From deployments conducted to-date there is a mixed picture of the value SOA brings

to organizations and much has to do with interpretations of what ‘success’ looks like.

Some projects have become IT driven enterprise initiatives lacking suitable

sponsorship inside the business to give them clarity of purpose and direction, while

others have been driven by senior management teams and have seemingly

transformed business behaviors and results. The majority appear to fall somewhere

between.

The author draws out the following observations on critical success factors gathered

from published case study examples:

Achieving buy-in from business and technology stakeholders

Without buy-in and reinforcement of the project by senior members from both

business and technology communities there is a significant risk of under-performance,

if not outright failure. In addition, SOA implementations have the potential to cut

across “fiefdoms” which can translate into potential brick walls. Senior executives must

embrace the initiative to ensure its success.

Early appreciation of organizational culture bottlenecks

Successful implementations show the importance of a clear understanding of the

prevailing culture of the organization in which the implementation will reside. There

must be a quantification of the level of acceptance of change within the affected areas

of the organization.

Starting in the right place showing the rewards of SOA investments FAST

Often, SOA initiatives are driven by IT because IT leaders appreciate the potential

rewards for the organization they serve, yet the complexity of IT can disguise the

importance of getting the ‘difficult IT’ aspects of SOA right (such as correctly

architecting Web Services, factoring in data quality issues and investing time in a

Master Data Management architecture). Without qualified quick win target areas, the

focus of SOA projects can quickly inherit the label of ‘just another expensive

middleware project to mask over fundamental problems in our IT systems’. Investing

time in gaining agreement on which processes are sub-optimal and evidencing ‘how

much better they could be’ by using iterative development to create working systems

quickly is a clear risk mitigator.

Understanding how outcomes impact on business performance

SOA implementations require a detailed understanding of the early-stage business

processes targeted for improvement by the initiative. Understanding ‘what good looks



like’ of the impacted business processes is vital and can only come from the line of

business managers and systems users themselves. This is an area frequently “skimmed

over” that fails to receive the appropriate due diligence because the stakeholder

involvement and “mix” in the project is poorly scoped i.e. the business stakeholders are

not represented strongly within the initiative’s planning process.

Poor data quality

So many enterprise IT projects are set to fail before they begin because the data held

by the organization is of such a poor quality and therefore resulting systems are no

better than the systems that preceded them. In the case of SOA, an opportunity exists

to anticipate weaknesses in data quality and for IT leaders to quickly expose

deficiencies in data quality to line of business stakeholders so they are in a position to

‘own’ the problem themselves.

Having a vision of the end-game information management architecture

Without a vision of the end-game technology architecture, SOA projects can easily run

off the rails; delivering useful results at departmental and silo level yes but not

fundamentally transitioning IT to a new agile state. Inevitably leadership and courage

is needed in the technology discipline to propose a fundamental step change in the

way information is managed and IT systems are procured and deployed. It’s easy for IT

leaders to get trapped by a desire for change from the business without the necessary

funds or tools to achieve the vision the business wants. In such circumstances it’s still

possible to turn out a result by progressively working towards an end-game

architectural vision through careful selection of early stage ‘quick-win’ projects and

appropriately dexterous software tools.



Contact information

About the Author

Previously holding a series of Sales and Marketing Management and Directorship

positions in the European IT industry, in 2002 Ian Tomlin co-founded the International

Management Consultancy NDMC Ltd whose portfolio of clients includes some of the

world’s largest public and private sector organizations. With Nick Lawrie he co-

authored ‘Agilization’, a guide to regenerating competitiveness for Western World

companies. Ian Tomlin has authored several other business books and hundreds of

articles on business strategy, IT and organizational design including ‘Cloud Coffee

House’, a guide to the impact of cloud social networking on business and ‘Social

Operating Systems’, an exploration into the next generation of enterprise computing

platform.

About Encanvas

Encanvas® software makes the workplace work better. We bring added value to the

Microsoft® enterprise platform by creating the technologies organizations need to

spend less and receive more from their software investments. We’ve created the

world’s first Integrated Computer-Aided-Applications-Design (CAAD) Software

Platform. Our Secure&Live™ platform enables the near-real-time design, deployment

and operation of applications without coding in workshop environments all made

possible by a single tightly coupled architecture. It facilitates the massive scaling of

portal architectures; so users can communicate, share information and their

applications in real-time while operating in ‘secure spaces’ that protect systems, data,

identity and intellectual property.

Encanvas Inc.

2710 Thomas Avenue, Cheyenne, Wyoming 82001 USA.

(Americas) +1 201 777 3398

(Europe) +44 1865 596151

www.encanvas.com

All information of whatever kind and which is contained in this documentation shall be called for the purposes of this

project ‘Confidential Information’ and remains the property of Encanvas Inc. All trademarks and trade names used

within this document are acknowledged as belonging to their respective owners.

White paper - A Social Oriented Architecture (SOA)

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