In keeping with the theme of this blog and Website, we brought you as many actual working examples of SOA in Action in organizations of all sizes and stripes as we could find. And in 2007, there were more than ever, as SOA hits the mainstream.
Here are but a few classic examples of SOA in Action we saw through the year 2007. More to come!
As a centralized online learning environment:
The State University of New York, which encompasses 64 campuses, 30,000 faculty members, and 414,000 students, brought together disparate registration and e-learning systems into a common environment using SOA techniques. Previously, the university's distance learning program was built on top of a centralized Lotus Notes/Domino system. As the system grew, integration of the distance learning system with other campus systems proved to be a real challenge, particularly with student identity. Each campus had its own student information system (SIS), and students taking both classroom and online courses had to go through a double registration process, resulting in double enrollments.
As a compliance management environment:
USinternetworking, an on-demand hosting provider and AT&T subsidiary, found it challenging to automate or manage business processes around systems audits for its many large clients -- processes which require a lot of paperwork. Often, managers would end up re-keying information from binders of information into separate reporting systems. The company deployed SOA with several components of Oracle Fusion Middleware to capture and leverage the information coming out of these systems into standardized cross-system services. The USinternetworking team also found that compliance mandates are a good way to get support from management for SOA initiatives.
To enhance competitive advantage:
HBA, an insurance carrier, operates in an intensely competitive market, where price makes the difference. HBA is employing SOA-based tools to keep these costs in line over the years to come by repurposing its legacy assets, which represent decades' worth of investment.
To increase business agility:
Marriott is employing services-based applications that can be assembled quickly to respond to changes in the hotel market. The SOA is also intended to provide easier paths to integration with partners, such as Web sites that provide online hotel bookings. The reuse of services would save development costs and get new value out of existing systems.
To improve enterprise search:
Merrill Lynch's Enterprise Data Solutions unit is employing an underlying SOA infrastructure to support an enterprise search and discovery portal. The company developed a single integrated portal, capable of searching 34 million records from nine separate systems.
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