Joe McKendrick, ebizQ's SOA in Action Blogger, is a nationally published author and consultant
with deep knowledge and insights regarding trends and developments in
the technology industry. He is a contributing editor to a number of
national and international publications and Websites including
Database Trends & Applications, ZDNet, and Webservices.Org. He also
serves as analyst for Evans Data Corp., and is lead analyst for Evans'
Web services and enterprise development management issues surveys.
SOA in Action Blog
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« Keynote: Capturing the Events that Really 'Matter' to the Business | Main | Enter the 'Data Service Mashup' » May 30, 2008Living SOA Life on the Edge SOA comes in many shapes and sizes, but most times when the discussion comes up, it's about the challenge of service-orienting some aspect of core mission-critical systems. To date, of course, most SOA and Web services deployments have been on the periphery. Sometimes, these peripheral projects have been referred to as "lunchroom Web services" -- only a prelude to the grander SOA yet to come. That's why it was interesting to run across this article, published in Thomas Erl's SOA Magazine, that brings up the topic of service-orienting the periphery as part of the overall enterprise SOA strategy. At the periphery are "edge" applications, databases, and systems are probably more numerous and pervasive than the systems found at the enterprise core. They may consist of repositories, embedded systems, open source databases, and distributed or departmental servers. Often, they are low or no-budget efforts that address a specific point solution. The challenge is bringing these systems and their processes into the main enterprise SOA effort. The article's authors, Paulo Rosado and Rodrigo Castelo, say there's a good business case to be made for service-orienting these edgy (or "shadow IT") systems, because while edge apps may be cheaper and faster to implement, they end up costing enterprises a bundle in maintenance and overhead. These siloed projects cost more than more centralized projects, and eventually mushroom into more headaches for the centralized IT department. What seem like small, off-the-radar projects eventually end up with "ever-rising maintenance and support expenditures," the authors say. Ultimately, they estimate, the total cost of ownership could run up to be five times as much as centralized apps and systems. Plus, they explain, "ignoring shadow IT incurs the risk of hindering your SOA evolution, overlooking potential application innovations that could streamline business process and increase revenue, and increasing expenditures in the long run due to retrofitting, and also potential security and governance breaches." Rosado and Castelo provide four key questions that need to be asked as part of any attempt to bring edge systems into an SOA effort:
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