How to Navigate a Sea of SOA Standards
Facing too many emerging standards -- and not enough vendor support for them -- in your service-oriented architecture implementation? Consider these steps in your planning.
Mastering Middleware
At smaller organizations, some CIOs are forging ahead with SOA without a major emphasis on standards. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., is a midsize organization that uses a lot of commercial software products, some of which are moving toward SOA, says Alan Levine, the CIO.
For example, the center’s enterprise resource planning vendor, Lawson, is moving to a services architecture. The Kennedy Center’s customer relationship management platform, Tessitura—an industry-specific application developed by Impressario, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Metropolitan Opera—also is moving toward SOA.
Levine says he’s taking steps to implement SOA without being overly concerned about standards. “We focus on creating the ‘glue’ that allows the SOA capabilities of the different commercial systems to fit together.”
To that end, the center is developing middle-tier solutions in-house, Levine says.
“Our focus is rather than trying to choose a standard, it’s knowing what to do to get the back ends to interoperate,” Levine says. Of course, middleware strategies depend on your organization’s size and existing systems. Overall, keep your eyes on the prize: a nimble IT organization. As GM’s Zhang puts it, the ultimate goal of using SOA is “to establish a flexible information systems and services environment that can quickly realign” as business needs change.
Bob Violino is a freelance writer.
