Each project participant agreed to build all integration interfaces (WSDL/XSD) using the interface-first approach to Web service development. Synovus could build the SVP website and Web services, integrate with vendor interfaces and perform much of the website unit testing before the vendors actually deliver their Web services. "This approach saved about two months off a five month project timeline," said Mize.

The technical design phase began January 9, 2008. It completed its implementation phase and transacted its first production purchase from iGourmet on March 31, 2008. By May, Synovus had rolled out to all its 37 financial institutions. Due to configuration flexibility, said Mize, Synovus will sponsor seven new merchants to the SVP program.

Commonly, consulting firms encourage buying a vendor's SOA solution as an implementation strategy. This approach creates a few timeline short cuts and reduces risks of the early projects, admitted Mize. "However, we decided to go in a different direction. Past experience shows that although the early projects are successful, the long term effect is reduced internal knowledge of development and architecture freedom of the system," he explained. Plus, changes to early implementations are difficult when they are not developed internally.

Synovus has had plenty of technical and business wins. Prior to the SOA implementation, Mize explained, customer and account information, funds transfer, credit card balances and intraday bank balances and transactions were not possible outside the branch channel. "Now this data has been integrated into call center, Internet and mobile banking channels using services from the banking and credit card legacy systems," he wrote.

The result is that the IT department could increase the business' ability to bring new products to market. For instance, Internet banking was the first company-level SOA project. As a follow-on, Mize explained, the business deployed mobile banking with less than 500 hours of IT involvement because the Internet banking Web services were reused in the mobile channel. "IT was able to bring great project ROI and business agility to deploy new products like SVP to the end customer," wrote Mize.

The company had plenty of "lessons learned," which may help your company in its own SOA adoption. For example, to make a success of the business IT architecture, Mize recommends, it's important to educate the business on design decisions that may compromise architectural principles. Leverage your business objectives to fund your SOA on a pay-as-you-go basis, he recommends; don't overbuild or over-promise.

The education role doesn't stop once the project is underway. "Continue to educate the business over and over again to ensure they fully understand the potential and the benefit," writes Mize. Talk to the business in terms of ROI, cost reduction, product enhancements, and speed to market. Set up an SOA configuration control board that is made of up subject matter experts and can guide your other governance structures.