How to combine SOA with your own business

About SOAThe following abstract definition is widely recognized:

Definition: the architectural style of SOA describes a set of patterns and guiding principles to create standards-based, loosely coupled services that are integrated with the business, due to separation of focus between descriptions, implementations, and bindings, these services provide higher levels of flexibility to respond to business threats and opportunities.

Forrester's investigation shows that enterprises are currently facing the following major challenges: enterprises need more flexibility and it cannot keep up with the rapid changes in their businesses, it requires a service layer that supports software packages and customized software innovation. Forrester believes that a new type of application is required to meet these requirements. This is a dynamic business application ). According to the Forrester definition, dynamic business applications have the following features: built-in enterprise processes support changes by nature, with a wide range of adaptability and can be tailored to meet personalized needs.

Assume that a company has the following requirements:

● Many departments and subordinate enterprises are launching new products, and the company needs to integrate them;

● Quickly promote new products to users;

● Expand existing products;

● The rapid changes in the customer base have led to changes in the definition of the customer.

Among them, the most urgent requirement is that in order to remain invincible in the competition, the company needs to speed up the delivery of new products. In the past, it was planned on a monthly basis, and the company hopes to plan on a daily basis, from the introduction of concepts to the implementation of products, it is best to complete the process within 24 hours. In addition, in order to cooperate with a third party, he also hopes that the third party can launch new products based on its application platform.

What we know is that SOA advocates assembling services that business and IT personnel can understand into applications on demand. This kind of assembly can even be done by the business personnel themselves, so that enterprises can get rid of the limitations of technology-oriented solutions and easily meet the needs of enterprise business service changes and development. In the past, to quickly respond to the market, users can only use the IT department to continuously develop new applications and expand existing applications to support their existing business needs.

With the help of SOA, business personnel can focus on solving business problems, while technical personnel can fully devote themselves to technical aspects, and business and technical personnel can work with each other, this allows you to quickly respond to changes in business needs.

Without SOA, the above requirements cannot be implemented at all. We can use SOA to make a revolution to the background system, that is, to build a dynamic business application infrastructure. These measures include:

● An intermediate layer is provided to encapsulate the old system;

● Use ESB to integrate application infrastructure;

● Simplify management to ensure high application fault tolerance;

● Use the Registration Center and repository to facilitate information sharing and reuse.

Based on the above cases, we will discuss how to combine it and business.

The emerging SOA and virtualization technology standards. Although these standards have been developed by other countries, they can be used for early research and development, then, we will go deep into the development and application of the entire SOA business. Including IT hardware and network, application form, and application module form.

At the same time, SOA and Virtualization Technologies complement each other and should be developed together. Even if all the infrastructure uses virtualization technology and virtualization, the two will be out of touch if technology writing is still a traditional method. The most important reason for SOA architecture is that enterprises have business needs and demand is growing. How can it adapt to business changes from the perspective of flexibility, in this way, enterprises can have a strong business competition in the industry.

The SOA architecture is currently the most suitable for business development in the IT industry. "The current business is a rapidly changing market, which leads to some changing needs for different businesses. The essence of SOA architecture is a 'loose coupling 'architecture. The coupling between different systems and systems is loose, and other systems are not forced to make unnecessary changes due to the change of one system, this is an important feature of SOA. This solves a long-standing problem, that is, the development of IT systems and the mismatch of business systems. With SOA, a business has changed, IT systems can easily adapt to this change." Xin erlun, general manager of Microsoft Greater China Enterprise Service Department, gave an interesting example: "It is more convenient to wear pants when a person is exercising ."

At present, many large companies around the world have started the application of SOA. Such as IBM, sap, and Microsoft, when they come to the market, they are based on interactive technology. Most of them already have their own SOA solutions and products. Among them, Microsoft is most worth looking forward to. The new SOA concept, SOA and. the integration of the net architecture and BizTalk Server products are all part of Microsoft's SOA strategy in the future. Moreover, some versions launched by Microsoft, such as SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, are all coming soon in the SOA architecture. In addition, Microsoft's latest Vista and new-generation Windows servers are also based on the SOA architecture. Therefore, SOA is not a concept of floating on the cloud. there are already so many products that bring SOA into existence, taking root and blossom.

Enterprises such as IBM and Hp were one of the first to use SOA. We can see that they are developing very well. Therefore, the earlier SOA is used, the more conducive to the development of enterprises.

So how can we build an architecture that helps it and business integration to be consistent? This is related to the SOA market maturity. For our country, the SOA market is still in the education stage. Most people hold a wait-and-see attitude. So what we need to do is to educate the IT departments of enterprises so that they all have a concept. Know what SOA is and what it can bring to us.

As for how to build such an architecture, the key is to find the appropriate industries for SOA.

First, large enterprises should grasp SOA first. Because of its huge budget and budget. For example, there is fierce competition in the telecom and communication industry, including the impact of user registration volume, policies, and the entire market environment. However, it is still very difficult to compile the financial industry and deposits, it also requires such an architecture to provide guidance.

The second is ordinary small and medium-sized enterprises. A year ago, SOA could only be manipulated by large enterprises, because small and medium-sized enterprises lack basic strength and have low technical requirements. However, with the fierce competition and extensive business, the increasingly urgent needs of SMEs for technology will become another highlight of SOA businesses.

Of course, many people may doubt this, because SOA also involves a key issue-cost. In China, the cost can directly determine whether a large enterprise or small and medium enterprises can or cannot seize this architecture. Too high costs will directly determine whether SOA can grow and develop in China. However, there are many solutions.

First, the cost of SOA can be distributed to retailers and customers.

Second, small and medium-sized enterprises can partially afford the cost. The combination of SOA and Virtualization has not touched much of the technology. Small and medium-sized enterprises only need to use the technical combinations provided by retailers, and then adjust according to their actual needs. For example, a specific desktop technology only targets specific users, rather than ordinary users. Small and medium-sized enterprises can use their new desktop technology at a relatively low cost. This desktop technology will make them discover many advantages. It can be summarized in one sentence, with a lot of money spent.

Third, there are many ways to reduce costs. For example, Citrix's new cost reduction technology.

The specific advantage of SOA is that it helps enterprises use existing IT infrastructure to meet their business goals. Effective SOA should:

· Taking into account the entire lifecycle of business processes to help ensure IT and business consistency.

· Deliver existing IT systems as available services.

· Manage services to achieve high efficiency and reusability.

The SOA business integration model should be able to achieve:

Connection: ensures reliable and flexible information flow between different applications and systems

Integration: the integration framework supports interoperability in heterogeneous environments-removing the obstacles before the integrated architecture supported by web services and non-web service methods

Automation: orchestrate business and IT processes to ensure consistency between it and business objectives, increase revenue, and control costs

Optimization: an overall approach to achieve enterprise transformation and management by aligning strategic and operational objectives with business activities and providing IT service support