INSIGHT | SOA in interoperability between the silos. The interoperability not only optimises and leverages the existing IT assets but also sets the basis for scalability. The end result is a flexible IT infrastructure that improves performance and business agility of the organisation. The ESB also performs service mediation on the fly, while acting as a service registry and repository for increased effectiveness. Essentially, there are three components of SOA that help achieve the desired objective—the ESB, SOA governance and construction tools. According to Gartner, the ESB market in India was USD 25.6 million in CY 2009 while the SOA governance market stood at USD 3.3 million. However, the ESB market is expected to grow with a CAGR of 17.9% over the next five-year period. By comparison, the SOA governance market will likely witness a higher CAGR of 22.9%, given its relatively lower base.
SOA and cloud “With the emergence of other paradigms, SOA is adapting and imbibing fresh perspectives to remain relevant and assess its alignment to different scenarios. Sometimes, as in the case of Web oriented architecture (WOA) and event driven architecture (EDA), we see a convergence of paradigms. In other cases, like cloud computing software, information is provided to computers and other devices on demand as shared resources. In a cloud scenario, SOA services form the vehicle for information and computational logic as reusable resources,” Rajan Lohar, AVP and Head of SOA Center of Excellence at Cognizant. “SOA is an architectural approach that creates services that can be shared and reused. It converts current vertical applications into a number of components called services that can be reused across multiple applications, thus providing savings and improved agility to make changes faster and more cost effectively,” says Margabandhu. “On the other hand, cloud computing is about providing ease of access to and usage of services. Cloud computing
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“TECHNOLOGY THAT IS RATIONAL, COMPONENT-WISE AND COST EFFECTIVE IS THE NEED O F THE HOUR AND ALL THESE ARE IN SOA” Jacob Livingstone, Manager – IT at Bhilai Engineering Corp
“A SOA IMPLEMENTATION SHOULD BE PRECEDED BY FORMING GUIDELINES TOWARDS BETTER SECURITY AND SLAS” Rajesh Aggarwal, Manager - IT, Jindal Pipes
employs repeatability and standardised easy access to shared hardware and software at low cost. Together, SOA and cloud can provide a complete servicesbased solution,” she explains. “Emerging paradigms often tend to overshadow the existing paradigms. The importance of SOA as an architectural style has not diminished. In fact, the cloud paradigm is better realised through the standardised architecture and services model provided by SOA. The services paradigm and the governance model around service life-cycle management of SOA also lend themselves to support asset reuse and provisioning aspects of the cloud computing model,” Lohar of Cognizant points out.
Protecting legacy investments Critical business processes of large enterprises are often realised using legacy applications. These applica-
tions contain enterprise core business logic that has evolved over the years. However, these legacy applications are most often monolithic in nature, tightly coupled with functional redundancies and have a high cost of ownership. SOA does not advocate elimination or replacement of these existing legacy applications, Lohar notes. “It opts to modularise the existing monolithic legacy applications to introduce clear separation of concerns and expose the core reusable functionalities as services. These services are then integrated and composed to realise business services and capabilities. Modernisation of legacy applications using SOA usually involves componentisation of existing applications, separation of presentation, business and data aspects, realisation of presentation aspects using modern technologies like portal, and finally, wrapping up of business logic and exposing them as reusable services,” he
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