Old architectural approaches that once expanded business opportunities now limit growth—but existing systems cannot be simply be replaced. Service-oriented architecture gives existing systems the flexibility and agility to respond to a business environment which is changing rapidly. Service-oriented architectures allow businesses and governments to capitalize on opportunity by:
Becoming more agile
Service-oriented architectures enable organizations to respond quickly to new business imperatives, develop distinctive new capabilities and leverage existing services for true responsiveness. Business and IT are more closely aligned.
Driving cost reductions
Service-oriented architectures promote the reuse of existing assets, increasing efficiency and reducing application development costs. They also enable IT systems to quickly leverage the most readily available code bases and services from across any organization. Furthermore, they improve coordination across sales, marketing, distribution and partner channels and reduce costly, time-consuming problem resolution.
Boosting ROI
Return on investment (ROI) is there, but not necessarily where you think. While a service-oriented architecture provides a foundation for high performance, value and return on investment are to be found in the project that SOA enables. Choose projects that deliver ROI on their own terms or ones that are required to provide competitive gains or fresh capabilities.
Service-oriented architectures also allow organizations to meet IT goals. The technological value of SOAs includes:
- Simpler systems: Service-oriented architectures are based on industry standards and can reduce complexity when compared with integrating systems on a solution-by-solution basis. They also enable future applications to mesh seamlessly with existing standards-based services.
- Lowering maintenance costs: Simplicity and ease-of-maintenance means that support costs are reduced and valuable IT staff freed up for strategic work.
- Enhancing architectural flexibility: Service-oriented architectures support the building of next-generation composite solutions. These performance-driven solutions consolidate numerous business processes from multiple systems in a simple user interface.
- Lowering integration costs: Service-oriented architectures make it possible for organizations to develop, implement and reuse processes that are technically enabled and integrated through the use of Web services standards such as XML, SOAP and WSDL. In addition, connectivity, data exchange and process integration efforts are simplified, reducing integration-related development and support costs.