One of the business benefits organizations strive to achieve by implementing a service-oriented architecture (SOA) or in utilizing Web services is the opportunity to reuse business components. Asset reuse is one of the core drivers of the SOA or Web service ROI calculation. Although leveraging the service concept provides an avenue for application consolidation and reuse, these same efficiencies also introduce a distinct level of business risk.
For example, in an architecture where multiple distributed applications provide a business with a specific operation, should a single application fail, the impact of the application downtime is isolated only to a limited set of users. Conversely, the practices of application consolidation and service reuse concentrate operations into fewer applications or perhaps a single point of failure. The impact or risk associated with a service's failure increases as more entities or business processes are dependent on that service.
Therefore, if a business entity consolidates its applications and exposes a specific operation as a service and the service fails, the potential enterprise-wide exposure to the service downtime can cause significantly more risk.
