SOA has reached a point where organizations are optimistic about the promised benefits of SOA and are starting to implement SOA based projects. Yet SOA is a broad set of concepts that will influence an organization and its activities beyond one project, thus the frequently asked question: “What are the activities and best practices for a successful SOA implementation?” To realize the promised benefits of SOA, an enterprise must progress and build capabilities in multiple dimensions such as architecture, infrastructure, organizational culture and alignment of people and processes, information and analytics capabilities, governance, techniques and utilize standards-based tools.
This 3-part series, The Path to SOA, puts forth a realistic business and technology view of what it takes for companies to successfully adopt SOA at what we have deemed Level 5. What is Level 5 SOA? Level 5 SOA is the final level of SOA capabilities in our model and represents the ultimate state of SOA within an IT environment. Within Level 5 SOA, applications and systems operate as optimized, automated and self-adapting control systems for the business. Each system has complete flexibility to continuously adapt in real-time, based on user direction or automated response to business performance measurements.
