The term web services is getting popular these days. Web services are systems that helps to break down an entire system into sub components, by using services oriented architecture method on the web.
What is does is it is able to provide any type of services you see online, plug it in and out of a system eg. a website, and then “publish” it so that everyone else is able to use it.
This is a research that I have done over the past few days and it shows how businesses of today should adapt the same concept to what web services is providing.
What is SOA?
This paper focuses mainly on what is Service Oriented Architecture or SOA in short. SOA is a new technology, and a new buzz trend in the IT industry. In summary, this new technology enables business to reach a new level in terms of business process, improve performance and overall cost savings. This will revolved the way Information systems entirely, therefore improving the productivity.
Services oriented architecture, in other words, is a collection of services provided by systems, that allows inter-communications. To use these services, one need to pass simple buy propecia online data to those services and a result will be returned.
At a more in depth level, an IT software system can or should be built with a loosely coupled collection of services. It means a system containing many other tiny systems that communicate to either internal or external services, also known as “web services”.
In return, any data that are passed to these services will return the proper results for the user who requested it. The user, on the other hand, does not need to understand how the system works.
Benefits of SOA and how it re-engineers the business process
There are several advantages with regards to a SOA built system. A system in the current context can either be an IT system with a few computers, an IT application for the enterprise, a software guided process flow, or just a piece of software on running on a network of computers.
One of the main advantages, is the ability to plug and play components. As we have discussed above, the beauty of SOA lies in the possibility to take out or bring in a particular process easily. A revolution will take place and business process will change entirely, saving resources and redesigning the business process. This will therefore improve productivity and other related matters.
Another advantage is the ability to break up an entire system into sub-systems or components, and allow inter-communications among these components to talk one another services provided. In other words, we are able to build a complete software just by bringing smaller components together. These web services are able to provide you with enough resources to produce an output desired.
Just imagine a printer cartridge that consists of black, red, blue and yellow ink. When anyone of these inks are used up, you will need to replace the whole cartridge. Then they started selling separate cartridges, black and color. Then they further break it down to individual color, so when any of the ink color is finished, you only need to replace one of them.
Finally, cost saving is the most concerned factor for businesses. Based on the previous advantage, existing businesses with a software system will not need to spend large amount of money to maintain or upgrade. This system may exist all over multiple sites. By implementing SOA, a business can redesign their processes over these sites, such that they can remove duplicate services, standardize software platform, outsourced or sell some of the non-core activities, and concentrate on core business priorities and improve performance.
The dawn of re-engineering
The next step in re-engineering the business process is to map out all activities, including those IT and non IT. This diagram will be term as “Heat map”, which will list down all tasks, grouped according in terms of priority, cost, performance, or other measurement factors. Within each job tasks, list down the possibilities of whether it should be automated with IT, whether if it should be kept in-house, outsourced, brought to customer’s or distributor’s site.
Once a diagram is drafted out, the next tier is to look at what value each task will fetch for the organization. We shall call this tier activity evaluation. Identification for the tasks should be decided, like core or non core activities, or it can be grouped as mandatory or support activities. The value of the tasks will then be evaluated, whether it is generating profits to a company, or if it is an important task in the support arm.
The next tier is about evaluating its current level performance. This step is consider most important, as the turning point on each tasks, whether they should be step up, cut down, terminated, or maintained. This is when the services oriented approached is needed. These tasks can then be purchased (if there’s a solution), sold (as a profitable unit), or enhanced by executing Web services.
The big thing of the 21st century in IT is automation and outsourcing. If the tasks can be automated, maintenance cost could be lowered. If not, it will be decided if it should be kept in-house (running IT web services), or it should be purchased, from other vendor providing these services, or it can be sold to customers, distributors or partners, if this service has started.
Finally the performance of core units can be measured after implementation of the re-engineering exercise. By using the SOA approach, the benefits mentioned in this report should take commence and follow through, giving some yield in terms of performance, or cutting down maintenance cost. The plug and play capabilities displayed here, will ensure that if remodeling or transition of services are needed, then it can done freely.
Conclusion
To conclude, large oraganizations should actively change the way traditional IT systems work, adapt, and make full use to whatever new technologies that will revolutionized business of today.
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