The SOA Magazine

There are a significant number of companies investing in SOA initiatives, but only a small number are at the point of realizing a positive return on their investments. These organizations have embraced SOA as part of their core business strategies, yet they have also taken a pragmatic approach, knowing that a successful service-oriented architecture depends upon the quality of the architecture itself. Creating an SOA quality foundation means understanding the overall goals of a service-oriented strategy, and optimizing the environment for successful execution of that strategy. This article explores the major components that make up the foundation of SOA quality and discusses the need for communication, trust and control to ensure that a service-oriented solution meets or exceeds business and technical expectations – whether it’s in the form of cost savings, productivity, better customer service, or reduced time to market. Introduction: The SOA Quality Foundation SOA quality is measure of how an SOA implementation accommodates business and technical expectations. To meet these increasingly high expectations, SOA must consistently yield value in the form of cost savings, productivity, and time to-market. In fact, “SOA quality is fast becoming one of the next critical issues that enterprises, consulting firms, and vendors alike must face when implementing SOA” [REF-1]. But, the question remains: How does a company go about achieving SOA quality? The key is building a proper foundation for success. And, to accomplish this requires a proper plan. A recent survey confirmed that organizations with a quality plan are more likely to be satisfied with their SOA deployment, and that “creating a viable SOA initiative is contingent on the ability to ensure software quality and gain trust of all constituents. Without an articulated quality strategy rigorously enforced SOA will not scale and will not deliver on its promises” [REF2]. Figure 1: The common building blocks of an SOA foundation framework. http://www.soamag.com/I5/0307-2b.asp (1 of 8)12/03/2007 7:39:30 PM