Experts push service-oriented architecture for business agility

SOAs promise to make businesses more adaptable and IT integration easier

Many organisations could improve their competitiveness by developing a more flexible approach to IT integration based on service-oriented architecture (SOA) with modular and reusable components, according to some experts.

Analyst firm Butler Group and SOA specialist iWay Software argued that SOAs create a more agile business and can help firms adapt more quickly to changing business conditions and IT platforms in the future.

"Software vendors have got into the habit of selling large proprietary stacks, but now there are too many out there which is a problem for integration, " said iWay director Russell Scherwin. "The key to integration is interoperation…but [traditional methods] entailed people hand coding interfaces which increases time to market and reduces agility."

Adopting SOA would also give the IT department the opportunity to raise its profile among senior managers, by positioning itself as a business enabler, Russell argued.

"Because of the current politics and the state of IT [I would recommend] an incremental approach [to adopting SOA]," Scherwin added. "We teach our sales staff to find problems which can be solved quickly [and generate good] return on investment, and [SOA can then be] used as a tool to build credibility with the line of business managers."