Movin' SOA On Up

September 19, 2005

Movin' SOA On Up:
Introducing a New Service-Oriented Architecture Maturity Model

In an environment where the strategic value of IT is questioned1 and the pressure is on for every IT and software development organization to cut costs, even the discussion of the strategic business value of technology can get lost. Much attention has been devoted to methods of reducing costs such as outsourcing and offshoring, but less attention has been focused on the business enablement value of new technology.

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) has emerged as the most significant shift in how business applications are designed, developed and implemented in the last 10 years, eclipsing the shift to client-server. In fact, Gartner, Inc. predicts that by 2008, "SOA will provide the basis for 80 percent of new development projects."2

SOA is an approach to designing, implementing, and deploying information systems such that the system is created from components implementing discrete business functions. These components, called "services", can be distributed across geography, across enterprises, and can be reconfigured into new business processes as needed.

While many IT development and architecture groups are quick to embrace the technical value of service-oriented design, development and implementation, IT executives face the very different challenge of accurately managing the investment in technology as it relates to business value. These IT managers and decision makers need to understand how to assess their organization, staff and project for SOA and to justify a multi-year investment in a better way of managing IT assets.

To address this challenge, Sonic Software and its partners AmberPoint, BearingPoint and Systinet have jointly developed A New SOA Maturity Model (SOA MM). The model is designed to show the increasingly positive impact of SOA adoption from a business perspective. It provides IT decision makers with a framework for benchmarking the strategic value of their SOA implementation, and a model for visualizing future success.

The SOA MM derives from three key points of inspirations:

1. Feedback provided to 2,000 architects and developers, who over the past year have attended one of Sonic's Architect Forum events in North America, Europe and Japan.
2. Industry analyst reports, such as those by Randy Heffner of Forrester Research3, showing the various successful paths taken by companies introducing SOA.
3. The successes of the Capability Maturity Model® (CMM) and newer CMM Integration (CMMIsm)4 from the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) in providing a common framework for defining and assessing process improvement in software and other engineering endeavors.

Figure: Service Oriented Architecture Maturity Model Levels with Key Business Impact

SOA Maturity Model Level 1

SOA Maturity Level 1 is Initial. Initial Services represent the initial learning and initial project phase of SOA adoption. Projects here are typically done to simultaneously meet a specific need to implement functionality while trying out specific technologies and an approach to SOA. This maturity level also includes initial R&D activities testing the SOA technologies in a laboratory environment. Usually, the initial introduction of SOA is driven by the application development organization - often as part of an application integration project. New development skills are learned and initial attempts at quantification of ROI are created.

SOA Maturity Model Level 2

SOA Maturity Level 2 is Architected Services. It is at this level that standards are set as to the technical governance of SOA implementation, typically under leadership of the architecture organization. The key business benefit of this level is development and deployment cost reductions through the use of SOA standard infrastructure and components as compared to using older technologies or costs accumulated through multiple unique one-time projects. These benefits are greater in the heterogeneous environments typical of most enterprises.

SOA Maturity Model Level 3

The focus of SOA Maturity Level 3 is on the partnership between technology and business organizations in order to assure that the use of SOA provides clear business responsiveness. Core to the value of SOA is the linkage between business process and digital processes. SOA Maturity Level 3 is defined with two complementary paths to attaining these goals - one, Business Services, focused on the improvement of internal business processes, and one, Collaborative Services, focused on the improvement of collaborative processes with external partners.

SOA Maturity Model Level 4

While SOA Maturity Level 3 focuses on the implementation of internal and/or external business processes, SOA Maturity Level 4 focuses on measuring and presenting these processes at the business level so as to provide continuous feedback on the performance and business impact of the processes implemented at Level 3. This level includes business activity monitoring to allow business users to transform the way the respond to business events.

SOA Maturity Model Level 5

SOA Maturity Level 5, Optimized Business Processes SOA, adds automatic response to the measurements and displays of Level 4. In this way, the SOA information systems becomes the "enterprise nervous system" and takes action automatically according to events occurring at the business level according to rules optimizing business goals.

This New SOA Maturity Model provides a framework for discussion between IT and business users about the applicability and benefits of SOA in an organization across five levels of adoption maturity. The goal of its authors is not only to provide a means for organizations to benchmark current implementations, but also-we hope-to offer a source of inspiration as IT leaders visualize a path to successfully advance the value of SOA for their organizations.

Of course, the full SOA MM is more than a rote depiction of IT and business value, it is a mind-set and methodology for preparing your organization for successful SOA adoption. Begining September 20th, Sonic and its partners will lead a 10-city tour to present this model and methodology to Senior IT directors, managers and decision makers through a series of Management Forums. During each seminar there will be a moderated panel discussion during which the New SOA Maturity Model will be discussed, among other topics related to strategic benefits of advancing SOA deployment. I urge you to attend if you're tasked with movin' SOA on up in your organization.

Jon Bachman
Senior Director, Product Marketing
Sonic Software

1 Carr, Nicholas G., Does IT Matter?, Harvard Business School Press, 2004.

2 Hayward, S. "Positions 2005: Service-Oriented Architecture Adds Flexibility to Business Processes," Gartner, Inc. Feb. 2005.

3 Heffner, Randy, "Your Paths to Service-Oriented Architecture", Forrester Research, Dec. 2004.

4 Software Engineering Institute, Capability Maturity Model® Integration, http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi.