Insync: Getting down to the business of SOA

In their journey towards adopting a SOA approach, organisations can be faced with a number a challenges. These roadblocks can often stifle SOA initiatives and reduce them to low ROI infrastructure integration projects. It is a concern to me that many initiatives follow this path.

While I spend my life in the world of technology, I am in the fortunate position of being exposed to a broad range of organisations attempting, maturing, succeeding and failing in their SOA journey. Two of my colleagues and I decided to compile a session at the Insyc Conference running on the 20th April in Sydney to address three key areas. (There is just so much you can cover in three hours!)

The first session will address strategies and tips on how to go about having the ever-important business discussion and how to approach building a business case. The second part of our afternoon will focus on preparing the IT organisation for transformation. We will cover topics such as the position and role of the CIO in the organisation, the relationship between IT and business, the potential need for an IT structural and role change, the development and resourcing of skills, the movement from architecture to execution, project selection, and the need for the establishment of a SOA Center of Excellence and governance framework. The last session of the day will focus on successful SOA execution. It will cover aspects of architecture, various enabling technologies that can support a SOA approach and execution strategies that organisations adopted, which eventually contributed towards their SOA journey and their eventual business transformation.

While our session is not the definitive guide on how to approach SOA, as the application of SOA is unique to every organisation, we hope that learnings gained from our interactions in the marketplace will be of benefit to other organisations embarking on their journey.

Hope to see you there!