According to Arnab Ghosh, CTO,Torry Harris Business Solutions, enterprises are moving from evaluating SOA based solutions to actually implementing solutions. The pace of adoption is accelerating and business critical systems are being implemented using SOA principles today. This has also led to maturity in standards.
 
CIOL: How do you see the SOA business evolving so far and what has been the rate of adoption?
Arnab Ghosh: Enterprises are moving from evaluating SOA based solutions to actually implementing solutions based on SOA principles. The pace of adoption is accelerating everyday and business critical systems are being implemented using SOA principles today. This is leading to the maturing of the products like ESBs, governance tools that are essential for any SOA based implementation. It is also leading to maturity in the standards related to SOA implementations, e.g., BPEL, WS-* and other industry specific standards, etc.
 
Indian customers have been quick to realize the advantages of SOA and are moving aggressively on the adoption path. The exponential growth that various sectors are experiencing has led to the realization that a nimble and fluid IT infrastructure is essential to maintain this level of growth. This can be achieved by leveraging SOA principles within the prevailing IT systems.
 
CIOL: Do you find that customers have gone beyond the experimetal stage to actual implementation?
AG: Customers have definitely moved to the actual implementation stage. Verticals like BFSI and hospitality, to name a few, have been the early adopters. However, the good thing is that adoption now is happening across verticals and hence, the move is more broad based.
 
CIOL: What would be the key business advantages from an SOA setup?
AG: It is a well known fact that the role of IT in business success is getting increasingly important. Not for nothing have some leading research firms recommended that the term information technology (IT) should be replaced with business technology. In today's world, business success depends on the ability to identify opportunities and being the first to leverage the same. IT plays a crucial role in both the identification of opportunities and the leveraging of those. The difference between traditional IT systems and SOA based systems lies in the level of flexibility, i.e., the adaptability to change that SOA based systems inherently have. This adaptability allows these systems to be altered quickly so as to support any new business opportunity and hence, allow the business to leverage these opportunities to the fullest.
 
CIOL: What sort of challenges do enterprises face while implementing SOA?
AG: The challenges involved can be summarized as follows:
* Realizing why: It is very important for any enterprise to put thought into why it should move down the SOA path and what would be the benefits that would accrue. A clear understanding of this would form the basis of subsequent steps.
* Deciding how and where to start: Significant thought should be put into how to start a SOA initiative and the order of activities to perform.
* Having a good governance infrastructure: Governance aspects in terms of service development standards, guidelines, run-time policies, etc., aid in ensuring that any SOA initiative moves in a orderly manner and helps realize business benefits.
 
CIOL: Finally, what would be the so-called best practices in SOA adoption?
AG: One, to move forward through a series of small iterative steps. This allows you to view the benefits at short intervals of time and perform necessary course correction(s). Next, to be standards compliant. This will allow for easier maintenance of the systems developed. Finally, pay careful attention to governance aspects as without this there is a risk of SOA adoption becoming unwieldy and difficult to manage.