CIOL: What progress has IBM made on the SOA front?

IBM: To sum it up in one word, IBM’s business has been very good. We started SOA in 2004 and upped our momentum in late 2005, and the results have been good in terms of companies adopting and testing SOA. Having travelled that journey, now we have customers who are mature enough to go for it.

CIOL: Have Indian companies started investing seriously in SOA vis-a-vis your international clients?

IBM: India or international the response is more or less the same. However, companies are in different stages of IT maturity, and therefore, it depends on the level of maturity of a company.

CIOL: Typically, what are the kind of companies that are interested in SOA — are they ones that have huge legacy systems?

IBM: Companies going in for these implementations primarily have a good IT infrastructure, with their business needs driving it. In the Indian market -- mainly process intensive, integration intensive sectors such as insurance, banking and telecom. It can any place where there is a lot of synergy between the business and IT. We also have a couple of cases in the mid-market region, where they have tried SOA — more from being foresighted.

However, percentage-wise the numbers may be small as the market is very big. The growth  is good from the point of view that people are putting their strategic IT  infrastructure on SOA. Nevertheless, if I say 15 percent, there is a much bigger market out there yet to be tapped.

CIOL: What are the business processes that are mainly impacted by SOA?

IBM: All business processes can be impacted – certain set of processes – advanced – some test it on non-critical processes – its very flexible, and depends on the mindset. It can impact each and very business process depending on how it is implemented. For e.g., in an insurance company — it offers change every 15 days – hence, for such companies, it is all about flexibility. SOA enables the change faster, resulting in immediate benefits. With SOA, flexibility is in the business and IT is the lowest hanging fruit.

CIOL: What is the key business advantage to be gained from an SOA set up?

IBM: Flexibility and all things related to flexibility. All things related to flexibility – be it change business processes – cycle based on best processes in companies – model the processes. Define and optimised processes – move from model to assembly stage. Then, there is deployment – put it in a product environment. Management strategy – measure the KRAs defined, maybe, in terms of the number of applications processes in so many days, the productivity of the staff or application processing speed.

CIOL: What are the challenges involved during an SOA implementation? Do all enterprises take either one of these approaches all the time?

IBM: When it comes to us it is people’s thought processes, many mny still think it is a product – even though we have educated people, they get confused about SOA. From the enterprises’ point of view – it's where to start? To address this, we have defined enterprise entry points.

There are five entry points into SOA – people, processes, information, re-use and connectivity. It calls for a lot of collaboration between the vendor and the customer. If it is a people-oriented company, where success of the business depends on knowledge sharing. So, it is advisable to take the people approach. If it is an information-centric business, you have to take that approach. Re-use and connectivity are the biggests IT benefits. The moment you get more mature, reusable services such as banking credit account or a customer master database, which can be reused, it saves so much more of coding, which in turn, reduces cost. However, those re-usable services have to be identified.

Enterprises can take all of these options if it is a big company with a well-established IT infrastructure.

CIOL: Can you elaborate on the best practices in SOA?

IBM: Once you have decided to go for SOA, it is always better to start small. It is difficult to manage if you take a big bang approach. Companies may not be able to manage the total change that comes about. So, it is always better to go on a piece-meal basis and then grow on that success. Connecting of services, managing the services, the learning process, defining policies, there are a lot of security issues and then, acceleration.