Service-Oriented Architecture Steps into the Future (continued)
Stabilizing the Application Environment
Perhaps most important, says Sateesh Narahari, the senior product marketing manager for APM (Applications Performance Management) at Symantec in Cupertino, Calif., is that software performance improves and systems become more stable.
"We check the availabilities of services 24/7," Narahari says. "Our APM products enable you to do a system 'health check' on a regular basis, and alert the proper person if something goes wrong."
Narahari strongly encourages his clients to focus on business requirements first, closely followed by performance. Through a constantly monitored system, the SOA environment enables even sprawling enterprises to build, define, manage and reuse code embedded in even the largest applications and systems in a methodical and economical fashion, without regard to what language the code is written in.
Implementing a SOA environment has surprisingly few technical issues. Cataloging the services and creating a central repository can both be done using either open source or commercial solutions, both of which are fairly well established. "It's about not reinventing the wheel," says Connolly.
Instead, the biggest challenges involve changing engrained habits and businesses processes, according to Connolly. "It's a change from the traditional mindset of programmers wanting to have the autonomy to write their own code in their own style to thinking in terms of specific problems and checking to see if someone else in the company has already solved them."
While it's a large task to transition to an SOA environment, experts agree that for most medium and large-size enterprises, it's a worthwhile long-term investment.
About the Author
Jeff Merron is a freelance writer living in North Carolina. A former staff writer for ESPN, his articles have also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Slate and Online Journalism Review.
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