Service-oriented Architecture - An Emergence of a Service-oriented Architecture from a Business Perspective

Abstract

This qualitative study analyzes service-oriented architecture (SOA) from a business perspective. The business is divided into different decision levels for clarification of the liability limits for the affected actors. The study of SOA covers the areas from development to implementation. The work has been conducted in order to contribute to a business perspective for how a SOA affects an entire organization, as published literature is more technically oriented. During the discussion and analysis of the empirical material did three reoccurring concepts emerge; ownership, communication and competence. These concepts were therefore discussed and analyzed within each decision level, and its adherent SOA-domains. The conclusions are presented by the three reoccurring concepts: • The ownership of a service needs to be clearly defined, and connected on both a strategic and operational level both for business and IT processes. This will create a balance between the actor groups’ interests. • Communication is essential and needs to be adjusted according to the level of the recipient. The linguistics needs to be adapted and clear within the level, as to facilitate discussions within dynamic formations, i.e. with representatives from different areas and with different backgrounds. • The study indicates that the competence at the strategic level needs to increase, since this level sets the foundation for the possibility to implement services, in the form of budget and alignment. Alignment means to facilitate and demand that the business and IT must cooperate to be able to reach the target and thus achieve the benefit from a SOA. The practical conclusions from this study are; communication is important in creating interfaces between decision levels and between different business areas. To develop services and manage interfaces for existing and parallel activities it has emerged that an iterative work flow is preferable, i.e. it is crucial to begin and then develop gradually. The implementation of a SOA needs to be structured practically by a project-model, which should be one the organization already is familiar with. Three areas for future research have crystallized during the study. Firstly, good benefitcalculation models for services do not exist; the current models have too few dimensions to cover an all different perspectives of entire organization. Secondly, is to explore deeper within the area of communication between IT and the business. The final area covers the verification of this study’s practical contribution, i.e. empirically investigate if the content of the decision-levels are coherent with an actual implementation of a SOA.