Service-Oriented Architecture An Agent of Change? Huy Pham

Before we start… Why a social and business focus? –Not because I am a business person –Found some questions that might be of interest to you –Most of you know more about SOA and WS than I do Spent the last 6 years trying to become a roboticist! Not a one-way presentation: –A group discussion –A radio pod-cast, if you like!  Your participation is needed!

Agenda Technical summarization of SOA and WS An Agent of Changes –How SOA and WS can be useful in addressing the problems of this ever-changing world –And how they create the new kind of changes themselves Fears/Opportunities –What can we, the techies, do to ride/survive these waves of changes

SOA and WS What are they? What are they good for?

Change – The technical challenge “The only constant is change” Types of change: –Personnel –Requirements –Development and Deployment Platform –Organizational Restructuring Cannot be ignored –Point solutions are no longer useful –The dire need of Robustness

SOA as a technical answer A universal connection technology –The PCI bus in the PC –The RCA connectors in A/V equipments Services are independent and replaceable system components  Modularity  Reuse: From class level to service level  Robustness: Quicker response to changes

Change – The social challenge How well can you live with change? –Different people have different tolerance –The same person would have different response in different situations In all cases, change can be very unpleasant! Especially when we are unprepared  Be prepared!

SOA as the SOA is an agent of changes for the IT industry –Large-scale yet robust systems will be built in modular ways using standardized services –Organizations will buy standardized software packages instead of building custom ones –The employment market for software developers will not remain the same If you are not prepared for the changes, SOA can become a fear factor!

How do we prepare?

A visit to The Oracle “The world won’t change overnight – Thy shall make a fortune adapting the existing systems to the new standard” “Thy shall not find entry-level development jobs, but shall find highly skilled jobs with ISVs that cater services to specific industries” “In both cases, thy shall learn about the transitional stages”

Expected Transition Stages Experiment with Web Services –Organizations send people for training, hire new people with the required knowledge Adapting existing systems to WS –Continue training and hiring process Building enterprise-wide SOA infrastructures Integrating with industry-wide systems

Conclusions As a universal connection technology, SOA: –Helps solve the scalability and robustness problem of enterprise information systems –Make the IT industry a better place for those who are prepared Thank you for your participation! I am eager to have more discussions!