Service-oriented architecture (SOA) continues to be promoted as a silver bullet for the resolution of many corporate efficiency challenges, associated with the integration of information systems and business process related issues. If we are to believe much of what is written about SOA, it is positioned to reduce development costs, simplify IT infrastructure and make service providers more agile and competitive. And it is becoming high on the agenda for many service providers. According to a recent McKinsey survey, 64% of CIOs and other senior executives planned to implement SOA during 20071.

As SOA principles become more widely accepted and service providers gain a better understanding of the practical implications of its adoption, companies may start to embrace new ways of conducting business, which SOA is supposed to enable. If SOA offers the potential for service providers to reinvent the way business functions interact and to improve performance, then this indicates that those organisations who are not already investigating the potential benefits of SOA will likely be placing themselves at a disadvantage, compared to their competitors, who have previously identified the SOA opportunity.

This article discusses the reality of the business opportunities that SOA presents, in terms of how to harness an SOA approach for improved management of the business processes supported by BSS/OSS.

In an increasingly pressurised business climate it is impossible to escape more aggressive corporate deadlines in terms of the need for shortened order lead times, more efficient service delivery, improved customer retention, aggressive price pressure, more demanding consumers, new legislation and a proliferation of new technology all contributing to a highly complex environment of business change. Forced to deliver more services, at lower cost, in a shorter time there can be no denying that even the best prepared service provider, who may have integrated their front and back office systems and automated their processes continue to drive for more process efficiency. So what could information systems management do to effectively cope with this rapidly changing business environment?

SOA adoption is regarded as one response for many information systems and IT departments. SOA presents an open systems architecture based around common platforms, protocols and re-usable code. Service providers can exploit the best practices and technology options associated with SOA to assemble and connect end-to-end business processes across their entire organisation. The challenge is to create a sustainable information system environment which is capable of quickly responding to new business process challenges and opportunities. In short, if you peel away the mystique surrounding SOA, business agility is simply achieved by managing systems that work across multiple functions using a ‘loose coupling’ of components, enabling the re-use of business services as and when they are needed.

Let us illustrate the issue from a conventional perspective. If a new customer wishes to subscribe to services on a contract or post-pay basis it is typical for a service provider to complete a credit check on that individual, prior to authorising access to their services. In a conventional BSS/OSS environment, including customer care systems, charging & billing, point of sale systems and web self-care portal, each element of the infrastructure may need to process separate elements of the overall credit check, resulting in separate credit check ‘programs’ being maintained across diverse platforms, networks and geographies. When you multiply that by all the possible combinations of processes and services on offer there is a considerable process overhead. Using an SOA approach the entity ‘Credit Check’ becomes a re-usable single process across all systems, providing guaranteed and stable interactions between existing systems. In fact using SOA it is possible to incorporate disparate systems into any new business application as needed. This means that organisations are able to rapidly create interoperable systems and processes that respond to business demands translating to both agility and productivity.

SOA in Action

Now consider the real world experience of one global wireless service provider which is an early adopter of SOA. One of its biggest challenges was the high cost and resources required to support a legacy mixture of BSS/OSS. Before establishing an SOA strategy its systems were unable to respond to business expansion needs following rapid organic growth and its increasingly distributed systems and staff.

For even quite minor application enhancements, system interdependencies were un-predictable and change requests required numerous application specialists and weeks of diagnostics and test cycles. The service provider relied on multiple networks, applications, devices, services and communications channels, which demanded a broad information systems and IT strategy. However, the design of its legacy systems could only support specific lines of business and services and for the most part were unsuitable for a rapidly evolving environment. In addition, requirements to offer value added content services demanded an operating environment that could foster innovation and provide the ability to roll out services quickly and cost effectively. This requirement also involved integrating with a network of content providers, aggregators and other external suppliers. Furthermore, the nature of digital content services demanded agility to launch products on a limited basis to perform market tests prior to general launch.

The situation was compounded as layers of staff were required to manage the legacy BSS/OSS infrastructure placing extra pressure on budgets, much of which were spent on low-value system maintenance activities and the continuance of silo-based business processes, ‘hard-wired’ in disparate and antiquated applications.

The SOA response was to move towards a more standards-based approach to create a simplified enterprise IT backbone capable of removing the constraints of stove-piped applications; removing the limitations associated with existing applications integration, data structures and data stores; and enabling the re-use of functions as services to new applications. This approach improved their business modelling and allowed processes to be redesigned without arbitrary application constraints being imposed. Service components can be quickly adapted to new and changing business processes rather than having to dedicate resources to the development of new, proprietary applications.

The Small Print

There are, of course, important caveats to consider. It is not practical to ‘rip and replace’ enterprise systems overnight or to implement SOA across an organisation in one go. Service providers need to address the areas of least efficiency and roll out SOA benefits in digestible phases, ensuring each project is aligned to the organisations long-term aspirations e.g. targeting areas that involve tracking, controlling and management of revenue flows to profitably deliver high value services to customers.

SOA adoption requires a new mind-set and a business blueprint to enable maximum agility. SOA places the underlying IT support architecture as subsidiary to business process efficiency. SOA can be perceived as being as much about a philosophy of aligning information systems and business strategies by providing standards-based business processes as the building blocks to creating sustainable value.

SOA also places new demands on the assessment of software vendors who may claim to be SOA practitioners or SOA ready. Certainly any evaluation of a software vendor, when considering an SOA approach, should take into consideration a number of issues:

• Evidence of SOA standards, interoperability testing and co-operation with other vendors
• Applications with a broad range of integration and interoperability toolkits
• Experience and skills in each of the main constituents of SOA: Business Analysis, Architecture design, Web services development and re-usable implementation
• Track record of SOA principled implementations. It is important that there is strong collaboration between external SOA practitioners and the internal IT organisation
• Reference architectures based on best practices. Vendors who constantly update their portfolio around common, re-used services show commitment to SOA principles
• Vendors who have a broader interest in the enterprise as a whole rather than focus on the delivery of narrowly focussed applications

Enterprise SOA Benefits

Service providers who are able to move beyond tentative SOA projects and embrace Information Systems architecture from a holistic enterprise perspective should expect to be able to achieve many cost and efficiency benefits:

• Lower integration costs, as standardised services enable disparate applications to connect quickly and easily
• Reduced development and integration time and cost, as SOA services are easily re-used and can be rapidly assembled into new applications
• Limited complexity of IT services and lower maintenance costs through the adoption of re-usable services
• Reduction in the diversity of skill sets and training required by the systems department through the use of a common Information Systems language
• Ability to innovate through composite applications that combine functionality from multiple existing systems to provide cross-functional capabilities
• Greater flexibility by exploiting a ‘library’ of services that enable the organisation to respond rapidly to new requirements
• The ability to integrate better with external partner systems and third parties

Summary

Communications service providers who are considering the adoption of SOA, or who are already adopting the principles, understand the importance of defining and embedding efficient processes into their business. SOA implementation uses a technology-enabled business change project, requiring full co-operation between commercial and IT interests, with clear direction from business leaders across the enterprise and the right input and knowledge from business partners. Clearly SOA does not deliver a quick fix. However, a fully optimised SOA approach promises to deliver both innovation and agility in business processes - the cornerstone to competitive success.

Author: Simon Dadswell, Advanced Solutions Marketing Manager, Intec.