Steve Jones, Head of SOA, Capgemini

- There *is* a SOA Reference Model: adopt the OASIS SOA Reference Model
 - Its independent
 - Its an OASIS Standard
 - Its applicable to business and IT services
 (...)
- IT needs to change to be about Value, not Cost
 - Today: 39%/61% (Cost/Revenue)
 - In 3 years: 69%/31%
- IT spend on the old and the new (15%/85%). New is expected to deliver value.
- People and Service interactions: Web 2.0 and SOA as a mechanism to interact
- What this means to SOA? If SOA is to deliver true value then it must:
 - Change the way we support systems, manage systems, modify systems, start with the existing IT estate
 - Claims that SOA sits above legacy are wrong, EAI claimed that and failed, Mainframe systems still continue to be extended, ERPs are acritical parts of IT infrastructures, Small scale applications are divorced from IT, business non-IT functions are divorced from IT
 - Claims that SOA is about technology is bunk, OO was not about C++, Smalltalk or Java
- SOA has to change ALL OF IT! Business, IT, external.
- SOA is about how you think about IT
- SOA has to be about making it simple
- Flexibility is actually a bad control, structure is critical, governance is needed.
- Delivering clear Business Service Architecture means:
 - Aligning your governance to the BSA
 - Including new build and maintenance in a single structure, no more architecture just for "phase 1"
 - Having explicit business ownership of the architecture
 - Continually updating the architecture
 - Doing process second
 - It Impacts all IT, and relationship with the business
- Understand what your IT is woth, and how to deliver. Do not change what is working just why technically will be a great project. Why spend?
- One size does not fits all. We need to understand what size to use and when.
- Projects make monoliths. Do programmes instead.
 - TCO not Cost to Live (CTL)
 - Enables fix and modify cycle to be integrated into development
 - Stops projects accidentaly creating monoliths
 - Keeps fix and modify cycles short
 - Aligns ownership directly to the business, not the project manager
- Apply SOA to support
 - Align your help desks to the services and their value
 - Capture change requests on service lines
 - Organize team leads around the services, not the technology
 - Make architects understand both the old and the new
 - Ensure that systems are continually evolving with the business
 - Stop the "legacy as deployed" problem. Dont try to make everything five nines just because you can. If business says dont care, then dont care. Thats because the value it is not there. Its vital to understand this.
 - Manage the portfolio based on its value
- Summary:
 - SOA cant be about just the new if it is to solve problems
 - IT organizations need to change the way they think
 - IT is changing, old assurances no-longer hold
 - SOA gives a single framework in which to make decisions
 - Adopt the OASIS SOA Reference Model, its a good standard and it has been used very successfully: Its much better then picking a vendors and it is a waste of effort to write your own

Additional reading:

- http://service-architecture.blogspot.com
- Enterprise SOA Adoption Strategies, http://infoq.com/minibooks/enterprise-soa