Farmyard SOA

I spend much of my time explaining the benefits of Service Oriented Architecture to people who just want to understand what it can do for them - most rightly don't care about the how.

Recently I was discussing this with a friend who told me about an analogy he has heard about for Business Intelligence users based on the characteristics of animals. I have taken this concept and applied it to SOA.

You have 4 basic animal types
* Sheep
* Cows
* Pigs
* Foxes

Sheep and SOA
Sheep are simple animals and will do simple things over and over again, they want simple tasks made simpler. So SOA can help here by combining process steps together into composite applications which lead the sheep by the nose through the process.

BENEFIT : Therefore it takes less time to train the sheep…but watch out sheep because the next step is to fully automate these simple tasks using Business Process Management (BPM). So BPM is a wolf is sheep’s clothing!!!

Cows and SOA
Cows are quite intelligent, having to learn when to be milked, how to get into the milking machine and can decided when to be milked. SOA can help here by collecting the process steps together and providing clear guidance on the process paths that are available, decisions are required but the choices are limited.

BENEFIT : Again this means less training is required and the cows can learn from the wisdom of the herd……eventually things can get so easy you can employee sheep (which are obviously cheaper than cows)

Pigs and SOA
Pigs are pretty intelligent but left on there own will consume everything that they can eat (access). SOA can help by collecting all the services (both transaction and information) required to carry out a task into one place – think of it like a pig pen. This means that data is only delivered in the context of other information e.g report on credit history for a customer when looking at that customers blocked order instead of running a report showing all credit histories, just in case.

BENEFIT : Once again the training required here is lower, the quality of decisions is high as they are made in context and the system resources are lower as only the information used in collected

Foxes and SOA
Foxes are very smart and will work out how to work round obstacles placed between them and the chickens – imagine chickens as business objectives. SOA can help here by giving them a vehicle to innovate new ways of doing business that enable them catch more chickens. They don’t have to run these new innovation off system and wait for IT the catch up.

BENEFIT : Now we get to the meat of SOA – this ability means you can release all of that innovative power (believe me it is there), which is being suppressed by a slow and cumbersome IT department. You can enter new markets, streamline processes (converting cows into sheep) - like having one massive Excel spreadsheet.

The reality is that most jobs are a mixture of sheep, cow and pig tasks and the beauty of well designed SOA is that it can be brought on stream task by tasks. So all you need to do is work out which animal(s) will benefit the most and start here…….my advice is to look to help the sheep first.