The benefits of an open-source SOA
- 11 September, 2008 11:27
- Comments
Service-oriented architectures are helping companies do everything from automate business processes to increase agility, but implementing the technology is not necessarily forthright.
SOA requires the integration of many varied processes, applications and technologies that are difficult to mesh seamlessly, meaning incompatibility, scalability and flexibility issues often arise. The license-fee structure of traditional software can also limit options and add cost. Turning to open source technology can help alleviate these issues and accelerate deployment, as well as business adoption.
Open source has become a staple of enterprise-class IT as concerns about stability, security and support fall away. Open source is as stable, secure and well supported as proprietary solutions, if not more so. In addition open source SOA solutions provide:
- Simplicity -- Open source solutions are easy to find and easy to implement, with many architects and developers being familiar with the core mechanics of the technology. Open source developers are motivated by their communities to deliver easy-to-use frameworks and platforms. It also enables enterprises to rapidly create solutions to deliver tangible, measurable benefits.
- Openness -- The flexibility inherent in open source allows for more freedom and personalization of the solution than proprietary offerings, and means that an organization will see more value relevant to its operations from the installation.
- Affordability -- The open source subscription model makes SOA products less expensive than proprietary tool sets.
The benefits of open source SOA solutions can be realized in each of the six stages of the SOA evolution: 1) business process understanding; 2) IT assessment; 3) SOA design/determination; 4) SOA service enablement; 5) SOA integration and governance infrastructure; and 6) process orchestration/composition.
For the first three steps, work efforts are focused on the business processes, current IT design and SOA design, and the open source subscription model offers a more affordable and flexible pricing structure than traditional SOA solutions. That helps the SOA design work proceed more quickly without concern about per-CPU license fees.
The advantages of open source solutions are particularly evident during the final three steps in the process.
Recommended
Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.
- Bookmark this page
- Share this article
- Got more on this story? Email CIO
- Follow CIO on twitter
- IDC: Delivering Customer Value with Enterprise Flash Deployments
- Integrated Computing Platforms: Infrastructure Builds for Tomorrow’s Data Centre
- BYOD and Beyond - Implementing a Unified Access Solution
- HP Helps NEC Reduce Network Management Costs and Gain Efficiencies
- Six Reasons to Empower Your SharePoint Citizen Developers
-
Why change management doesn’t work
-
Larry Page wants to see your medical records
-
Dual-Persona Smartphones Not a BYOD Panacea
-
After two-year hiatus, EFF accepts bitcoin donations again
-
CIOs struggle to deliver timely mobile business apps: survey
-
Integrated Computing Platforms: Infrastructure Builds for Tomorrow’s Data Centre
Integrated Computing Platforms, such as EMC VSPEX RAs, provide a solution by eliminating the time (and cost) of designing, testing, and engineering integrated environments with components built independently of one another. These validated architectures are ready for production environments upon delivery, and offer a single point of support should IT require it. Learn more on how a leading IT vendor has aligned product innovation with an IT market need to improve efficiency, performance, and value for SMBs. -
Deploying Flash in the Enterprise
Flash is quickly emerging as the preferred way to overcome the nagging performance limitations of hard disk drives. However, because flash comes at a significant price premium, outright replacement of HDDs with flash only makes sense in situations in which capacity requirements are relatively small and performance requirements are high. Learn how deployment approaches-including hybrid storage arrays, server flash, and all-flash arrays-that combine the performance of flash with the capacity of HDDs can be cost effective for a broad range of performance requirements. -
NetApp FAS6240 Clustered SAN Champion of Champions
Storage systems today must match agility with diversified I/O performance to satisfy an enterprise’s changing needs. In their review, Silverton Consulting ranks the NetApp FAS6240 Clustered SAN, as an Enterprise OLTP “Champion of Champions.” Read the results of their benchmark testing and the features that impressed them the most.
Get exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis. 
