Connectivity and SOA

• Current trends in technology are leading to application decomposition
  As adoption of Web Services increases, traditional applications (e.g. ERP, CRM) are being seen as too siloed in their approach to the business needs.
• The move to SOA will drive connectivity needs
  The move to a more services-led approach will drive the need for the adaptors at an exponential rate. With services providing discrete functions, a single process may well involve the need for hundreds of these to interoperate and exchange data to facilitate the process needs.
• Organisations need to look at outwards connectivity
  "Value chains", where processes include suppliers and customers, can provide distinct market differentiation where process connectivity is used successfully.
• "Point-to-point" solutions will rapidly become unusable
  "Point-to-point" connectivity solutions require adaptors at the rate of the number of data stores/end points squared plus 1 (n²+1), whereas a bus-based approach only requires one adaptor per data store/end points (n). This means that managing a point-to-point architecture will rapidly become infeasible.
• Contextuality of data connectivity is key
  To maintain business and technical flexibility, data mapping and transformations need to be carried out by adaptors associated with the data store/end point, and abstraction needs to be provided by a bus architecture.
• Bus architectures cut down on the need for management and maintenance
  The intelligent abstraction of connectivity means that fewer adaptors need to be managed and maintained, enabling organisations to invest more IT budget in facilitating the business, rather than spending on fire-fighting and maintenance.

Conclusion
SOA will provide greater flexibility for organisations looking to automate and facilitate dynamic processes both within their own organisation and between themselves and their suppliers and customers. However, connectivity within an SOA is a major problem, and must be addressed at an early stage. The use of a bus architecture provides a high level of abstraction and minimises the number of adaptors required, while data transformation and intelligent data mapping helps to lower the time spent on retro-testing and maintenance costs.