Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Integration has become one of most dominant styles of IT integration. The event-driven style of integration delivers unique advantages to solve fundamental IT challenges. Simultaneously, there is lack of clarity about this integration concept and people often confuse it with Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) or an integration concept to integrate web services. In this blog, we will discuss some important concepts integral to SOA integration.
What is SOA Integration Not?
SOA integration is not an ESB and neither a mechanism to only integrate Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Web services. It can be defined with the problems it addresses like longer cycles for new products, customer data onboarding, disparate IT systems, etc. SOA delivers out-of-the-box reusability to fix these complex business problems which an Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) or coded approach cannot fix.
What’s up With EAI and Hand Coded Approaches?
Archaic forms of integration were designed to built better transparency between business partners and users for only information exchange. However, SOA was introduced to address specific business needs apart from data services, to real time events and process management. In a nutshell, the earlier solutions, i.e., ESB and EAI were built haphazardly for only solving the need based data connectivity challenges.
Moreover, the point-based solutions lacked integrating patterns for supporting dynamic integration needs in a complex hybrid environment. They also pose inefficiencies for management and security of IT systems. Weighty challenges, i,e Java or .NET integration, cloud integration need advanced service mediation capabilities which are delivered by SOA.
In earlier models, developers built services that used the same data points for internal and external use. Accidentally, they used to create multiple services with differing rules for various applications that used the same data. Managing all this becomes intensely difficult for IT teams.
How SOA Integration Helps You Gain a Competitive Edge?
SOA offers advanced collection of features for seamlessly integrating new & old technologies and delivering better business results. The approach delivers out-of-the-box reusability and flexibility for combining composite services and orchestrating them in an order across the enterprise. It delivers easy to plug-in capabilities, schemas, and end-to-end SOA security paradigms to map and integrate packaged applications, and processes. Here are some ways an SOA integration framework allows organizations to reap the true benefits:
SOA Transforms IT Services: SOA integration leverages the concept of Service-Oriented Architecture to harness greater value from the IT assets. The composable architecture can be reused across the enterprise over and again. IT provides a robust framework for aligning and orchestrating business processes, data and events as per the evolving business requirements. This advantage drives the IT responsiveness for emerging business needs. This unique capability also accelerates IT responsiveness as per constant changes in business requirements.
Establishes a Scalable Integration Pathway: SOA delivers advanced components for orchestrating services, processes, and data in multiple integration scenarios. Some of the advanced components it packs are run-time optimization, unique processing, and advanced integration tooling. The solution enables business users to scale workflows across multiple projects for seamless inter-enterprise and intra enterprise data sharing in a complex network.
Optimizes Information Exchange: SOA integration establishes strong focus on integrating the data of transformational and archaic data contained in disparate systems. It address federated query requirements between complex new and old paradigms. This unique approach optimizes information exchange across the enterprise to fit diverse data connectivity requirements. Reusability components available in SOA integration enable users to send and receive data across multiple federated projects.
Delivers Reusable Connectivity: SOA establishes data connectivity as a stellar reusable component to ensure continuous flow of live data. This integral aspect of SOA allows data to traverse across traditional as well as ERP systems. It enables IT business users to reuse or scale the same tooling and expand the integration flow. It also delivers tools to monitor integrated business-activities and bring real-time process improvement.