Most people agree that SOA is a beneficial business/IT schematic. But there are challenges:

• Security is one of the biggest down sides to SOA- and this is intentional. SOA architects know there are a number of security options that can seamlessly integrate. Here are some options:
• • When you use “Locked IP addresses,” you allow only certain approved IP addresses to gain access to your system. For example, consider an e-commerce site. Only commands asking for services coming from the actual e-commerce website would be approved. Therefore no random people can gain access to the database, shipping, credit card processing or accounting systems that all make up an e-commerce SOA network.
  • Institute a required user name and password on your network. Very simple, but effective.
  • Use a certificate with an expiration date that is not far off. Another simple but useful tool to mitigate security worries. 
• Lack of control is another challenge associated with SOA.
• • If you are using a third party service provider and their service goes down – you are toast. For example, let’s say you are an author and you sell your book on your website. If someone clicks on a link to buy your book they get taken to re-seller website. What happens if the re-seller is down? Your books are not being sold. That is a problem. In business critical situations such as these you might think of changing the process and instead selling your book through your own website. In other situations that are not as business critical the answer is to just wait for the third-party service to come back online.
• Performance
• • You might have complete control of the moving parts in a SOA structure, but what happens when a part of the architecture becomes a weak link or bottle neck? For example, you may have lightning fast payment, shipping and inventory modules, but the order processing portion only handles one order per minute. Perhaps you could just go ahead and replace this portion. Alas, this could take years and an investment in the millions of dollars. Your company may decide it’s not worth the investment, or maybe there is a lack of funding; but if you forecast increased orders and there is money in the budget then a good idea might be to parse your project into manageable portions. 

In Summary

SOA is here. There is no turning back. The key to ensuring effective use of SOA is to realize the power and identify problems early and look for solutions promptly.

Author Megan Ahearn serves as the director of communications at Eureka Software Solutions. For more information about SOA contact us to set up an appointment. For Austin resident call 512.459.9292, our toll-free number is 866.936.9292.