Shrinking the Enterprise with SOA
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• Cognizant 20-20 Insights
Shrinking the Enterprise with SOA
A framework to help companies to more effectively create a
distributed service-oriented architecture that reduces costs,
optimizes infrastructure and facilitates more manageable
sharing of services across the enterprise.
Executive Summary prises. There are many parameters to assess.
For example, customer information or product
The concept of a service-oriented architecture
details can be maintained in many places, but
(SOA) has been around more than 15 years. There
finding the right information requires locating
are several ways to handle an SOA, but some
the appropriate team and numerous detailed
approaches are complex to maintain and difficult
meetings.
to sustain over time. This white paper addresses
the challenges and provides simplified solutions • Accessing data: To access data across the
to maintain data that enable the free flow of infor- enterprise, organizations typically face the fol-
mation across the enterprise. lowing challenges:
Visualizing data in any organization is critical >> Inconsistent standards.
in establishing the infrastructure required to >> Data trapped in legacy applications with
simplify SOA support. Organizations typically minimal and non-customized interfaces.
have numerous data points. The smoothest
possible transition is possible if each data point in
>> A lack of separate applications or back-end
jobs to maintain the data.
an organization can communicate in a universal
language such as XML or JSON. Pushing them >> Reading the data in the right format requires
to Web-services architecture ensures that every additional development work.
data point in an organization is accessible and • Data security challenges: In reality, enter-
secured. prise SOA is much more difficult because
services may be deployed across multiple do-
Data challenges enterprises face include:
mains of ownership. To make interactions pos-
sible, mechanisms have to be present to con-
• Redundancy: Much of the data that flows
vey semantics, to declare and enforce policies
across an organization is redundant. In fact,
and contracts and to use constraints for data
applications, hardware, resources, time and
passed in and out of the services as well as ex-
other related resources used for maintaining
pressions for the behavior models of services.
and provisioning are often redundant in ways
The ability to understand both the structure
that are difficult for organizations to detect.
and semantics of data passing between service
• Finding the right data: Locating data is an- end points is essential for all parties involved.
other painful and difficult task in many enter-
cognizant 20-20 insights | may 2014• Monitoring the services developed in SOA: data. Moreover, some organizations lack data
As a result of this challenge, many specialized access standards, and in some cases the code is
platforms are evolving to meet these needs. so closed that it’s difficult to understand the logic
that underlies it.
A Framework, Tools and Dashboard
to Visualize SOA All of the above problems are common. This white
How can organizations address the above paper focuses on remedies for them.
problems? Our work with companies across indus-
tries over the last dozen years on SOA projects Defining and Designing an Effective
makes clear that organizations need to build a Enterprise SOA Solution
framework with a set of tools that are portable, The building blocks within our SOA framework
easily customizable and generic to deploy. Web used to address the aforementioned challenges
services offer great promise to reduce complex- are as follows:
ity and enhance application interoperability. Many
organizations typically end up with numerous • Portal.
useful Web services and are often unaware which
ones provide what functionality due to a lack of • Security bots.
tools and architecture. • SLA management.
Many organizations recognize that their Web • Search indexer.
services and functionality are either partially or • Dashboard.
fully built-in with at least more than five applica-
• Executive dashboard.
tions. As a result, data often becomes redundant
and has multiple sources for the same informa- • Agent brokers.
tion, despite the fact that many organizations • Data sniffer.
have strong policies to control and secure the
• Data pickers.
Anatomy of an SOA Solution
Monitoring/Event Management
Process/Orchestration Governance
Services
Services
Data Services/Messaging
Data Abstraction
Data Data Legacy Legacy
Repository
Internet-Based New Services
Services
Figure 1
cognizant 20-20 insights 2A general SOA framework can be deployed at SOA Portal
organizations (see Figure 1). To understand how The portal’s main purpose is to register services
SOA works, please refer to other white papers (using industry conventions) and validate func-
and articles across the Internet. tionality. The description of the Web services and
their taxonomy and details will help other devel-
To design an effective solution for framework
opers find the right components. Every enter-
SOA, organizations need to consider numerous
prise Web service must be registered so it can be
factors. One of the critical objectives is to create a
properly monitored (see Figure 2).
cost-effective, portable and generic solution that
can be deployed across enterprises. Agents and Brokers
Once the Web service is registered, certain back-
To keep maintenance costs low, our SOA
ground processes are necessary for it to be part
framework uses a decentralized, agent-based
of an enterprise SOA. Agents and brokers are
approach compared with a broker-based system
installed on the server where the Web service
where all service requests are handled by a server
is located. Agents and brokers are a set of light-
or set of servers. Custom-developed agents
weight components that decentralize SOA layout.
or small code libraries sit on all its application
Agents are mainly created in J2EE and .Net to
servers to intercept various pieces of information
conform with the way most Web services are
about the services, such as usage, response time
constructed. Five different activities are handled
and IP address. As these data points flow back
by an agent once installed on the server of the
and forth, they are recorded and stored locally
hosted Web service.
and transmitted on a regular basis via a log file to
the framework database. The agents support the Services are instrumented via the SOA framework
subscription, management and dashboard layers agent to provide secure access control and moni-
over the top of the existing SOA framework. The toring of service usage events. In this approach,
subscription layer allows developers to publish the SOA framework infrastructure is highly dis-
and consume Web services and to set up SLAs tributed, with agents colocated within application
regarding their service. containers (the Java or .NET application engines
on which the application services run within the
A decentralized SOA framework covers four
organization’s infrastructure). This arrangement
processes:
allows the SOA framework to scale horizontally
• Portal. in conjunction with the application infrastructure.
• Dashboard. Agents are added only when new services are
exposed. The centralized broker model does not
• Brokers.
require agents, and therefore does not intrude on
• Agents. the actual application.
Building an Effective SOA
Developer Web Service
Develops SOA Publishes Web Service Providers
After Validation Is Ready for
Is Ready to Be
Approve
Web Service Discovery Consumed
Web Services Web Service
Registers in SOA SLA Is Applied. Subscription Approval Process
Figure 2
cognizant 20-20 insights 3At a Glance: SOA Portal
Developers WSDL
Dashboard Portal SLA Details Extractors WS Search Help Tools
Figure 3
• Security Management: The SOA framework a second layer of security. Services that are
uses “username tokens” (based on Web exposed to external customers and partners are
services WS-Security model) to provide authen- accessed via public-network-facing gateways.
tication and authorization. Depending on how These gateways use username tokens for
the service is instrumented, these activities are authentication and authorization; they also
performed at run-time by the agent or by the require “digital-signature”-based encryption
centralized broker. Agents and the broker have for privacy protection and data integrity.
the ability to cache the credentials and authen-
SOA Framework: Return on Investment
tication information to improve performance.
The security service itself is deployed as a The benefits and returns on investment for a SOA
framework service that is accessed by agents framework can be broadly classified into three
and the broker. categories:
For services that are used across business • The cost and “speed to market” benefits
units, a two-way secure sockets layer (SSL) at associated with reuse of services.
the transport layer is usually added to provide
Quick Take
Leveraging Service-Oriented Architecture to Deliver Value:
The SOA Framework Experience
A company we worked with in the recent past Finally, in addition to service reuse benefits, any
adopted a decentralized SOA framework and saw business will find that exposing Web services
a net savings of approximately $5 million in just (customer information, billing details and
one year from service reuse. This was achieved by other related services) in a B2B environment
both encouraging the creation of services as well with additional security provisions to external
as the distribution of the services via the SOA enterprise customers can yield further benefits.
framework repository. An organizational target For example, allowing the customer and partner
for service creation was set and was translated applications to directly invoke services might
into targets for individual development portfolios result in fewer calls into the operations centers
depending on their size and the nature of their as these communications would have otherwise
development work. The SOA framework has also been made via calls. A tremendous growth in the
enabled the retirement of legacy systems as part use of B2B “trouble reporting” services when they
of infrastructure consolidation: Over the period, are made available to customers and partners can
the IT budget has been slashed to half of its cost. be achieved.
cognizant 20-20 insights 4• The cost benefits associated with system con- unit communication within an organization with
solidation and legacy system “decommission- B2B partners. As the SOA framework overcomes
ing.” challenges, it should evolve in three ways:
• The cost and efficiency benefits associated
• Continued functional additions via framework
with the direct exposure of these services to services: Expanding the SOA framework
external customers and B2B partners. services beyond security and logging, and
The cost and “speed to market” benefits associ- creating new framework services for SLA
ated with service reuse are obvious as it is usually contract management, service discovery and
significantly faster to reuse a service compared to even the dynamic provisioning of services.
writing it from scratch. For any of these benefits
to be realized, there must be a significant level of
• Migrating from service standardization to
information standardization: Integrating an
adoption of services and SOA across the company. SOA framework with an enterprise data
The simplicity of the SOA framework’s distributed services platform to unlock information from
agent model and the associated portal environ- legacy data sources and expose them as data
ment helps considerably with its service adoption. services.
Looking Forward • Moving toward full business automation:
A distributed SOA model can be widely adopted Total integration of service composition and
within any enterprise that supports service business orchestration tooling into the platform
creation and management. While the internal to automate entire business processes — from
adoption and growth of SOAs has been phenome- contract definition to service creation.
nal, the platform has also enabled cross-business-
References
• Kyle Gabhart, Bibhas Bhattacharya, Service Oriented Architecture Field Guide for Executives.
• http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/soa/ind-soa-mdm-2090170.html.
• http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/101084/Hammering_Out_Web_Services_Links.
• http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/verizon-goes-back-workbench-019.
About the Author
Sameer Kulkarni is a Senior Associate, Technology Consultant and Business Analyst within Cognizant’s
Advanced Systems Group. He has 13-plus years of experience in systems analysis, programming, architec-
ture, testing and implementation across multiplatform applications. Sameer has worked as a developer
and architect on all the Microsoft technologies since 2000. He received his masters in computer applica-
tions from Pune University. Sameer can be reached at Sameer.Kulkarni4@cognizant.com.
About Cognizant
Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process out-
sourcing services, dedicated to helping the world’s leading companies build stronger businesses. Headquartered in
Teaneck, New Jersey (U.S.), Cognizant combines a passion for client satisfaction, technology innovation, deep industry
and business process expertise, and a global, collaborative workforce that embodies the future of work. With over 75
development and delivery centers worldwide and approximately 178,600 employees as of March 31, 2014, Cognizant
is a member of the NASDAQ-100, the S&P 500, the Forbes Global 2000, and the Fortune 500 and is ranked among
the top performing and fastest growing companies in the world. Visit us online at www.cognizant.com or follow us on
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