| SOA Service Engineering |
Overview
Every SOA / I.T. Transformation initiative represents a significant investment. The value generated by that investment will only be as good as
the services that form the building blocks of a "composable" I.T. enterprise. Technical excellence in SOA service engineering is foundational to
ensuring excellent return on that investment. Yet, there is often a rush toward service coding without adequate consideration for the
architectural issues that ensure technical excellence.
Effective service engineering is much more than coding services. It is an effort that requires addressing the following problem domains:
Services and Application "Silos" - Many I.T. Transformation initiatives require extracting business process functionality and data embedded
within vertical applications (application "silos") and capturing these assets within reusable process and data services. When improperly
addressed, these efforts can become costly while yielding little value. Vektrel offers the expertise and experience that ensures practical, cost
effective application value extraction and service enablement.
Vektrel is successfully engineering, developing and delivering mission critical services, and their supporting infrastructures, in some of the most
demanding client environments in the industry (e.g.: high performance, high security, high availability). The sections that follow address some
key areas where Vektrel service engineering is ensuring the success of client SOA / I.T. Transformation investments.
Every SOA / I.T. Transformation initiative represents a significant investment. The value generated by that investment will only be as good as
the services that form the building blocks of a "composable" I.T. enterprise. Technical excellence in SOA service engineering is foundational to
ensuring excellent return on that investment. Yet, there is often a rush toward service coding without adequate consideration for the
architectural issues that ensure technical excellence.
Effective service engineering is much more than coding services. It is an effort that requires addressing the following problem domains:
- Service Hosting Platforms - The nature of the platforms hosting process, data, integration and presentation services.
- Composite Service Engineering - The design of the infrastructure that facilitates how services call other services.
- Network Infrastructure Engineering - The network infrastructure that binds, load balances and exposes service hosting platforms and their
endpoints. - Security Engineering - The extent to which service hosting platforms, and their service endpoints, are abstracted from security concerns.
- Information Architecture - The availability of effective, transactional data services that work with transactional, operational information.
- Operational Efficiency / Agility Engineering - The management and administrative interfaces that define the day-to-day cost of ownership
of service hosting platforms and their ability to rapidly accommodate change. - Service Engineering Governance - The alignment of service authoring with the strategic, operational, security and technical directions of
the organization. - Service Software Engineering - The effectiveness of service software architecture.
- Auditing / Reporting / Logging / Compliance Infrastructure - The efficiency and performance of infrastructures supporting service activity
tracking. - Service Interaction Model - The model that defines all aspects of how service clients and service endpoints interact.
- Etc - Many more issues.
Services and Application "Silos" - Many I.T. Transformation initiatives require extracting business process functionality and data embedded
within vertical applications (application "silos") and capturing these assets within reusable process and data services. When improperly
addressed, these efforts can become costly while yielding little value. Vektrel offers the expertise and experience that ensures practical, cost
effective application value extraction and service enablement.
Vektrel is successfully engineering, developing and delivering mission critical services, and their supporting infrastructures, in some of the most
demanding client environments in the industry (e.g.: high performance, high security, high availability). The sections that follow address some
key areas where Vektrel service engineering is ensuring the success of client SOA / I.T. Transformation investments.
Composite Service Engineering
One of the key goals of any SOA / I.T. Transformation investment is to develop the potential to rapidly assemble powerful new services by
composing their functionality from other services. Services that call other services are often referred to as "composite" services. There are
many critical engineering issues associated with designing efficient composite services (see the Performance Engineering section for some
examples). The architecture and infrastructure that supports composite service calls can make the difference between excellent and poor return
on investment.
Vektrel offers deep expertise in the complexities and challenges of composite service engineering. Vektrel has evolved proven solutions to these
architectural challenges that consistently yield high performance while ensuring security and traceability. Additionally, Vektrel invests in areas of
innovation that have yielded creative solutions to some of the most difficult challenges associated with high performance composite service
engineering.
One of the key goals of any SOA / I.T. Transformation investment is to develop the potential to rapidly assemble powerful new services by
composing their functionality from other services. Services that call other services are often referred to as "composite" services. There are
many critical engineering issues associated with designing efficient composite services (see the Performance Engineering section for some
examples). The architecture and infrastructure that supports composite service calls can make the difference between excellent and poor return
on investment.
Vektrel offers deep expertise in the complexities and challenges of composite service engineering. Vektrel has evolved proven solutions to these
architectural challenges that consistently yield high performance while ensuring security and traceability. Additionally, Vektrel invests in areas of
innovation that have yielded creative solutions to some of the most difficult challenges associated with high performance composite service
engineering.
Service Hosting Foundations
Service Hosting Foundations are often perceived to be little more than a vendor suite (or "stack") of products. It's important to note that, how
and where services are hosted has an enormous impact on SOA architecture and the overall success of the investment.
Where - Consider the following service hosting platform options:
Working with a variety of clients, Vektrel has seen all of these approaches in various stages of SOA maturity. Every service hosting decision has
advantages, disadvantages, pitfalls, challenges and long term repercussions to I.T. and the organization it supports. Establishing service
hosting foundations is very much a strategic decision that requires expertise in SOA problem domains and SOA solution architecture design and
trade offs. It also requires comprehensive knowledge of the capabilities and limitations of vendor platforms and open source platforms.
How - How services are hosted on target platforms is at least as important as where. For example, many ESB foundations are also service
hosting foundations. Capabilities such as these raise many questions concerning the merits, advantages and disadvantages of hosting services
on service mediation (ESB) foundations. There are many key issues relative to "how" services are hosted. If, for example, the service hosting
foundations reside on virtualized servers, many new architectural issues and possibilities come into play (see SOA and Virtualization Technology
Fusion).
Vendors - In selecting and positioning services on hosting platforms, it's important to realize that SOA product vendors may have different
priorities. Although every vendor will listen attentively to your requirements, their goals may favor selling more licenses over the long term.
Vektrel is a vendor neutral I.T. engineering provider with a focus on technical excellence through best-of-breed foundations and optimal
architectural positioning for services. We have defined and guided the service hosting foundations of Fortune 500 clients with a focus on client
strategic goals.
Service Hosting Foundations are often perceived to be little more than a vendor suite (or "stack") of products. It's important to note that, how
and where services are hosted has an enormous impact on SOA architecture and the overall success of the investment.
Where - Consider the following service hosting platform options:
- ERP platform hosting (e.g.: SAP Netweaver, etc)
- Mainframe hosting
- Open Source Platform hosting
- Vendor suite hosting (e.g.: BEA / Oracle, IBM, etc)
- Heterogeneous hosting - Services hosted on multiple heterogeneous platforms
- SOA Federation - Services hosted from multiple heterogeneous networks and entities.
Working with a variety of clients, Vektrel has seen all of these approaches in various stages of SOA maturity. Every service hosting decision has
advantages, disadvantages, pitfalls, challenges and long term repercussions to I.T. and the organization it supports. Establishing service
hosting foundations is very much a strategic decision that requires expertise in SOA problem domains and SOA solution architecture design and
trade offs. It also requires comprehensive knowledge of the capabilities and limitations of vendor platforms and open source platforms.
How - How services are hosted on target platforms is at least as important as where. For example, many ESB foundations are also service
hosting foundations. Capabilities such as these raise many questions concerning the merits, advantages and disadvantages of hosting services
on service mediation (ESB) foundations. There are many key issues relative to "how" services are hosted. If, for example, the service hosting
foundations reside on virtualized servers, many new architectural issues and possibilities come into play (see SOA and Virtualization Technology
Fusion).
Vendors - In selecting and positioning services on hosting platforms, it's important to realize that SOA product vendors may have different
priorities. Although every vendor will listen attentively to your requirements, their goals may favor selling more licenses over the long term.
Vektrel is a vendor neutral I.T. engineering provider with a focus on technical excellence through best-of-breed foundations and optimal
architectural positioning for services. We have defined and guided the service hosting foundations of Fortune 500 clients with a focus on client
strategic goals.
Service Interaction Model
A fundamental reality of any larger I.T. organization is a system landscape comprised of a wide variety of application form factors, application
server platforms and operating systems (a heterogeneous client-side SOA ecosystem). Each of these platforms utilizes different software
engineering frameworks with different capabilities and limitations. Limited or incompatible support for standards (e.g.: WS-Security, WS*, SAML)
within heterogeneous platforms poses architectural challenges relative to consistent client support engineering. These limitations and
incompatibilities make it unlikely that any two service clients can consume and interact with services with the same capabilities using the same
WSDL and the same WS-Policy constraints. Client-side realities make it difficult to establish and enforce requirements for consistent client-side
behavior relative to service security, performance and operational agility.
Against this challenging backdrop, there exists the SOA engineering goal of ensuring heterogeneous service clients have one, common, simple,
consistent and powerful model for accessing and interacting with SOA services. Vektrel refers to this as the “Service Interaction Model”. This
model spans many issues common to service interaction (e.g.: security, standards support, standards abstraction, complexity abstraction,
performance, operational agility, etc). Complementary to this engineering goal is the operational goal of simple client / SOA "on-ramping" and
minimal runtime administrative overhead for all service clients regardless of host platform limitations.
The value of SOA and I.T. Transformation investments quickly decline when heterogeneous client platforms cannot easily consume services in a
simple, common, consistent standards based manner. They also decline when client limitations make it impossible for heterogeneous clients to
easily adapt to policy changes within the SOA service security layer. Yet, these heterogeneous client-side challenges are largely ignored by the
SOA product vendor community (the majority of vendor offerings have an ESB and service-side focus). It largely falls to experienced SOA and
enterprise architects to address these client-side issues.
Resolving the technical issues inherent in heterogeneous SOA client landscapes is a key success factor relative to effective SOA solution
engineering. Vektrel has helped transition highly heterogeneous, large-scale I.T. environments to SOA foundations over time. These efforts
have evolved practical, effective, agile and proven client-side, service interaction solutions that facilitate service consumer "on-ramping" in a
manner that accommodates limitations and diversity while abstracting clients from complexity.
A fundamental reality of any larger I.T. organization is a system landscape comprised of a wide variety of application form factors, application
server platforms and operating systems (a heterogeneous client-side SOA ecosystem). Each of these platforms utilizes different software
engineering frameworks with different capabilities and limitations. Limited or incompatible support for standards (e.g.: WS-Security, WS*, SAML)
within heterogeneous platforms poses architectural challenges relative to consistent client support engineering. These limitations and
incompatibilities make it unlikely that any two service clients can consume and interact with services with the same capabilities using the same
WSDL and the same WS-Policy constraints. Client-side realities make it difficult to establish and enforce requirements for consistent client-side
behavior relative to service security, performance and operational agility.
Against this challenging backdrop, there exists the SOA engineering goal of ensuring heterogeneous service clients have one, common, simple,
consistent and powerful model for accessing and interacting with SOA services. Vektrel refers to this as the “Service Interaction Model”. This
model spans many issues common to service interaction (e.g.: security, standards support, standards abstraction, complexity abstraction,
performance, operational agility, etc). Complementary to this engineering goal is the operational goal of simple client / SOA "on-ramping" and
minimal runtime administrative overhead for all service clients regardless of host platform limitations.
The value of SOA and I.T. Transformation investments quickly decline when heterogeneous client platforms cannot easily consume services in a
simple, common, consistent standards based manner. They also decline when client limitations make it impossible for heterogeneous clients to
easily adapt to policy changes within the SOA service security layer. Yet, these heterogeneous client-side challenges are largely ignored by the
SOA product vendor community (the majority of vendor offerings have an ESB and service-side focus). It largely falls to experienced SOA and
enterprise architects to address these client-side issues.
Resolving the technical issues inherent in heterogeneous SOA client landscapes is a key success factor relative to effective SOA solution
engineering. Vektrel has helped transition highly heterogeneous, large-scale I.T. environments to SOA foundations over time. These efforts
have evolved practical, effective, agile and proven client-side, service interaction solutions that facilitate service consumer "on-ramping" in a
manner that accommodates limitations and diversity while abstracting clients from complexity.
Process Services
Technical excellence in process service engineering requires addressing a set of architectural, strategic and software engineering issues.
Portability - A short time ago, the goal of building process services that were truly portable between BPM platforms simply wasn't practical.
Today, these strategic goals are increasingly possible. True process service portability is an enormous strategic asset to any I.T. organization.
Achieving true process portability within sophisticated BPM / BPEL 2 process services requires an understanding of where incompatibilities exist
and how to accommodate them in a manner that preserves portability. The ability to deliver on true portability requires architectural expertise
coupled with a knowledge of vendor capabilities, limitations and proprietary extensions.
BPM vs ESB - There is a measure of turmoil within the SOA engineering and vendor communities concerning how and where process services
should be designed and hosted. Many ESB vendors want to own service orchestration and incorporate BPM / BPEL capabilities at the ESB level.
However, in real-world implementations, practical service orchestration (e.g.: composite service engineering) virtually always weaves business
logic and integration activities between composite service calls. Business process automation and integration products advocate a separation of
concerns and position process automation, including composite services, on BPM foundations separate from service mediation (ESB) products.
The decision of how and where to implement BPM and integration services has far ranging architectural and strategic implications to the
enterprise and the success of the overall SOA / I.T. Transformation initiative.
Relationship to EAI - Process modeling and service orchestration both typically weave Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) activities into
process flows that span multiple business platforms. Vendors respond to this reality by incorporating some EAI capabilities into BPM tools and
ESB products (often limited EAI capabilities). These capabilities raise questions relative to the architectural relationships between EAI, BPM and
ESB foundations. Architectural decisions must be made concerning how EAI, BPM and ESB functionality is positioned within a SOA solution
architecture.
Process service engineering encompasses other key issues such as performance engineering, workflow integration and more. Vektrel offers
exceptional depth in process service portability engineering, performance engineering, strategic / technical positioning of process services, EAI /
BPM / ESB relationships and more. Our architects and engineering teams understand the many issues and challenges associated with technical
excellence in process service engineering. They have designed, developed and implemented many mission critical, standards based, high
performance process services that have yielded exceptional return-on-investment to our clients.
Technical excellence in process service engineering requires addressing a set of architectural, strategic and software engineering issues.
Portability - A short time ago, the goal of building process services that were truly portable between BPM platforms simply wasn't practical.
Today, these strategic goals are increasingly possible. True process service portability is an enormous strategic asset to any I.T. organization.
Achieving true process portability within sophisticated BPM / BPEL 2 process services requires an understanding of where incompatibilities exist
and how to accommodate them in a manner that preserves portability. The ability to deliver on true portability requires architectural expertise
coupled with a knowledge of vendor capabilities, limitations and proprietary extensions.
BPM vs ESB - There is a measure of turmoil within the SOA engineering and vendor communities concerning how and where process services
should be designed and hosted. Many ESB vendors want to own service orchestration and incorporate BPM / BPEL capabilities at the ESB level.
However, in real-world implementations, practical service orchestration (e.g.: composite service engineering) virtually always weaves business
logic and integration activities between composite service calls. Business process automation and integration products advocate a separation of
concerns and position process automation, including composite services, on BPM foundations separate from service mediation (ESB) products.
The decision of how and where to implement BPM and integration services has far ranging architectural and strategic implications to the
enterprise and the success of the overall SOA / I.T. Transformation initiative.
Relationship to EAI - Process modeling and service orchestration both typically weave Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) activities into
process flows that span multiple business platforms. Vendors respond to this reality by incorporating some EAI capabilities into BPM tools and
ESB products (often limited EAI capabilities). These capabilities raise questions relative to the architectural relationships between EAI, BPM and
ESB foundations. Architectural decisions must be made concerning how EAI, BPM and ESB functionality is positioned within a SOA solution
architecture.
Process service engineering encompasses other key issues such as performance engineering, workflow integration and more. Vektrel offers
exceptional depth in process service portability engineering, performance engineering, strategic / technical positioning of process services, EAI /
BPM / ESB relationships and more. Our architects and engineering teams understand the many issues and challenges associated with technical
excellence in process service engineering. They have designed, developed and implemented many mission critical, standards based, high
performance process services that have yielded exceptional return-on-investment to our clients.
Data Services
Data services are among the most neglected aspects of SOA solution engineering. In the end, services are about data. They require an
investment in Information Architecture to bring out their full potential value (their ROI). Just as Business Intelligence products require higher level
perspectives on “business entities”, so do composite applications and workflows that consume transactional data services. There is a need to
model the higher-level transactional, operational business entities that workflows, BPM processes and composite applications typically utilize.
Vektrel offers extensive experience in building high performance data services that work with the highly interactive, transactional, operational
data that are the focus of workflows and business processes. Vektrel offers extensive experience in aggregating, collating and transforming data
from multiple data sources to assemble the near real-time transactional data services that are foundational to effective service engineering.
Explore the following link for more information on Vektrel data services and SOA data integration.
Data services are among the most neglected aspects of SOA solution engineering. In the end, services are about data. They require an
investment in Information Architecture to bring out their full potential value (their ROI). Just as Business Intelligence products require higher level
perspectives on “business entities”, so do composite applications and workflows that consume transactional data services. There is a need to
model the higher-level transactional, operational business entities that workflows, BPM processes and composite applications typically utilize.
Vektrel offers extensive experience in building high performance data services that work with the highly interactive, transactional, operational
data that are the focus of workflows and business processes. Vektrel offers extensive experience in aggregating, collating and transforming data
from multiple data sources to assemble the near real-time transactional data services that are foundational to effective service engineering.
Explore the following link for more information on Vektrel data services and SOA data integration.
Event-Driven Integration Services
With event-driven integration, mission critical enterprise integrations are engineered as SOA services invoked by a wide variety of business
process events occurring throughout an I.T. enterprise. Vektrel was an early adopter of this powerful technique that drives critical integration
activities through the same security, trust, logging / auditing and compliance infrastructure that tracks and secures standard SOA service
interactions. This technique ensures that all critical enterprise integrations leverage a 24 / 7, secure service infrastructure that monitors,
secures, audits and enforces compliance on all mission critical process integration activities occurring throughout an enterprise.
Vektrel engineering teams have put into production event driven integration solutions that support large-scale, challenging, mission critical
integration initiatives (e.g.: transitioning the financial, ERP and process foundations of Fortune 500 global enterprises). Our solutions integrate
leading-edge, rules-based enterprise event scheduling / monitoring / orchestration infrastructures with world-class SOA infrastructures to provide
our clients with the efficiency, traceability and security that translates into a tangible competitive edge.
With event-driven integration, mission critical enterprise integrations are engineered as SOA services invoked by a wide variety of business
process events occurring throughout an I.T. enterprise. Vektrel was an early adopter of this powerful technique that drives critical integration
activities through the same security, trust, logging / auditing and compliance infrastructure that tracks and secures standard SOA service
interactions. This technique ensures that all critical enterprise integrations leverage a 24 / 7, secure service infrastructure that monitors,
secures, audits and enforces compliance on all mission critical process integration activities occurring throughout an enterprise.
Vektrel engineering teams have put into production event driven integration solutions that support large-scale, challenging, mission critical
integration initiatives (e.g.: transitioning the financial, ERP and process foundations of Fortune 500 global enterprises). Our solutions integrate
leading-edge, rules-based enterprise event scheduling / monitoring / orchestration infrastructures with world-class SOA infrastructures to provide
our clients with the efficiency, traceability and security that translates into a tangible competitive edge.
Presentation Services
The last year or two have seen rapid evolution in how Web applications present information and interact with users. Vektrel has been at the
forefront of this trend by designing, developing and implementing secure, high-performance presentation services that provide the XML streams
that are foundational to Rich Internet Applications (RIA) and standards based "portlets" (WSRP).
Please follow this link to learn how Vektrel is working to drive innovation in the emerging fusion between SOA and Presenation Technologies.
The last year or two have seen rapid evolution in how Web applications present information and interact with users. Vektrel has been at the
forefront of this trend by designing, developing and implementing secure, high-performance presentation services that provide the XML streams
that are foundational to Rich Internet Applications (RIA) and standards based "portlets" (WSRP).
Please follow this link to learn how Vektrel is working to drive innovation in the emerging fusion between SOA and Presenation Technologies.
