elemental links

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Primer

[Note added on 12/2/2005:  I've noticed a fair amount of views on this post lately, and while the early primer isn't horrible, the SOA Cheat Sheet I did for PSGroup is much better!  Go to this post].

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an important IT architectural strategy that is changing how software is developed, used and sold. You can use SOA for simple integration, to augment existing applications, to assemble new applications, and even as a springboard to break through the restrictive bounds of traditional application development to what we refer to as business scenario development. (In business scenario development, IT business solutions will be compositions of services, business events, and business processes mirroring the interactions (or flow) of your business.)

To be successful with SOA, first you need to understand what services and SOA are. From there, you need to adopt solid service-oriented practices in order to build a deep services catalog and implement an extensible SOA environment.

In our newly published SOA Primer, we focus on the beginning, with the basics on services and SOA.

The IT Elements...What are they?

Technology – Data – Applications, right?  Well, kind of.  No question, those are the most basic of the basic IT elements.  However, for IT to be meaningful, a business need must drive its execution.  To execute IT, you need people and tools.  To execute IT well, you need strategy and architecture. 

So what just happened?  We quickly surfaced the essential elements of IT: Business, Strategy, Architecture, IT Portfolios (Business Solution, Information, Infrastructure, Architecture/Technology, and Project), People and Tools. 

Why is a piece on the IT Elements our first entry?  We wanted to explain our name and our focus.  Elemental Links is an IT consulting firm specializing in strategy, architecture, IT portfolio planning and delivery for the enterprise. 

The “Links” refers to our unique ability to take a holistic view across the elements … resulting in holistic IT thinking (and action) for your business.