Initial phases of new SOA deployment

Most of the industry publications, sites and blogs are talking about SOA, trying to describe it and telling folks the best manner to implement a Service Oriented Architecture. I certainly noticed this trend and started digging into SOA and all the technologies surrounding SOA. We were recently acquired, and after the initial gap analysis of all of our applications and processes, Senior Management agreed to invest in rewriting our primary applications. The architecture team has started the process of taking a closer look at a Service Oriented Architecture, and has started the necessary investigative work to determine what works and what does not.

Given my role on the infrastructure deployment/support side of the business, I have little influence over new architecture decisions, but that does not stop me from talking with the architecture folks on a regular basis. I have always had a good understanding of the Front-end delivery side of applications (portals, clients, and web pages) along with the Back-end database servers and repository side, however the area that I need to focus on is the apps/workflow section that is between the portal resources and the database resources in a SOA type architecture.

Senior Management has beefed up the infrastructure team and has started the first phase of investigating products in the SOA space. I have been approached to deliver sandbox type resources (intel and unix servers) to assist the architects in their initial investigation of SOA type products, and I know that this is the opportunity that I have been looking for. I have shared my thoughts, my blog and limited knowledge of SOA, BPM and ESB with the architects who have been extremely open with information and in particular, have shared resources and pointed me to a couple of great resources that I am still investigating.

Over the next few months, I will share with you the resources that we use, keeping everyone up to date on the build-out of the sandbox environment, and communicate our experiences from a first person - ground floor approach.