Tuesday, February 13, 2007

SOA and EA Convergence?

I happened to read these articles about SOA and EA Convergence ....

http://weblog.infoworld.com/realworldsoa/archives/2007/02/soaea_convergen.html
http://weblog.infoworld.com/realworldsoa/archives/2007/02/open_group_deba.html

Hmm ... I think the author is confused. In my mind, EA is a process where is SOA is an approach.

When one looks at frameworks like TOGAF and FEAF, its clearly about the architecture process. These frameworks also encapsulate a detailed methodology of their own. Net-net, its about steps and best practices in understanding as-is architecture, bring in different drivers to define to-be architecture. EA approaches/process doesnt care about different pieces of technology or how the business processes are defined. Its just about providing principles for creation of sound architecture foundation satisfying the drivers of today and tomorrow.

On the other hand, SOA is an architectural approach - it does care about the way processes are defined enabling service orientation. It does care about specific pieces of technology and resulting interoperability between various components. It does expect such principles as reusability is put to action from top to bottom.

So, one should be able to apply EA principles/process to SOA approach... isnt it? In the process of applying EA principles to SOA approach, some specific steps may have to be redefined - such as QOS/SLA as SOA promotes organization interoperability.

Any thoughts folks?

3 comments:

pebbles said...

Ram..I agree with your comment. I don't undertsand the terms SOA architects and EA architects as mentioned in the original article. There is only software architects. EA is the final goal..i mean architect the enterprise(EA - Enterprise Architecture) and "Service oriented" is an approach to efficiently do that. So there is nothing like EA and SOA convergence, but only SOA enabling EA to be more efficient.

Anshu Gaind said...

I believe that SOA and EA are interrelated. Both SOA and EA generally end up meeting in the middle, by focusing on Business Capabilities. SOA works upstream, to create a Service Model from the Business Capabilities Model. EA works downstream, to create a Business Capabilities Model

EA is generally agnostic to the specific capability implementations. Though certain EA mandates can definitely limit the technology choices. Business capabilities can be implemented using a Services Oriented Architecture approach.

The relationship between SOA and EA are further discussed on my blog.

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