Service oriented architecture

Helping organizations achieve the promises of SOA

Organizations are under enormous pressure to respond more quickly to the changing demands of their customers, partners, suppliers and employees. Service oriented architecture (SOA) promises to deliver the speed and adaptability businesses and governments need to make their organizations more service-driven.

Simply stated, SOA is an architectural approach built on a technology foundation that packages reusable business activity components as well-defined services. Through SOA, organizations break down silos within and between enterprises and create new business processes on the fly, through inexpensive, timely and multiple use development.

Planning and implementation services

To help clients prepare for the inevitable shift to SOA-while reaping the early benefits-CGI offers a combination of skilled expertise and evolutionary planning and implementation services. Wherever your organization is in its SOA journey, CGI helps you connect the right people and processes with your services. CGI's SOA offerings include:

In all of these service areas, CGI also helps you navigate the complex and ever-evolving landscape of SOA technologies and vendors. With experience and partnerships in all major SOA platforms, CGI provides an objective view to help you select the technology that best meets your strategy, quality and flexibility requirements.

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Becoming SOA ready

SOA is about more than implementing a single project; it's an evolutionary journey. That's why it's critical to have your organization fully prepared. CGI helps clients assess their SOA readiness and build practical and clear steps that help them move forward, including:

  • Aligning SOA with your business strategy
  • Developing the organizational structures-including involving the necessary executive champions-that promote the right behavior
  • Putting a mechanism in place to budget for SOA-related efforts
  • Developing communications processes to engage and understand the needs of all stakeholders
  • Creating an evolution roadmap that rolls out SOA initiatives in a manner that assures project success

CGI also helps clients avoid the common pitfalls of SOA readiness by helping organizations better introduce security into its culture, including identity access management tools and processes, and by identifying and documenting their often ad-hoc business processes.

Launching your SOA initiative

As with any business and IT investment, SOA requires a formal ROI analysis. CGI helps clients develop their SOA business case-outlining cost savings and avoidance and business benefits-and identify the project's benefits and risks. As a strategic planning partner, CGI also assists in the coordination of executive and stakeholder involvement to accomplish the following:

  • Selection of the right services to expose, including those that will deliver the earliest benefits
  • Development of a governance framework that includes service level agreements and the proper decision making processes and enforcement
  • Selection of the appropriate technologies that best meet clients' current and future requirements

Within all of these services, CGI stresses an incremental rather than "big-bang" approach, which helps SOA evolve into the culture while building credibility and keeping focus on the "big picture" of SOA's end state.

Implementing SOA

Through our solid project management expertise and development methodologies, CGI works hand-in-hand with the client's SOA project manager and enterprise architect-or serves as these functions on the client's behalf-to implement SOA within and outside of the enterprise. As part of our implementation services, CGI provides the following:

  • Definition and implementation of a mechanism to monitor and measure metrics, which are tied to established governance processes
  • Development of formal methods for collaboration, status reporting, issue resolution and escalation
  • Performance of system health checks at both the service and business process level
  • Alignment with industry standards, best practices and reference models, which are tailored to the specific needs of your operations

Just as e-commerce has become a status quo part of business, at some point in SOA's evolution, it will no longer be referred to as "SOA" but as "normal." Through CGI's implementation services, we help clients plan the transition to normal operations from the start, treating your implementation as a journey and not just a project.