IBM's SOMA Bridges SOAs and IT
Type: Competitive Intelligence Report
Analyst: S. Willett
Report Date: January 27, 2005
Module: Application Infrastructure
ID: CIR13089 |
Current Perspective: Positive
Vendor Importance: Moderate
Market Impact: Moderate/High |
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Summary
Event Summary
January 26, 2005 -- IBM announced a new service to help companies build capabilities that support business goals, while freeing up currently overstretched IT budgets to focus on growth opportunities. The new Service Oriented Modeling and Architecture (SOMA) is an innovative approach to solving a significant problem: finding a consistent way for businesses to develop flexible technology that will provide the maximum return to the business. It helps companies implement a service-oriented architecture (SOA), a standards-based framework that enables enterprises to evolve to on-demand businesses that integrate data and applications with customers, partners, and suppliers.
Analytical Summary
• Current Perspective: Positive on IBM’s new Service Oriented Modeling and Architecture (SOMA), because the company is making positive moves to link IT to business goals in its consulting, which will serve to bolster the entire WBI line of products.
• Vendor Importance: Moderate to IBM, since this type of in-depth analysis is needed to attract a small number of larger firms that have a deep commitment to implementing SOAs and measuring benefits in a systematic way.
• Market Impact: Moderate to high on the integration and Web services markets, because aligning IT with business goals will likely be the new buzz-phrase of 2005, although the enormity of this task is likely too complicated for individual firms to achieve with their products.
Target Markets
End Users, Global 2000, IT Implementers, Large Enterprises, Systems Integrators, Third Party Implementers
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Perspective
Current Perspective: Positive
We are taking a positive stance on IBM’s new SOMA (Service Oriented Modeling and Architecture) service, which is offered through Business Consulting Services, part of IGS. This rather comprehensive methodology will ultimately help IBM sell more WBI and WAS products as customers turn to IBM for runtime software. These types of services, however, are limited to higher-end firms with a clear technology vision.
While customers have reacted positively to the notions of service-oriented architectures, most have pegged it as a long term goal. Similar to all such theoretical architectures, there is a lot of uncertainty about the business benefits of SOAs. Vendors who can help business analysts and IT better quantify the benefits and costs of an SOA will have a leg up in gaining their software business. Thus, IBM has some advantages through its extensive consulting services.
The company is capitalizing on this with a set of consulting services for building SOAs, the latest of which is SOMA. This particular service’s main innovation is the way it tries to align business modeling and goals with practical IT issues around building SOAs. This includes building a “service model” around a particular targeted service, which lists its dependencies, technical feasibility, state management requirements, quality of service issues, and place in a hierarchy of services. SOMA also builds on the Component Business Model (CBM) and offers a detailed analysis of a business and its domains. Goal Service Modeling then identifies business goals and aligns them with possible new services. IBM has a number of tools and products to help in the realization of this methodology. There is WBI, with its numerous adapters and transformation services for creating Web services out of legacy applications. WebSphere Application Server also contains a number of Web services creation tools stemming from EJBs and Java. The firm also has a strong BPM tool for modeling and monitoring processes. There is a strong likelihood that some or all of these will be put into use by customers of SOMA services.
This kind of high-end consulting, however, is a naturally limited market due to its price. Another downside is that there is no overall software tool to achieve the SOMA methodology. Rather, it seems there is a collection of tools and methods for collecting and analyzing this information and bringing it together. IBM should consider such a tool in the future. IBM should also consider its own Web services management/SOA management product, since this seems to be integral to measuring the performance of services and their dependencies. SOMA seems to be weak on providing metrics, particularly dollar metrics on processes and services, and the firm should attempt to strengthen this. It should also provide more runtime guidance, which will have the ancillary benefit of helping to sell more WBI and WAS software.
IBM’s moves will spur other players such as Oracle and SAP to improve their own SOA consulting services and align SOA business goals more realistically with IT realities. Other players will have to partner with a large SI for this type of comprehensive planning and analysis.
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Positives and Concerns
Competitive Positives
• IBM’s Business Consulting Services (part of IGS) announces a new service to help build SOAs that align better with business goals. The service, dubbed Service Oriented Modeling and Architecture (SOMA), builds on several other consulting services, such as “IBM Assessments for Web Services for SOAs” and “Component Business Modeling.” In general, these consulting services help bolster the sale of IBM infrastructure such as WBI, particularly to a small segment of larger customers that approach SOAs in very disciplined and systematic way. This is a differentiator over competitors that do not have extensive consulting around building SOAs.
• SOMA’s main innovation is the way it tries to align “pie in the sky” business modeling and goals with reality-based IT issues around building SOAs. This includes building a “service model” around a particular targeted service that lists its dependencies, technical feasibility, state management requirements, quality of service issues, and place in a hierarchy of services. This ensures that building and managing a service is not so complex and disruptive that it cancels out the benefits. It also can ensure some guarantee that this will be a re-usable service, not just put into use as another point-to-point connection.
• SOMA builds on the Component Business Model (CBM) and offers a detailed analysis of a business, its domains (domain decomposition is a major element of this), and its associated processes. Unlike other tools (for example, IDS Scheer), it is not solely concentrated on a formal BPM-oriented business process. These are arranged in a “heat map” according to importance, which helps identify candidates for services. Goal Service Modeling then identifies business goals and aligns them with possible new services. This helps business analysts identify what services are the most beneficial to build.
• The company does attempt to put metrics and dollar goals through this methodology. This can be done in Goal Service Modeling, or through the inclusion of KPIs and other metrics at key points in the SOA. This helps to quantify the dollar benefit a firm gets with the SOA. More specific costing out is done on a custom basis.
• IBM has a number of tools and products to help in the realization of this methodology. There is WBI, with its numerous adapters and transformation services for creating Web services out of legacy applications. WebSphere Application Server also contains a number of Web services creation tools stemming from EJBs and Java. The firm also has a strong BPM tool for modeling and monitoring processes. There is a strong likelihood that some or all of these will be put into use by customers of SOMA services.
Competitive Concerns
• SOMA’s appeal is likely limited to larger firms (i.e., Fortune 1000) that have an extremely coherent and disciplined vision around implementing SOAs.
• There is no overall software tool to achieve the SOMA methodology. Rather, it seems there is a collection of tools and methods for collecting and analyzing this information and bringing it together.
• A key element for realizing SOMA seems to be a SOA management product, which IBM does not have. Instead, the company is relying on smaller pure plays for Web services/SOA management.
• SOMA seems to be weak on providing metrics, particularly dollar metrics on processes and services. Again, the firm seems to be relying on other tools for KPIs, or “costing out” of services. It does provide detailed ROI on a more custom basis.
• While the company has a number of tools for realizing this SOA, the SOMA methodology does not include a large amount of runtime information or guidance. That is left for other groups to achieve, presumably. The firm has talked about including more runtime information in the next version of SOMA.
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Recommended Actions
Recommended Vendor Actions
• The company should consider either coming out with a software tool or recommending one for realizing SOMA. This should include role-based interfaces and a repository of information. Users should be able to feed inputs from its WBI Modeler and Monitor into this new tool.
• IBM should consider purchasing or coming out with a Web services management/SOA management product.
• The company should consider more pre-built tools for “costing out” processes and services, including the cost to the business (and cost benefit), the cost of maintenance, the cost of downtime, and the effect on customer satisfaction.
• IBM should include more runtime guidance, which will help sell specific WBI configurations.
Recommended Competitor Actions
• Larger competitors in the integration and application infrastructure space (such as Oracle, SAP, and Sun) should consider more detailed consulting services and methodologies that link SOA construction with business goals. While all firms pay lip service to this concept, competitors need more detailed information about the feasibility and cost to IT for building and maintaining services, as well as the effect on all the dependencies.
• Smaller firms that do not have extensive consulting services should consider partnering with a larger SI to provide customers with a methodology for building an SOA and linking it to business goals.
• Competitors need to put more analysis into their BPM tools, along with better monitoring of services.
• In general, competitors need to open up more avenues to business analysts into their BPM and integration tools. This includes development and monitoring interfaces.
Recommended End User / Customer Actions
• End users that are considering a comprehensive plan for implementing an SOA that will bring real business benefits should consider SOMA and the full set of IGS services. This can help bring discipline and clarity to such projects and it could help in a real world cost-benefit analysis.
• End users, however, need to keep in mind the tools that will be used for the runtime of their SOAs, since this has an effect on cost-benefit.
• End users should consider more ways to align business goals with IT through software products, interfaces, and project management-type software.
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