Evaluation of Service-Oriented Architecture’s Implementations Using Maturity Models

Abstract:

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) represents a new information systems concept. It represents an extraordinary challenge at scientific, practical and economical level. That is a reason why SOA represents the topic of many different researches. The dominant technology used today in SOA implementations are web services. Web services are technology that enables connection of the different information systems, applications and platforms separated by the Internet with the use of standard Web protocols. The functionality of SOA and web services enables us to consider profoundly the functioning of public administration and to connect the separated databases, making an integral information system of state and public administration, with no relations to organizational boundaries which. The drawback in this concept is the fact that implementation of SOA is often not successful and one of the reasons for this is the fact that organizations have not adopted and fulfilled some basic SOA prerequisites. The SOA prerequisites are not clearly defined. There are some researches on this topic but they are mostly focused on technical aspects of SOA implementation. This article analyses necessary set of prerequisites which should be fulfil by public administration attempting to implement SOA. Since SOA implementation requests significant organizational changes such set of prerequisites should comprise not only from technical prerequisites but should take into account data architecture, system integration and compatibility, security and legislative requirements, business requirements and organizational prerequisites. This set of prerequisites can be defined as a Service-Oriented Architecture Maturity Model and used to evaluate the possibility for successful utilization of SOA in specific organization.