<<The primary goal John Whitridge has for service-oriented
architecture adoption at Marriott International Inc. is summed up in
the classic physician's credo: "First do no harm."
This cautious approach is designed to methodically deploy SOA so as
not to disrupt the already successful operations, explained Whitridge,
who is vice president of enterprise architecture for the hotel chain.
The one thing he does not want SOA to do at Marriott is disrupt
operations at its 2,800 properties in 67 countries, which had revenue
of $11.6 billion in 2005, he told a gathering of fellow architects at
last week's Open Group's Enterprise Architects Practitioners
Conference in San Diego.
The goals he plans to achieve at Marriott with an SOA implementation,
which is still in its early stages, are similar to those expressed by
other architects in other organizations. SOA would provide "increased
agility" with services-based applications that can be assembled
quickly to respond to changes in the hotel market. It would provide
easier paths to integration with partners, which in Marriott's case
includes e-commerce Web sites that provide online hotel bookings. The
reuse of services would save development costs and get new value out
of existing systems.
There are no rip-and-replace projects in Whitridge's plans. The
pre-SOA IT operations are supporting the enterprise successfully, he
said, so he is following the old cowboy wisdom: "If it ain't broke,
don't fix it."
The Marriott architect said his careful plan to enhance existing
systems is based on the concept that the service-oriented approach is
a long journey not a destination arrived at in a day. "For us," he
said, "SOA is not something we're going to get to overnight."
As is common practice for beginning enterprise SOA development, the
Marriott plans relies on C-level executive buy-in and brings in
business people from departments such as sales and marketing. However,
Whitridge cautioned his fellow architects to avoid overwhelming them
with SOA-related acronyms and jargon. Rather than discuss XML, WSDL
and UDDI, his program begins with a strategy and an acronym from
business schools, management by objectives (MBO).
The MBO approach to the business side starts with the COO and CIO and
includes all levels of management. While IT notoriously faces
difficulty communicating the value of SOA to business people,
Whitridge offered a list of tips for bridging the chasm. To get the
point across in meetings, he said he found it is important to make
sure the list of objectives IT offers to the business side:
* Is simple to understand and communicate
* Ensures ability to set goals and measure them
* Articulates what we have accomplished, what we are working on
and what we have deferred
* Includes organization and process not just technology
* Provides the business with realistic and affordable options
* Avoids "over commit and under deliver"
* Eliminates "boil the ocean" or "big bang" efforts
Communicating realistic objectives to the business side is important
for the architecture team in overcoming what Whitridge called one of
the major SOA challenges: "SOA technology alone is not sufficient to
achieve SOA benefits." Unlike technology waves of the past, SOA needs
the active participation of people in sales and marketing because they
are not only the potential users of the applications, their input is
crucial to determine what those applications are.
To achieve this "business alignment," the Marriott SOA effort includes
two official watch dog organizations where technology and business
people come together to work out the details of an implementation.
The Architecture Review Board coordinates information resources
planning and funding decisions. It is also responsible for ensuring
that projects follow agreed upon roadmaps and standards, Whitridge said.
The SOA Services Governance Board gathers the "cross-functional
business sponsors" for the projects to make sure they are meeting the
objectives and that everybody is on the same page.
These officially established groups allow business and IT to
collaborate in defining what Whitridge called the "SOA journey" and
make adjustments as business needs change along the way.
He said this approach is designed to overcome one of the biggest
obstacles to SOA implementation: bringing onboard the skeptical
business manager, who has lived through other new waves of technology
that failed to live up to their promise, and hears about SOA and says:
"Yeah, right.">>
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Gervas
