Are You Ready For An SOA Future?

Imagine a world in which most content management functionalities are accessed through large-scale ASPs (application service providers) instead of performed by in-house software solutions. For example, rather than investing in an ECM system, an organization could scan a document and send the image to one ASP for indexing, one for data extraction, another for processing the extracted data, and finally one ASP that hosts the company's document image repository. This model would allow organizations to manage their content with minimal investment in hardware and software technologies. It also is a speculative future that industry consultant Bud Porter-Roth believes is possible with the widespread adoption of SOA and presents in his article SOA + ECM = The Future.

SOA is a framework of Web services that provide application functionality made available through well-defined interfaces, and it is an ideology for designing IT networks that is gaining a lot of traction in the business community. If this SOA-inspired future Bud Porter-Roth envisions actually comes to pass, what does that mean for the traditional ECM or document imaging VAR? How will you earn margins and add value if there is no longer demand for the hardware and software you currently resell, integrate, and customize? More importantly, how can you become familiar with SOA and prepare yourself for whatever future impact it will have on your business?

The Reality Of SaaS In ECM
Let's start by examining the future ECM picture painted by Porter-Roth. It takes the software as a service (SaaS) concept to the extreme. Most analysts and vendors put a lot of stock in the SaaS concept. From a customer perspective, SaaS makes a lot of sense because installing and maintaining in-house software systems traditionally requires a company to invest in a great deal of specialized IT skills — either internally or through the support of a solutions provider. As a result, many software manufacturers in the industry have begun to redesign their applications based on the SaaS concept, creating platform architectures that can accommodate this trend as it grows. In fact, SaaS already has proven to be a successful approach in the sales force arena with services like Salesforce.com. However, many experts doubt whether this type of SaaS success will be possible with content management applications.

"The primary reason SaaS has been so successful from a sales force perspective is that the underlying data that is contained in those systems [i.e. leads, contact information] isn't mission-critical," says Paul Lord, president and CEO of Westbrook Technologies. "Much of the information contained in content management systems [i.e. general ledgers, balance sheets, purchase orders], on the other hand, is vital to company operations. Understandably then, many organizations will be uncomfortable allowing this valuable content to be stored outside of their organization and managed by multiple faceless service providers." With this in mind, perhaps a more realistic future for ECM applications is one in which ECM software vendors allow the distinct functionalities of their software packages to be consumed as services inside and outside an enterprise, but the content still is managed and controlled by the company that purchases the software.

SOA Adoption Is Advancing
Regardless of the extent to which SaaS will penetrate the ECM industry as a result of SOA, the fact remains that SOA adoption is advancing rapidly, primarily because of the ease with which the approach allows applications to be reused and repurposed. "With SOA, once a service has been built and defined, it can be reused by multiple applications with minimal programming requirements," says Lord. "For this reason, many large organizations currently are embracing SOA because it provides them with a competitive advantage. For example, by rebuilding its systems under SOA, a large financial services or telecommunications company can gain flexibility and quickly adjust to changes in the industry or implement new pricing schemes to beat out their competitors."

While most large organizations are in the midst of an SOA initiative, SMBs are adopting SOA at a much slower pace. One reason for this is that SMBs don't have the IT budgets to rebuild all of their existing infrastructure systems on SOA day one. Also, as with most other technology inflection points, SMBs don't want to be the first to adopt new technology. They would rather have the larger organizations break the technology in first and help work the bugs out of it before they implement it themselves.

While adoption is slower in the SMB market, analysts and vendors alike see SOA as an IT strategy that most companies already are pursuing aggressively or will be in the near future. As a result, many ECM software vendors have begun to rebuild their applications as sets of discrete Web services that can be consumed and reused easily in an SOA environment. As these solutions begin to emerge, there are a few questions the industry still needs to work out surrounding these applications. First of all, the industry needs to identify exactly what an SOA-based or SOA-compatible ECM product looks like. Since SOA is a concept, it means different things to different people, and what is SOA-compatible by one vendor's standards may not be by another's. This could very easily confuse consumers and cause them to purchase products that don't fully meet their needs. "Like Gartner's five models of client/server computing, I believe the analyst community should establish a set of rules or criteria that clearly articulate whether an application is SOA-based or not," says Lord.

The other challenge facing the industry with SOA-based applications is how vendors and integrators should charge for the software, given that services can be reused and repurposed throughout and outside an enterprise. "It is clear that an infrastructure system needs to be established that will allow vendors to monitor contracts between services and charge based on the service," adds Lord. "However, the vendor community can't wait for that infrastructure to be put in place. We need to begin delivering these SOA-based applications and worry later about how those Web services are consumed and who they are consumed by."

Education, Vendor Support Key To Shortening The SOA Learning Curve
As traditional ECM or imaging VARs, it is likely that this SOA stuff is new for a lot of you. Learning how to deliver solutions in an SOA environment may take longer for some of you than others. For example, if the extent of your integration skills involves setting up configuration screens, then it's likely you will have to invest in some programming expertise. If you're already accustomed to programming code, then it is just a matter of learning a new set of tools that will allow you to apply the Visual Basic, Java, or other programming expertise you have to a Web services environment. "SOA has reached a point in the adoption curve where it looks like it is going to stick," says Gary Gershon, principal of IMERGE Consulting. "It's not like DCOM [distributed component object model] that fizzled because of a division between Microsoft and other computing camps. SOA is gaining universal acceptance, and ECM VARs and integrators should need to and want to learn how to program in a Web services environment."

Most traditional ECM integrators can't afford to send their employees off to expensive weeklong educational sessions, so for many, the SOA education process largely will be based on programming literature and vendor support. "Many integrators will learn about SOA the same way they learned about many of the software products they resell — by getting some sample code from the vendor and their API [application program interface] book and hacking away at it until it works," says Gershon.

Much of the vendor community is trying to help their channel partners adapt to the SOA trend through other means. "Some vendors are packaging some of their SOA-based product components so they are easier for them to sell and install," says Andrew Pery, VP of marketing for Kofax. "Vendors also are taking a more proactive role in selling with their partners to help them articulate the value of new SOA-based products and help them with this industry transition."