To implement a service-oriented architecture, companies must consider what steps and technologies are involved. Portals represent a logical first step in the process.
Although most businesses are beginning to embrace the concept of service-oriented architectures (SOAs), many are having difficulty identifying the first step in the process. Many businesses are asking what they can do today to prepare their shops, applications, infrastructure and people for SOA.
The portal can be a logical and appropriate first step toward SOA implementation because its fundamental nature lends itself to SOA approaches. The portal uses service-oriented concepts; it leverages Web services extensively; and it leverages portlets, which consume services or communicate to provide orchestrated flows and on-the-glass composite applications. If you buy the SOA concept, the portal can represent a rational first step down that path. If, instead, you take a wrong first step by buying an overwhelming number of technologies, you will lose time, money and momentum. Organizations must have a "ramp-up" approach to entering the SOA and Web services markets. Portals are a good starting point, even from the standpoint of making the SOA concept less abstract.
A Learning Tool and Project LaunchpadA portal can clarify the sometimes confusing SOA concept for an organization's IT staff and end users. An enterprise portal project pulls together the disparate groups involved in cross-enterprise technology projects. No other technology is more tangible than a portal, and IT professionals and users can relate to it. Portal products have leveraged service-oriented concepts since 1998, so they provide a natural approach to SOA (see "Portals Provide a Fast Track to SOA").
With the recent focus on using SOAs as a means to become more real-time and gain competitive advantage, portals are the linchpin of many vendor- and user-SOA strategies. Leading portal product vendors are pursuing SOA in their portal infrastructures, and several are actually delivering service-oriented applications to run on top of those infrastructures. Through 2007, an enterprise portal will be the first major application of SOA concepts for more than 50 percent of enterprises (0.6 probability).
Gartner defines a portal as "access to and interaction with relevant information assets (information/content, applications and business processes), knowledge assets and human assets by select targeted audiences, delivered in a highly personalized manner." Portal products provide a full spectrum of technologies for extensibility, data integration, application integration, syndication and service orientation. Some of these capabilities, such as really simple syndication, have a single mode of use that is largely non-SOA. Other capabilities, such as portlets, can be used in an SOA-style architecture or a non-SOA "legacy" mode. For most scenarios involving portlets, the SOA approach is a better fit with the nature of portlets and with the mission of portals. However, enterprises must understand the nature of service orientation and the system requirements to know which mode to apply (see "Portal Technology Has Two Faces: SOA and Non-SOA").
A Development and Web Services PlatformAn enterprise portal, built with a robust portal product, provides an off-the-shelf framework for developing and deploying service-oriented applications. It can serve as a ready-made Web services consumer platform, and enables you to build composite applications, deploy syndicated content from other portals through remote portlets, replace/augment legacy interfacing applications, create common views of data, and facilitate access by mobile and wireless devices (see "Six Ways Portals Can Address Your Application Development Needs"). However, you must avoid the potential downsides associated with each type of use. For example, Web services without rationalized information can be disastrous. Web services allow programmatic interoperability, but do nothing to enable data interoperability. The resultant disconnects can be fatal. Specifically, when an enterprise links two processes from two separate systems that define data elements differently, major problems (for example, inaccurate program execution or invalid/corrupt data) are likely to occur. Enterprises must do something to rationalize the data from the different systems: enterprise information management (see "Enterprise Information Management Is Key to Enabling Portals").
Putting It All TogetherOrganizations seeking to enter the world of SOAs should consider using enterprise portals as a vehicle to:
- Focus on portal product vendors that have strong SOA strategies, and portal products that are service-oriented and support Web services.
- Understand their portal product vendors' strategies for service-oriented business applications, packaged integrating processes and packaged composite applications — especially vendors that sell infrastructure and application software.
- Ensure that your portal product vendor is actively supporting Web services standards efforts. Better yet, look for vendors that drive or participate in the technical committees of standards efforts.
- Rationalize your multiple portal environments and look for portal products that deliver federation via Web services for remote portlets.
