SOA: The Next Technology Inflection Point

Driven by the universal adoption of Web services and convergence of key standards, service-oriented architectures (SOA) have emerged as the key enabling technology for interoperability among disparate pieces of software regardless of the network architecture, platform, or programming language. SOA is not a software product, but is a framework for designing and building applications and services that allow for data to be exchanged where and when it is needed. Service-oriented architectures are the next technological inflection point that will drive organizations to build applications that are designed from the outset to collaborate with other applications both within and beyond their enterprise boundaries.

Electronic document and content management systems have come a long way from their original beginnings. The first systems were centered on scanning and storing paper documents as digital images. While "effective" for that time and the technology available, many users were simply not satisfied with these simple systems and wanted to do more - such as pass the document around a network, manage electronic documents like a Microsoft Word file, and exchange data from the scanned images with a legacy application.

It seems that users of electronic document management (EDM) technology have always wanted more out of the technology and have been pushing vendors to constantly improve and innovate. And, after roughly 20 years of improvement and innovation, electronic document management is no longer a simple document storage solution used to keep digital documents after the work has been completed. Today's systems have become an integrated component of the daily work whether that is accounts payable, claims processing, or managing records for compliance purposes.

The fundamental problem with software and hardware applications is that they are still built as stand alone systems that do one thing well but do not easily interoperate with other systems. Phrases such as "islands of automation" and "data silos" while more than 20 years old, are still valid concepts and still describe the state of the software industry today.
The convergence of key technologies such as XML, SOAP Messages, WSDL and HTTP signify that software applications can interoperate with each other and information can be shared openly and freely provided that the application is designed from the outset to exploit these technologies.

With the advent of service-oriented architectures the software industry is beginning to develop and write applications that freely communicate with other applications, reduce the complexity of new software applications, and allow existing systems to share data. SOA and related technologies are driving software vendors to build applications that are inherently open and capable of interoperating with other applications as opposed to the traditionally closed and monolithic systems that exist throughout the industry today.

Web Services Made Easy or SOA 101

Think of an SOA in terms of going to a restaurant. First, you look up the restaurant in a phone book and see Bob’s Big Steak House – the phone book is essentially a registry of restaurants (a service) that you can read because it is in English and is organized along lines that you expect. It provides you with a way of communicating with the restaurant and gives you information about the restaurant such as hours and directions and payment terms.

Second, when you arrive at the restaurant, you are greeted by the Hostess, who is another service that can tell you where your table is. This interchange is in a language you both understand and you can also set limits by saying you want a table by the window and not by the kitchen door (a contract is entered between you and the Hostess).

Third, a waiter (service) provides you with a menu (the restaurant’s registry of available food), helps you interpret the menu and conveys your order to the kitchen (service) where your “request” is responded to. Your order is in terms that both you and the cook understand - “slightly pink but not bloody” and the waiter only servers as the messenger.

Fourth, the kitchen service responds to your request by providing you with a steak as specified and satisfies the contract it made with you when it accepted your order.

And last, the restaurant service, via the waiter service, requests you to pay the tab, which you do instead of interfacing with the dish washer service.

Notice that everything that happened depends on bi-directional communication, contracts are established, and both you and the restaurant are requesters and providers of services.

Enter Westbrook Technologies’ Fortis SOA

When an electronic document management (EDM) system is part of an SOA, users would be able to introduce and index an image into the EDM repository without actually being logged onto the system. Based on the metadata contained within the image, the ECM system may also automatically trigger a workflow pattern to complete a process, apply records management policies to the image, and archive the image in the correct storage device. Other software applications, like OCR (optical character recognition), could become Web services available to all users on the network.

Westbrook Technologies is leading the charge into SOA-based document management with its Fortis solution. Fortis SOA, which will be released later this spring, will not be a legacy application with an SOA wrapper, but rather a true SOA business application or SOBA (Service-Oriented Business Application) built from the start by Westbrook’s developers over the past two years. It will revolutionize the business process by allowing for true interoperability, by giving ALL line-of-business applications the ability to communicate with each other. Just imagine reducing your organization’s transaction processing costs in accounting. By leveraging an SOA-based document management system, like Fortis SOA, users can not only eliminate a significant portion of their AP costs – which go straight to their bottom line – but they are simultaneously driving down corporate head count.

Currently, Westbrook Technologies provides enterprise document management software solutions for mid-market companies that need to maintain their competitive edge. The Company develops document management (Fortis), Web-imaging (Fortis PowerWeb), ERM and workflow (Fortis Inflo) software in use at thousands of customer sites in 52 countries. Businesses across every vertical market depend on our comprehensive document management solutions and use them to capture, index, store and retrieve their critical information from anywhere - instantly and securely. Westbrook Technologies was recently named one of Connecticut’s 50 fastest growing technology companies by Deloitte & Touche.

For more information, call (203) 483-6666 or log on to westbrooktech.com. Once there, be sure to take advantage of our SOA knowledge with a free download of our continuing series of whitepapers on SOA.