In the first part of the SOA motivation factors, we discussed how Agility can bring effectively increase an organization's profit and savings. In this article let us see how SOA will do the savings for an organization.

Motivation factors for Using SOA - Cost Saving

Earlier on this blog, we discussed the key concepts of the SOA as Services, interoperability and loose coupling. These are the factors that do the cost saving and a motivation factor for using SOA in an organization. These cost cuttings/savings will be at both Business level and IT infrastructure and maintenance level. At business level the cost savings will come from the Agility.

Many times even though a product is cheaper we will go for it as it was difficult to integrate into our existing system. SOA solves this problem since it is loosely coupled and interoperability. This it allows you to choose the cheapest product that can offer the same kind of functionality and stability.

Then as we have seen the Agility of the SOA will make you streamline the Business process. Which means, now your business process support ever changing market and demand. Also one of the key SOA concepts Service, will enable you to reuse any component with in your SOA setup. Together these enables an organizations to use its internal resources more effectively. Hence the cost requited to adopt to a new change or rapid change in the business are less compared to the traditional approach.

Another factor that helps organizations while using SOA is, Reporting. Using this reporting you can the dynamic reports from any where in you SOA setup. Say for example, we are monitoring a business process and getting the reports on a daily basis from this SOA reporting functionality, If there any is any change is required to improve the business functionality of that business process.. we can take decision after seeing the daily reports. Thus you don’t need to wait for your quarterly results and annual sheets to check how well your business process is performing.

In summery: due to improved business Agility, it is possible to improve the revenue by adopting quickly to new business models and by offering innovative/timely products for the end user.

The above are only some of the ways of how SOA can reduce the costs with in my understanding as an IT engineer. From a core business view, you may found more ways to reduce the cost after implementing SOA. If you have a new point to add to this..please leave in comments section of this post.

Its not just the cost savings from Business level but SOA can also reduce the costs at IT infrastructure level.

One of the biggest problems with the large IT projects is the cost required to build and maintain them. SOA''s concept of service means you can reuse it and can call it from anywhere and use it. This is one of the key factor in reducing the cost of getting a IT project up and running. For example, when you want to build a new application which needs a functionality that is already existing in your IT environment, you can use it again by exposing it as a service.

Another concept of SOA is interoperability, which makes the integration easy. This means the cost required to integrate a new product or existing legacy applications is less. As a whole, a new business process can be developed easily or the existing can be modified easily with out putting more money and efforts on to how they will be implemented.

By isolating the implementation aspects from the services, SOA enables the usage of existing legacy systems. By enabling a pool of shared services, SOA enables reuse of them at various levels. This eliminates the re-occurring costs in IT systems management. It also reduces the duplication of code, applications, storage for the same functionality and hence reduces the maintenance cost.

Summery:

    • Reduces Total cost of Ownership[TCO] and increase Return Of Investment [ROI] on evolving systems.
    • Add value to core investments by leveraging existing legacy assets/systems into SOA.
    • New systems can be built faster for less money because existing services can be more easily reused.
    • Built for flexibility hence enables plugging new services when required, which reduces the time to deliver the new functionality.
    • Long term value of interoperability, your SOA infrastructure will be ready for future.

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