The Connected Business: The Microsoft Approach to SOA (Continued)

Building the Connected Business
Microsoft .NET—Microsoft's strategy to connect people, information, systems, and devices through Web services—is designed with connected businesses in mind. Supporting service orientation at the ground level, .NET tools and technologies help developers and architects create new applications as well as connect existing systems, enabling the technical means to achieving a connected business.

Beyond the plumbing and tools, Microsoft offers a familiar way for people to act on information in the Microsoft® Office System and other smart client applications. Smart client applications are easily deployed and managed because they provide an adaptive and interactive experience by leveraging local resources and connecting to distributed data sources intelligently. Smart client applications put information that might reside in any number of back-end systems in the hands of people so they can act on it, performing analysis, making decisions, and collaborating with others: conducting business and achieving results.

Getting There
Architecture and orientation are not the result, but a means to creating value for your business. As a manager, you have undoubtedly not escaped the buzz and pull of those seeking to "move you to an SOA."

What do you do?

Continue your work with Web services and ensure that your staff is focused more on how your clients, fellow employees, and partners use your information and applications. The ideal of a connected business should be in your head when new plans are considered, projects are undertaken, or applications are proposed. Ask yourself: How does this piece of technology support our overall business goals? How can I get this done faster and cheaper and still build it to work with my other systems today and down the road? How can I connect my systems and build a connected business?

As a developer, you should continue learning Web services and the service orientation that Microsoft's development tools foster and support. As an IT specialist, you should endeavor to get your infrastructure exposed in a secure and standard manner and be ready to manage Web services and connected systems. As an architect, you should learn how to blend service orientation into all your architectural designs. As an end user, you should demand applications that put you first, let you work online and offline, and give you the information you need in a way that lets you act on it easily. This will empower you to build on existing skills as your business profits from the connectivity available through .NET.

Designing connected systems that act as the foundation for a connected business brings together a series of elements that include and rely on:

• The Web services fabric providing the underlying communications framework for the connected system to work. The great advantage of Web services is that they are implementation-agnostic. That's because Web services are built on a series of standards that ensure they can interoperate. This lets the Web service be platform-independent yet remain secured and reliable.
• Development tools that must be designed to empower the Web service developer. Integrated programming environments such as Visual Studio .NET along with the Web Services Enhancements 2.0 for Microsoft .NET give developers the freedom to integrate Web services directly into the systems they design.
• Distributed infrastructure including identity and rights management services. Deploying these services on a federated basis helps provide the glue for the connection points upon which the system is based.
• Application portfolios or application ecosystems that allow you to leverage existing code to integrate it into your connected system.