Starter SOA, Part 3

So far we've discussed a few concepts that organizations can take on without too much pain:
1. Get the project disciplines to talk with the enterprise guys about SOA
2. Create a SOA Steering Committee to start a dialogue between enterprise disciplines

Number 3 is a bit harder for some organizations. It deals with money, or the lack thereof. The heart of the problem is that the funding process in most I.T. organizations still doesn't facilitate the SOA paradigm. In the past, systems were generally funded as a standalone 'application' that had one owner. Going forward, funding will be broken into:
- Shared Services
- Composite Apps / Clients
- Non-Shared Services (services with one consumer/client; temporarily dedicated)
- Shared infrastructure (reg/rep/esb/wsm/etc.)
- Non-Shared Infrastructure (service container, app server, etc.)

Within each of the aforementioned areas, the dollars will be broken down by the various support groups (engineering, operations, etc.)

The SOA Steering Committee must be capable of recommending financial models that support the future paradigm. Most organizations already have some mechanism to make a request for shared investments. The SOA initiatives must work together to create a standard model for joint investment as it deals with services. Initially, the request looks like an exception to the rule but after time shared investment will become the norm and non-shared investments will be critically reviewed.