SOA CASE STUDY

SOA Case Study



Abstract

Various forms of IT sourcing used by audit clients create issues of concern for external auditors. This article investigates the nature and basic characteristics of service-oriented architecture (SOA), a modern information system architecture strategy, to ascertain whether the use of SOA by a service consumer audit client would have an impact on the activities typically performed by the external auditor. It was found that SOA presents a complete shift in the way IT application functionality is constructed and integrated and inevitably effects changes in the accounting system and the related internal controls of the SOA service consumer. As a result SOA has a significant impact on the activities performed during the audit process and introduces various SOA-related aspects that need to be considered by the external auditor of a SOA service consumer.

SOA Case Study

Introduction

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has received increased attention from practitioners and academicians. SOA allows companies to reuse available components/services and build flexible systems that implement changing business processes quickly. However, SOA is not well understood and few studies have addressed its concepts and implementation. The purpose of this study is to discuss the implementation and governance issues of SOA based on a detailed case study at a large financial services company. The results show that SOA can transform an organization's information technology infrastructure and reshape project deliverables. However, developing an SOA infrastructure can take multiple iterations and years to develop. The results also demonstrate the importance of understanding not just technology, but also business value and processes when implementing SOA(Cox, 2005, p709).

Technology changes at a very rapid pace and for businesses to stay competitive they are forced to adopt new processes. Information Technology (IT) investments can account for a significant portion of a company's expenses. Infrastructure is managed by those with different expertise in the IT field. Whether they are application specific or programming language specific, there are a lot of intricate balances between resources and technology. A company can become tied to certain systems, languages, applications, and skills which can make technology migration a difficult process. Companies have long sought to integrate existing systems in order to implement IT support for business processes that cover all present and prospective systems requirements needed to run the business end-to-end (Cox, 2005, p709).

Discussion on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

The inception of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is rooted in the idea, that a company can become more flexible by utilizing a standardized architecture to better support the connection of various applications and the sharing of data (Gottschalk, 2002, p89). The ability of SOA processes to create an architecture that would let IT develop and modify the supporting applications as business needs change is important in today's dynamic business environment. Because SOA is still a new concept, it is not well understood by practitioners and academicians. Confusions exist in its definition and few studies have discussed its implementation and governance issues. To fill this gap, this paper first discusses the concept of SOA and ...