Analyzing the usage of open source products for SOA

Abstract: Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is rapidly becoming the new standard for today’s enterprise. SOA can enable great agility, productivity and cost savings, but not if it is implemented with complex, closed and expensive enterprise platforms. The best way is to implement it in Simpler, Open and Affordable manner. The main purpose of this thesis is to identify some of the core characteristics of SOA and explain how they are manifested in actual technologies that can be used in a cost effective way in an enterprise. Collectively these technologies will combine to form what we are calling the Open SOA Platform. Once these technologies are identified then our main goal will be to find open source products that can be used to satisfy these technology requirements. We are going to analyse and decide the solution areas for example; Integration, e-Business that we can use Open Source products in and also the functions blocks for example ESB, Registry, and SOA Governance management, within the decided Solution areas that could be implemented by Open Source products. We will also define the Technical Reference Architecture (TRA) for the SOA (EAI and ESB) and Portal. The implementation of the TRA done by the Microsoft and Red Hat will be compared and the best option will be selected on the basis of different criterion. If we can prove that the usage of Open Source products and SOA within any particularly organization is possible which means there are big savings, and if the savings are much more than today’s IT costs, migration cost and other costs related to IT, then we maybe have decision basis for next generation of standard product(s) in some solution areas in the IT landscape. The last part of the thesis is to analyse the impact of using Open Source products in Vattenfall Business Services Nordic AB, and what kind of competence we need. Other IT-suppliers in Vattenfall can use the Master Thesis as a template to calculate the implementation of the decided functions blocks in their IT landscape.