BEA to unveil its Federal SOA Readiness Self-Assessment Tool in the Middle East during GITEX 2005

The tool is designed to help government and public sector agencies quantitatively measure their progress in pursuing SOA as an IT strategy.

SOA is an approach to software application development designed to transform business applications into "services" - specific pieces of functionality - which can be combined and reused. This modular approach can help federal, state, and local governments and public sector agencies build applications that are designed to provide more flexibility and, as a result, can be more efficiently built, combined, and reused.

BEA's SOA products are helping to enable government and public sector agencies around the world to be more responsive to constituents and leverage globally available information resources, streamline information flow, simplify information access, enhance security and improve operating efficiencies through shared services models.

"A key benefit of the Federal SOA Readiness Self-Assessment Tool is that it helps government customers evaluate time-to-value and SOA readiness assessment factors so that they can determine the strategies they need to implement SOA," Diyaa Zebian, General Manager, Middle East & Egypt, eSolutions BEA. "GITEX Dubai 2005 will give us an excellent opportunity to extensively promote the tool, which is a major asset for governments in the Middle East, especially at a time when they are moving towards e-governance and integrating their services through shared electronic platforms."

The BEA SOA Domain methodology highlights six key areas of SOA including, business strategy and process, architecture, costs and benefits, projects and applications, building blocks, organization and governance. The Federal SOA Readiness Self-Assessment tool can help government customers plan and implement an effective SOA strategy. The tool is designed to help IT managers organize the components of SOA adoption, benchmark against peers and provide tools that can help them determine how to effectively work towards a more adaptable IT design and infrastructure. Use of the BEA SOA Domain methodology can result in a more practical approach to understanding SOA that is designed to help government customers to quickly begin an organizational transformation.

After an assessment is completed, results can be presented in a customized report designed to provide practical suggestions on improving SOA deployment. Consequently, agencies can use the report to help them develop long-term plans for implementing an effective SOA strategy.