Agile. Funding. Rarely would you expect to see these words associated with one another. However, the rise of service-oriented architecture (SOA) requires new approaches to funding, and will help bring the two concepts together. As SOA becomes more widely adopted, funding will become a critical enabler. The funding process and associated decisions will set the tenor for an organization's SOA strategy.

There are a few basic IT funding models. Most discussions of IT funding first consider centralized versus decentralized approaches, and focus on two areas: What will be funded and who will fund it? A centralized funding model means that IT management has budget authority over such spending and receives input on spending decisions from business units. A decentralized model might distribute funding among centralized IT management and the various business units. In this model, the IT department funds all shared infrastructure, enterprise-wide applications, and telecommunications, and business units fund business applications that pertain to the specific needs of their units.

An aspect of IT funding that is rarely addressed -- and intimately connected to SOA implementation -- is its timing. Since IT budgets are handed down during the annual funding process, how are emergent requirements or unanticipated IT expenditures addressed between budget cycles? Can an IT project be funded out of cycle?

Some companies fund IT projects quarterly in small increments based on Wall Street performance. The problem with this funding model is that it usually is too small to accomplish anything substantial, it must be spent in the current quarter or else will be lost, and, more often than not, it violates all IT and enterprise architecture governance because it is not enough funding to address IT challenges properly.

This segues to the agile funding challenge of SOA. In an SOA scenario, there will most likely be centrally funded enabling technology infrastructure; enterprise services shared by all business units such as security, audit, and logging (technical services); and business unit-specific Web services that pertain to one or more, but not all, business units. However, in time, business-unit services may be promoted to enterprise shared services, while some enterprise services may be demoted to business unit-specific services, or even retired completely. This SOA portfolio management process will require budget and funding adjustments over time as services, ownership, and support responsibilities are reallocated across the enterprise.

If it is to be successful, SOA governance must assign ownership and responsibility for various classes of SOA assets and services. Many times, oversight of these services must be reassigned early in the SOA implementation process, and that shift requires reallocation of the associated budgets, staff, and resources.

Organizational reconfiguration for SOA is a critical step toward achieving reusable services in an SOA context. These may be difficult decisions to make, but they are necessary. The agility and flexibility benefits that SOA offers demand an agile IT funding model as an accompaniment. Agile funding models will accommodate the initial ownership decisions for SOA, as well as the ongoing management of a portfolio of services across the enterprise.

So, while you are planning SOA initiatives with the goal of achieving agility and flexibility, don't forget that your IT funding must be equally agile and adaptable. Agile funding is an SOA requirement, too.