Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Adoption on Heterogeneous Information Systems in Universities' Environment: A Case of Universiti Utara Malaysia

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the adoption of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) concept in information systems (IS) at universities' environment. Recently, SOA has been tremendously adopted in many organizations for their benefits in IS management. Characteristics of SOA such as loose coupling and service based make heterogeneous systems easily integrated. However, the adoption of SOA into IS development for universities especially in Malaysia is still not very encouraging. Many aspects need to be further explored in relation to the issues and motivation of SOA adoption, especially in the aspect of system integration. This paper will discuss the reviews on previous and current studies of adopting SOA in universities' systems environment. The findings show the trend of SOA adoption on heterogeneous IS in universities' environment. A study has been initiated at Universiti Utara Malaysia to explore the potential of the SOA current trend in improving system integration between heterogeneous IS; Learning Management System and Student Information System. The study intends to use different technologies in constructing SOA based system with apply the so-called web services that will act as the major technology in solving problems of the system integration.