Service oriented Business Applications

Service oriented Business Applications

Executive Summary

In today's world, an IT organization's value to the business depends upon its ability to break down existing IT silos and provide the business with the level of agility and flexibility it requires in order to compete effectively and meet emerging business needs. Current states such as "swivel chair integration" where business users are forced to switch from one business application to another in order to get their job done need to be eliminated. Dissolving these silos for the business user is critical and predictably the most dramatic way to both enrich the customer experience and improve overall efficiency and effectiveness. Practically speaking, this means being able to bring applications and their associated functionality to business users in a different way. It means delivering them as discrete shareable services. Not as an array of distributed web services; but rather as a clearly defined and manageable service layer – a layer that allows for true interoperability of existing systems, high reuse, cost effectiveness as well as a high degree of flexibility without impacting the business adversely.

Today, many organizations are attempting to meet the demands of their business by creating business processes that facilitate real time customer and business partner interaction over the Web. The method of choice up to now has been to Web-enable existing applications as driven by customer demand, but this has not allowed organizations to realize the full potential of Web-
centric processes and systems. Until recently, the only alternative to Web- enablement was to replace existing systems by building all-new, Web-centric systems from the ground up. While technically feasible, this is not economically practical for companies with significant investments in systems – custom and packaged applications built on different technologies and platforms.

More recently, an application architecture has emerged that delivers the foundation for Web-centric computing while mitigating the costs and risks of replacing existing systems. This Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) allows business users to access software services without worrying about where the software is resident – it allows for a shared service layer of functionality where capabilities are available for use as needed and where needed. This new architecture completely leverages Internet standards and technologies, using XML, Java, .NET and HTTP to restructure the application environment.

In this paper, we explore the SOA-enabled shared service layer and the services which can comprise it and be assembled into Service Oriented Business Applications (SOBAs) to finally deliver true agility to business while leveraging past IT investments.

Business Drives Service Oriented Business Applications

Businesses today are facing the need to improve process efficiencies, sales productivity, revenue growth and cost savings — and many have made great strides by transforming their organizations to better focus on the needs of customers and business partners. However, to win more business from new and existing customers, and to even further streamline supplier relationships, organizations need to create outward-facing processes that meet several key requirements:

• They must create process efficiencies for better productivity and cost management.
• They must be able to quickly adapt to market changes.
• They must give customers and partners access to complete and accurate information in realtime.
• They must satisfy customer demands for personalized information and self-service.

To achieve this, organizations need to shift to a Web-centric business model where transactions are carried out seamlessly across the extended enterprise. This model requires a new information architecture in which applications may run in the network, but where the bulk of the interface and transactions are carried out over the Web, in an integrated, highly streamlined and automated way. Specifically, the new architecture must:

• Support one-to-many and many-to-many business relationships with different classes of users.
• Provide a single portal that enables users to access information based on their unique needs and access privileges.
• Leverage existing application and information assets in the enterprise while enabling business processes to be smoothly shifted to a service oriented model without major software reengineering costs or time delays.
• Enable applications to be easily customized and changed to support on-going innovation and a company’s evolving business strategy and brand.
• Enable applications to support multiple languages, currencies and business practices globally.
• Seamlessly integrate other services and applications on-demand.
• Minimize total cost of ownership and implementation risks while creating sustainable market differentiation.

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