What many  organisations fail to recognise is that by  embarking on that very process, all sorts  of opportunities to reduce business  complexity and costs open up as well.  SO A and process  ma nagement  Let’s illustrate how SOA and process  management can be complimentary.  Consider an Australian bank with  a branch network that wishes to sell and  service a varied portfolio of financial offers.  This may include mortgages, credit  cards and traditional mainstream banking  products.

However, that bank’s retail  customers have become accustomed  to the highly convenient manners –  branches, Internet, ATM, mobile phone  and so on – in which they interact with  the banking side. If the bank wishes to  provide similar access to the IT systems  that support those other products, the  inevitable integration challenges arise.  Without an SOA (or even modern  EAI) architecture we are back to our  Swan Syndrome and Pig Lipstick situations. 

This becomes exacerbated when  the systems that deliver the functionality  to the branches have to be modified  for the inclusion of additional acquired  business units and compounded further  when one part of the enterprise is  expected to pay for a modification that  will also benefit another. Does this  sound familiar?  Temptati on and planning  ahead  So now we look at how to approach  an enterprise-wide SOA process  management programme and how to  leverage the investment in a way that  all stakeholders in an organisation can  benefit from the monetary and personal  investment.

Knowing where to start is  the key, and often external help in the  form of experienced credible consultants  with industry and technical expertise  can accelerate the process in the  right direction. Adopting the right SOA  and process improvement framework is  also imperative.  Whilst the IT department is closest  to the nuts and bolts of the line  of business applications, the business  management are the ones closest to the  operation of the company and the expectations  of an ever more demanding  customer base and ‘cut throat’ market  competition.

Fortunately, there are  service definition frameworks available  for purchase that defines a model SOA  service profile for particular industries.  Temptation comes in the form of  the tendency to architect the service  layer to suit today’s business processes.  What would appear on the surface to be  a business-friendly approach has proven  to be erroneous in that it results in tying  the processes and the service layer too  tightly together.

This eliminates the  flexibility that should be a hallmark  of a well-developed SOA. It is also a  mistake that is repeated with alarming  frequency.  The future  If there are opportunities for business  operations to leverage benefit out  of SOA investments today, then what  other current trends may benefit also?  Well, since 2006 the emergence of SaaS  (Software as a Service) technologies  has been gathering pace. Indeed, an  impediment to enterprise SaaS-based  solutions is the challenge of integrating  the service-based architecture at the  SaaS provider with the legacy applications  that reside at the customer’s premises.