Service Oriented Enterprises

Book excerpt: Extending beyond the technical architecture to the very philosophy of how a business should operate, the Service Orientation approach establishes fluidity across boundaries to provide agility, transparency, and fundamental competitive advantage. Service Oriented Enterprises brings the concept of service orientation from the IT department to the boardroom, applying the precepts of service oriented technology to the underlying dynamics of how a business operates. Implementing a technological concept as a cultural paradigm, the SOE succeeds by combining the best features from virtual, extended, real-time, and resilient enterprises to serve not just its customers, but also its trading partners, shareholders and employees. Building primarily on the success of the Internet and the automation of business policies and processes, the Service Oriented Enterprise (SOE) is defined by three essential layers: the enterprise performance layer, the business process management layer, and the underlying service oriented architecture. This book focuses primarily on layers two and three and how the fundamental dynamics of a business can be altered when these concepts are applied to both architecture and culture. Beginning with an overview of the emerging SOE culture, the text contrasts the new service-oriented methodologies with traditional waterfall and iterative methodologies. Emphasizing Web Service strategies for description, discovery, and deployment techniques, the author goes deeper into service-oriented concepts describing the business process management suite as the central core of the SOE, and introducing the Enterprise Service Bus as the backbone for integration. The text describe how modeling, executing, and continuously improving the business process and business policies lends to the development of a common language between business and IT. The book concludes by expanding on these concepts and delving into the societal and behavioral aspects of the Service Oriented Enterprise. The reality of business is no longer one where change is an unusual phenomenon; today change is the norm and the capacity for consumer-sensitive, fluid transition is vital to business survival. Service Oriented Enterprises provides the key concepts to facilitate that change.