SOA principles and capabilities have been around for many years. Many larger corporations have implemented large legacy applications be they CRM, Billing systems, HR or accountancy systems. The implementation of these applications have been timely and have grown implementation and maintenance costs way higher then any IT department or supplier had ever documented, communicated or delivered.
Over the years, such systems have gone through so many changes and are so tailored it is nearly impossible to integrate new products and applications to improve business deliveries.
Many companies realise the importance of “off the shelf” applications and by using SOA, IT becomes an enabler to business delivery and not a millstone.
Implementation of IT architectures and applications using SOA allow configuration and content changes to be easily implemented and, if possible, by business not IT professionals. We are still some way away from this mind set but significant change is occurring within IT departments. Middle and senior managers with business skills and awareness are being recruited, ensuring they understand the need for this level of agility.
A number of market leading applications have recognised this flexibility and adopted an “open SOA” architecture approach making integration of new products and applications considerably easier.
Over the coming 18/24 months and in light of the current financial market, this approach will be for businesses still in a trading position and will have board level focus.
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Larger corporations will have no choice but to adopt this revised SOA approach. The debate on the ROI model will be one around detaching legacy and moving to this new model.
A key question will always be how much of the £M CRM, Billing, HR application delivered 5 years ago can be written off, replaced or amended with an SOA architecture Vs the cost of not doing this and your key competitors being first to market with new products and services.
Few enterprises fully understand the business context in which their communications occur yet real time communications are the key to the normal operations of many processes becoming critical when exception or crisis events require rapid response and quick decision.
Central Telecom, because of its unique market position, can integrate real communications such as Unified Comms to automate specific business processes within the production and productivity stream of a business to increase revenues, customer satisfaction, faster response rates, lower operational costs and higher returns on technology investments.
One of the biggest misconceptions is that web standards and Java alone will resolve system integration issues. Although these standards have come a long way in improving system integration and application flows it will not resolve information exchange between applications.
What SOA does not do without taking a further step is to integrate communications and collaborative capabilities. However because of the way that SOA works, if automated communications software is a feature of the SOA environment and available as a set of web services then business processes can be designed to take advantage of it.
SOA requires a change of the way IT departments behave from managers, developers through to architects. Although there are many books, and training courses around WEB, Java, VXML environments, and develops are plentiful within the current market, staff require training on business processes, project oriented development and business requirements and analysis.
This approach will ensure a more focused business lead IT organisation which is aligned to the challengers and goals of the business.
Alignment around business to IT development techniques, with a "can do" attitude and realistic time deliveries.
Communications Enabled Business Process (CEBP) can be seen as the next stage in the evolution of business applications, building on and integrating with the advances of SOA and Event Driven Architecture (EDA) to enable the design of the whole business process. The long term opportunity for CEBP has the potential to become a driving force in the continuous improvement of the organisation.
Ultimately, the end vision is a comprehensive multi-channel communication access architecture that increases business agility through rapid, intelligent responses to business events that finds and connects the right people, at the right time, with the right devices. This integration will enable businesses to keep their decision-making processes moving towards resolution, whether for application-to-application tasks, human-to-application, or application-to-human communications related tasks.
Technology will become an enabler with IT departments becoming business to system analysts and develop based on a project orientation development.
SOA will provide the structured framework for IT architectures and alignment to business requirements and developments i.e. a true "win/win".
Web Services within an SOA infrastructure provide the ability to create new business application integration incorporating communications services. SOA promises to achieve higher levels of application interoperability which can result in better application integration with business process, faster deployment of new capabilities, and increased flexibility for application and business process modification.
