Implementing an SOA with Common Technologies

by Michael Rosen

An agile enterprise is one that can quickly shift processes and resources to address market opportunities and competitive pressures. This requires a flexible mechanism that allows enterprise business services (those offered to customers and partners) to be easily assembled from a collection of smaller, more fundamental business processes. A common example is the integration of customer service, knowledge management, inventory, credit evaluation, billing, shipping, and so on to provide online purchasing capabilities. The better an enterprise's ability to create new sequences and combinations of processes, or to add new capabilities (processes) to existing services, the more agility it has to introduce new products and services or quickly respond to competition.