Business Potential Unleashed

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“The areas of consensus shift unbelievably fast; the bubbles of certainty are constantly exploding.” Rem Koolhaas, Architect and Futurist From feature article, “Rem Koolhaas: New work, new positions,” by Marcus Fairs, Icon magazine, June 2004. The impact of technology architectures Information technology leaders understand Rem Koolhaas’ message. At this critical inflection point—when business and IT are bound together as never before—technology architectures and infrastructure increasingly govern whether businesses adapt to change and thrive, or whether they fail. Old architectural approaches that once expanded business opportunities now limit growth. Sparking business innovation with a new IT architecture is the next step in achieving the renewed dynamism and flexibility that high performers have determined their IT organizations must deliver. Indeed, many businesses and governments are tackling challenges such as how to: • Unleash highly responsive business processes • Launch new products and services • Develop next-generation, productivity-enhancing employee tools • Harness relationships with strategic business partners • Build new partner, supplier and outsourcing relationships, while encouraging the use and reuse 4 of IT assets and services, including Web services. And, as ever, deliver high performance. To help address these challenges, high-performing IT organizations offer crucial capabilities, including a strong emphasis on business productivity and the building and integrating of new IT systems. According to Accenture research, high-performing IT organizations focus 43 percent of their new projects on business productivity, while the average organization focuses only 30 percent. Furthermore, high-performing IT organizations spend 40 percent more of their budget on building and integrating new systems versus low-performing IT organizations. In other words, high performers get it. This is why there is now a rapidly emerging consensus among highperforming IT organizations that service-oriented architecture (SOA) represents the future: among leaders, the bubble of certainty that older architectures could respond effectively to change has finally exploded. Service-oriented architecture, then, is not just a set of technologies—it is an architectural approach that encompasses broad organizational and technological capabilities. A software company, for example, recently used a service-oriented architecture to develop a set of reusable services, providing access to integrated customer information, while breaking down business silos that supported its financial, sales and customer service processes. As a result, the company improved sales force productivity, increased services reuse and reduced application development costs. In a business environment that demands unparalleled sensitivity to market shifts, responding to change slowly, inadequately or
inappropriately may result in lost sales, customers and opportunities as well as have potential regulatory repercussions. Earnings growth may also be jeopardized. Service-oriented architectures, however, mitigate risks, allowing businesses and governments to capitalize on opportunity by: Bridging business and IT. <strong>Business</strong>es must establish opportunities for growth. Information technology allows businesses to address opportunities, build new capabilities, such as integrated supply chain visibility, and leverage existing services for true responsiveness. Improving performance. Serviceoriented architectures enable businesses and governments to harness the full power of IT to improve business performance, orchestrate advanced business processes, and better meet customer needs. Driving cost reductions. Serviceoriented architectures promote the reuse of existing assets, increasing efficiency and reducing application development costs. They also enable IT systems to quickly leverage the most readily available code bases and services from across any organization. Furthermore, they improve coordination across sales, marketing, distribution and partner channels and reduce costly, time-consuming problem resolution. Boosting ROI. Return on investment (ROI) is there, but not necessarily where you think. While a serviceoriented architecture provides a foundation for high performance, value and return on investment are to be found in the project that SOA enables. Choose projects that deliver ROI on their own terms or ones that are required to provide competitive gains or fresh capabilities. Service-oriented architectures also allow organizations to meet IT goals. The technological value of SOAs includes: Reducing complexity via standards. Service-oriented architectures are based on industry standards and can reduce complexity when compared with integrating systems on a solution-by-solution basis. They also enable future applications to mesh seamlessly with existing, standardsbased services. Enhancing architectural flexibility. Service-oriented architectures support the building of nextgeneration composite solutions. These performance-driven solutions consolidate numerous business processes from multiple systems in a simple user interface. Lowering integration costs. Service-oriented architectures make it possible for organizations to develop, implement and reuse processes that are technically enabled and integrated through the use of Web services standards such as XML, SOAP and WSDL. In addition, connectivity, data exchange and process integration efforts are simplified, reducing integration-related development and support costs. 5
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