Re: [service-orientated-architecture] SOA & IT-Business Alignment

Mon, 26 Jun 2006 02:55:36 -0700

And I'm the other person on there....

From talking to various vendors around Biz/IT alignment the message is always the same

1) We agree its important
2) What does the product look like
3) How will it impact our other products

Until they actually have a product its very hard for a product company to admit that something is really important, and until the analysts put a quadrant up they aren't going to worry too much.

NONE of them currently have a service modelling tool that works at the business layer.  Microsoft Motion is about the closest but its not terribly flexible (IMO).

Steve


On 26/06/06, Gervas Douglas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

<<Capgemini continued their campaign for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to be recognized not as a series of new technologies but as a change in the way that businesses manage and deliver their IT systems at last week's OASIS symposium.

"Capgemini's approach to SOA has always been about aligning IT to the business," said Andy Mulholland, Global Chief Technology Officer, Capgemini. "For SOA to actually succeed and deliver value to organizations it must aim to represent the business view, not the technology view."

Capgemini's Steve Jones, CTO for Application Development Transformation, used the OASIS symposium in San Francisco to outline how SOA is about being more about helping business and IT work together than about the technologies currently aligned to SOA. Capgemini firmly believe that for SOA to succeed it must not be another technology buzzword; instead it should be about changing the way IT delivers systems by making those systems aligned to how the business operates.

"The purpose of our presentation was to underline how IT organizations need to change to align to how their businesses operate." said Jones. "Too many IT organizations are current organized for their own benefit rather than truly understanding how they need to adapt to changing business needs. SOA can be an enabler of this change if it is used to properly understand how the business operates and the requirements on IT to deliver this business service architecture."

The presentation outlined the interoperability chasm that currently exists in many organizations between business and IT, with IT focused on individual projects and technologies, while the business looks at the value of whole functions and strategy. The business often fears that SOA is yet another three letter acronym, with new product procurement and large strategic projects from IT that rarely deliver the expected, or sometimes any, business benefit. The presentation detailed how business process and service architectures can be brought together to create a single approach, rather than having two distinct and competitive solutions to the same problem.

"Capgemini's approach to this problem is to view SOA as being about the S and the A, Service and Architecture," said Mark Pettit, Head of Integration at Capgemini. "A properly established Business Service Architecture helps both sides work together to deliver a common view of both business and IT. The Services give context and control to the processes, while the processes explain how the services operate and are consumed. Using Capgemini's Integrated Architecture Framework (IAF) we are able to help our clients use SOA not as a new technology solution but as a way to change both systems delivery and the IT organization that under takes it."

The presentation further outlined how Enterprise Architecture enables organizations to better enable flexibility at the "edge" while retaining control in the centre. A critical factor in this is moving away from monolithic projects towards more flexible Service based programs. >>

You can read this in full at:   http://www.consultant-news.com/article_display.aspx?p=adp&id=2797

[Disclaimer: Mark Pettit is a charming young intellectual who has bought me many drinks in the past!]

I like the above extract – as you know I tend to bang on about the upper business-centric layers which SOA hopefully serves so well.  Capgemini of course have a background in business as well as IT consultancy, as do the big consultancies coming out of the big accountancy firms.

The biggest, visibly proactive player in the SOA arena has to be IBM.  IBM traditionally has tended to sell more to top management as opposed to just DP/IT managers – I am going back now to an era when their competitors sold to the DP Manager, as did IBM, the difference being that IBM also took the Managing Director out to lunch (proper business lunches in those days where even IBMers were allowed to drink) or a game of golf.  Since IBM Global Services bought PWC's consulting arm, they have had even more reason to promote business-IT alignment solutions.  However, the stuff about SOA and IBM that I come across on the Web seems to be very much at the technical level.  Would any IBMers in this Group care to correct this impression?

While we are at it, would anyone from other major SOA vendors such as BEA or Oracle like to explain their company's position on SOA and business-IT alignment – or at least refer us to texts on this theme?

Gervas

 

Gervas Douglas

+44-7763-109 116

http://www.aisl-services.com

 




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