Strategy and Architecture

IT is embracing a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach to provide a new level of IT agility to support fast moving organisations.

A Service Oriented Architecture is primarily a way of creating software systems based on Services – small independent units of software and data – that communicate with each other via explicit interfaces, using industry-wide standards known as XML Web Services. SOA provides software with the qualities that CIOs have been seeking for decades: flexibility, loose coupling, scalability, manageability, vendor/technology independence, reduced costs in development, deployment and maintenance.

A SOA approach is also about reconnecting business and IT. The business process framework is the basis for the SOA enterprise architecture. The business plan drives the SOA programme; the business itself defines the rationale for the web services; IT determines how they will be deployed; and business and IT together collaborate on what will be achieved.

Download the full paper describing the benefits of SOA business approach

SOAbenefits.pdf