Bringing people, process, information and technology
together for cost optimization and agility
Highlights
● Provide a more flexible infrastructure
● Provide a foundation for joint business/IT initiatives
● Align technology with the needs of the business
Today’s work
Business communities have dramatically changed the
way we work. Now entire markets appear, disappear, or move
halfway around the world—seemingly overnight. Innovative,
new products are being developed faster and keeping up
with market demands seems, at times, almost impossible.
Customers insist on better service and higher quality products
at lower prices.
At the same time, technology and culture have transformed
the why we work. People expect to be able to work anytime,
from anywhere, with anyone. Information is abundant. With
all this progress, one might think businesses are getting things
done faster and better than ever before.
However, with each change, new inefficiencies creep into
every aspect of work. One study showed that two-thirds of all
employees surveyed believe there are colleagues who can help
them do their jobs better, but don’t know where to find them.
Furthermore, 42 percent say they make decisions based on
the wrong information at least once a week. And every week,
businesses waste more than five hours per employee due to
inefficient processes.
It’s no wonder that 98 percent of CEOs say they need to
restructure the way their organizations work. Restructuring an
organization in a business climate that changes as quickly as
the current one, while a daunting challenge, presents a
tremendous opportunity.
Work smarter
Hundreds of organizations around the world have already
begun to take advantage of this opportunity by working
smarter. They have become more dynamic—more efficient
and more profitable. They can adapt, and respond, to these
quickly changing market conditions. Their business partners
and customers can seamlessly collaborate throughout every
link in their supply chain. Their employees can access the
right information at the right time—every time.
Some of the same technological advances that are forcing so
many rapid changes on the business landscape also hold the
potential to revolutionize the way work gets done. Business
processes can be more dynamic and flexible, using advanced
analytics to not only react to market shifts, but anticipate
them.
Information can be shared not just across an organization,
but between organizations—revealing new patterns and opportunities.
And employees a world apart can work together and
collaborate naturally, in real time.
The results are in
Smarter work is getting done right now. In each case,
companies are connecting, integrating and capitalizing on previously
disparate parts of their business. And the results are
visible and measurable.
A recent customer survey by IBM of more than 900 IT and
business decision makers around the world reported success in
demonstrating return on investment (ROI) and a SOA
investment that pays for itself—and more—60 percent report
exceeding their cost reduction objective. More importantly,
one of the top success factors cited in surpassing SOA expectations
was investment in supporting SOA infrastructure
Smart SOA foundation
How does a Smart SOA™ foundation help? It can provide
your business with a more flexible infrastructure. It can make
processes, even fundamental business models, more dynamic
by automating the simple tasks as well as the complicated ones
and optimizing processes for maximum business performance.
A Smart SOA foundation allows organizations to maximize
their business interactions better—and smarter. It connects
them in real time, wherever they are and with whatever device
they choose. It makes collaboration and discovery of expertise
natural and simple.
It also delivers trusted information and smarter analytics.
Trusted information becomes widely available—in context.
Analysis now becomes more predictive in nature. This leads to
better, faster and smarter decisions.
Finally, a Smart SOA foundation can provide a set of
technology capabilities that maximize agility and the
ability to interconnect people and processes through service
orientation—flexibly aligning the technology with the needs of
the business.
A Smart SOA foundation can provide a set of technology capabilities that
maximize agility and the ability to interconnect people and processes
through service orientation—flexibly aligning the technology with the needs
of the business.
Scenario 1: Flexible connectivity
To achieve flexibility, organizations need to reduce IT complexity
so IT can more quickly and easily deliver on the needs
of the business and still afford to innovate. A Smart SOA
approach untangles costly and debilitating IT complexity associated
with point-to-point connectivity and integration, while
maintaining the highest levels of reliability.
As a result, IT is able to cost effectively deliver fast and flexible.
to dynamic business requirements, reduce resource, maintenance
and integration costs, as well as enable IT to seamlessly
bridge to new connectivity technologies that are in such
demand today.
SOA applications and services can also be extended beyond
organizational walls to your partners, suppliers and customers.
And it provides a fast and reliable way of unlocking packaged
business applications, accelerating the delivery of industryspecific
information and consolidating partner management
and business-to-business efforts. So you have your entire
organization working seamlessly and ready for any marketplace
situation—quickly.
The Texas Health and Human Services Commission developed
a new business model offering clients better and more
varied service over the phone, at hospitals, in community
centers, offices and via the Internet, supported by a serviceoriented
architecture using existing applications, saving
between 40 - 70 percent.
Scenario 2: SOA entry points
SOA entry points allow a business to start on projects that
have the most value and move to new opportunities quickly.
They allow the ability to solve immediate and, likely, straightforward
challenges, such as connectivity, reuse, collaboration,
information access and automation, in a way that can segue
into more substantial changes, should they become necessary.
But for all the simplicity that the SOA entry points bring,
it is very important to recognize that simplicity is not just a
principle that applies to basic projects. No deployment is so
advanced that we can tolerate needless complexity. Smart
SOA requires simplicity as a tenet of good design. The Smart
SOA approach cuts through needless complexity.
For example, the Finnish Defense Forces enabled all their
branches to share common C4 applications and—by enabling
the dynamic reuse of services—allowed them to get new
applications out to the field in a fraction of the time, realizing
an 80 percent reduction in development time.
IBM offerings for flexible connectivity
Software
● IBM WebSphere® Enterprise Service Bus
● IBM WebSphere Message Broker
● IBM WebSphere DataPower® Appliances
● IBM WebSphere MQSeries®
● IBM WebSphere Transformation Extender
● IBM WebSphere Partner Gateway
● IBM WebSphere Adapters
Services
● SOA Infrastructure Consulting Services
● Design and Implementation Services for ESB and
Message Broker
● Event Management and Monitoring for SOA
IBM offerings for SOA entry points
Software
● IBM WebSphere Process Server
● IBM WebSphere MQ FTE
● IBM WebSphere Application Server
● IBM WebSphere Portal
● IBM Rational® Asset Analyzer
● IBM Rational System Architect
● IBM InfoSphere™ Information Server
Services
● IBM WebSphere Portal Quickstart Services,
● IBM Testing Services
Scenario 3: SOA Governance
SOA Governance helps organizations manage, trust and
secure services and documents in an SOA. As a result, organizations
can rapidly bring new services to the market, reduce
business application risk, increase staff productivity, and lower
maintenance costs while maximizing return on their assets.
SOA Governance is key to a dynamic infrastructure that helps
organizations address higher service expectations and rising
cost pressures while providing a foundation for breakthrough
productivity, accelerated value creation and the increased
velocity needed to achieve the faster pace that business and
society demand. This dynamic infrastructure becomes instrumented,
interconnected and intelligent to bring together the
business and IT infrastructure to create new possibilities
across the business.
For example, AMB Generali established an SOA Governance
Center team which enabled groups to work effectively in tandem,
reducing technology and process redundancies, optimizing
system integration and workflow, and mitigating project
risk resulting in US$50 million in savings.
Smart SOA foundation and ROI
How does a Smart SOA foundation provide an improved
return on your investment? Flexible connectivity leads to
improved connectivity. SOA entry points provide the
foundation for joint business/IT initiatives, including cloud
computing and Smart Work High Performance Applications.
Together, they simplify and accelerate application development
and end-to-end system deployment to help lower costs
even further. With SOA governance, you can more quickly
gain executive buy-in and increase the reuse of business
processes. And SOA Appliances provide the low-cost, low-risk
start for your SOA implementation.
For more information
To learn more about the Smart SOA, please contact your
IBM marketing representative or IBM Business Partner, or
visit the following Web sites:
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