EA, SOA and BPM

  • Enterprise Architecture (EA)                                                                                                                                                                                      joins the business and technological requirements together to create a dynamic concept. This concept includes the relationship between systems and subsystems and the external environment as well as the guiding principles for the design and evolution of an enterprise.

 

 

 

  • Service oriented architecture (SOA) and Business Process Management (BPM)
    SOA is made up of processes, services and components. The core part is a service model which defines the services and describes the components which in turn implement the functionalities.

 

  • Goal
    • Flexible system architecture with re-usable building blocks (Services)
    • Flexible composition of business processes through a sequence of services
    • Integration through platform, system, application and programming language barriers
    • Close/reduce the gap between business and IT
  • Services
    • One service displays a specific process step
    • The service has an interface which is independent of implementation
    • The service can be implemented on any platform in any programming language
  • Business Processes
    • A modeled business process displays the activities that are being carried out (order, sequential/parallel processes, requirements, branches, loops)
    • Services are allocated to each activity
    • The business process that is created is independent from the service implementation (through separation of interface and implementation)
    • Manual process steps are displayed through „Human Tasks“

 

  • Advantages
    • Flexible applications from components which are re-usable, exchangeable on demand, or combined in a different order. No hard-wired process logic (reduced maintenance and development efforts)
    • Usage of generally defined interfaces (independent of proprietary interfaces of single systems) which means on connection to further/other foreign systems no change in process application
    • Loose coupling between process applications and the services used and thus an independence of the process from for example the customer’s backend-system
    • Usage of the functionality of consisting systems and applications
    • Support from manual tasks and integration into different web based surfaces (To Do lists and dialogues for task development, for example in IBM or SAP portals)
    • Business driven: modeled processes build a framework for software solutions
  • SOA/BPM mit IBM WebSphere
    • Modeling of business processes: IBM WebSphere Business Modeler
    • Implementation of business processes: IBM WebSphere Integration Developer
    • Runtime environment of business processes: IBM WebSphere Process Server
    • Control of business processes: IBM WebSphere Business Monitor
    • Communication with service providers: IBM WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

 

  • Economic benefits
    • SOA means working in a business-oriented manner
      The productivity and profitability of the company will improve noticeably. Interactions across departments will foster innovation and flexibility.
      Integration costs will decrease as well as the amount of time spent for installation and availability of new services.
    • SOA decreases the amount of time spent on IT projects. This in turn will increase the probability of a timely introduction of products and services.
    • SOA saves you from having to change all of your systems.
    • With SOA you can reuse your software applications as many times as you like. This is five times cheaper than writing new applications!
      "Through the reuse of services you can resolve business-oriented problems much faster and with more efficiency." - (Amy Wohl)
    • Through SOA a detailed compliance with internal and external guidelines is guaranteed. Due to a central and standardized source, changes regarding compliance must now only be made once. They can then be applied without duplication in the entire firm.
    • SOA means connectivity
      Higher service levels in the company enable a reliable and safe availability of data across all processes.
      "A SOA influences every aspect of the IT and the business activities." (GARTNER)