Map to Service-Oriented Business and IT: A Stratified Approach

To succeed in the current business environment, organizations need to be innovative, flexible and faster in the face of uncertainty, complexity and change. As the perspective has moved from products to services, enterprises have componentized their structures to operate in the newly emerging collaborative ecosystems. Service-oriented information technology approaches have proven to be well suited to this business transformation. Increasingly, IT capabilities also drive business strategy. To create a ‘big picture’ that brings together different viewpoints and their relations and helps positioning and comparing various approaches to service systems, we put forth a new artifact, the Map to Service-Oriented Business and IT. The map uses a layered approach and is divided to four viewpoints along two dimensions: business-IT continuum and distinction between internal and external aspects. The layering is grounded in the Stratified Systems Theory, a cognitively motivated theory on organizations.