Successful Application of Service-Oriented Architecture Across the Enterprise and Beyond

This paper is divided into two major sections. In the first section we look at evolving service-oriented architecture to the service-oriented enterprise, and in the second, we examine integrated process and technology reference models. The literature abounds with articles about ServiceOriented Architecture (SOA) and particularly Web service-based SOA. Yet, to be successful within a real enterprise, there needs to be more than simple agreement over protocol, data packaging, service invocation, and discovery. While the latter are essential to SOA by providing a foundation for the creation of services, they do not describe how those services function within the overall enterprise environment. They do not describe, for example, how to deliver reliable, scalable enterprise business processes built upon SOA–i.e., the ServiceOriented Enterprise (SOE). The literature on this topic is remarkably sparse. In the first section of this paper, we explore SOA from the perspective of an SOE where the primary service building blocks execute within a managed SOA ecosystem. This managed SOA ecosystem relies upon orchestration, business rules, and process correlation to provide monitoring and management, and business process analytics and autonomics. This framework weaves SOA into the enterprise fabric providing a rich service framework within which to implement enterprise business processes. We begin with an overview of SOE, and then discuss a technology development project to create a Business Rules service. Several usage models are discussed. In a globally connected economy, enhanced collaboration increases visibility of critical supply and demand changes and streamlines the flow of information that governs critical design and supply chain decisions. The main barrier to digital supply chain collaboration is complexity and high costs associated with extensibility of business processes throughout the network of suppliers and customers. Business process extensibility is the ability of an enterprise to conduct digital collaboration with its partners, by extending processes throughout the supply chain to increase visibility and streamline the information flow. Enterprises must be enabled to expose their business processes through SOA while retaining and extending the capabilities normally found in tightly integrated vertical applications. We must comprehend fully those collaboration models and the architectural elements necessary to support them. In the second section of this paper, we explore methods for modeling and implementing business processes within the value chain as an integrated system and introduce a set of principles and guidelines for defining a reference architecture that consistently and accurately represents the value chain as an SOA. We explain how this can be accomplished with a reference model for modeling, simulation, and benchmarking business processes and with a reference architecture that supports deployment and management of collaborative processes within the value chain. Our research with Collaborative Product Development Associates introduced us to a Federation Enterprise Reference Architecture (FERA), a reference architecture that extends SOE to the federated enterprise. * Other brands and names are the property of their