Wikipedia defines Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) as: “an architectural style that guides all aspects of creating and using business processes, packaged as services, throughout their lifecycle, as well as defining and provisioning the IT infrastructure that allows different applications to exchange data and participate in business processes regardless of the operating systems or programming languages underlying those applications”.

Although not suitable for all companies the benefits of a SOA can be great.

-›    It enables systems to do what they were designed to do and prevents application creep.
-›    Aids the replacement or migration of outdated or underperforming applications.
-›    Reduces expensive customisation in order to get systems to interact.

One of the, often overlooked, bonuses of implementing a SOA is that it forces you to examine
and rationalise your existing business processes. This exercise often realises enough cost
and time savings on its own to justify the whole project!

Many firms implementing a Service Oriented Architecture are often guilty of "throwing the
baby out with the bathwater".

That is, they neglect the strengths of the systems that are already in place in a customer's site
and focus on bringing in myriad new expensive applications or building bespoke systems from scratch.

What we endeavour to do is leverage the most from your existing systems whilst
standardising their interfaces in order to get them talking to each other effectively.

We also realign your architecture in a way that the various applications within it can
be replaced with the minimum of effort and impact if their cost or lack of functionality ever
becomes an issue.

We often combine our SOA solutions with automation of business processes which
can have a dramatic effect on a company's productivity.

You'd be surprised as to what is achievable in the way of automation, contact us to find out more and perhaps use our free consultancy offer for more in depth advice.