This book presents an approach to enterprise architecture, which enables corporations to achieve their business objectives faster. Focusing on the governance of IT in the organization, it provides tangible tools, advice and strategies for implementing and designing the architectural process within a corporation that will make a major contribution in driving the business forward and achieve its goals.
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a way of organizing software. If your company’s development projects adhere to the principles of SOA, the outcome will be an inventory of modular units called services, which allow for a quick response to change. This book tells the SOA story in a simple, straightforward manner that will help you understand not only the buzzwords and benefits, but also the technologies that underlie SOA: XML, WSDL, SOAP, XPath, BPEL, SCA, and SDO. And through it all, the authors provide business examples and illustrations, giving a practical meaning to abstract ideas.
The role of the enterprise architecture professional is one of the most challenging roles in information technology today. Many aspects of the role are technical, while much more of the job is becoming political. To say the least, it is a challenging position. Many enterprise architects have significant responsibility, but do not have the necessary authority to bring about success. The primary focus of this book is to be a guide and trusted advisor to those who want to be successful in this pursuit. Through real-world examples from experts who have filled the role of enterprise architect, the reader will learn how to solve complex problems, maintain technical competencies, and make a positive impact on the overall business. The most successful architecture will have an architect that can describe the motivation behind the technical choices; this book provides the background the practitioners will need to become the enterprise evangelist.
Information Technology professionals can use this book to move beyond the excitement of web services and service oriented architecture (SOA) and begin the process of finding actionable ideas to innovate and create business value. In Enterprise SOA: Designing IT for Business Innovation, SAP’s blueprint for putting SOA to work is analyzed from top to bottom. In addition to design, development, and architecture, vital contextual issues such as governance, security, change management, and culture are also explored. This comprehensive perspective reduces risk as IT departments implement ESA, a sound, flexible architecture for adapting business processes in response to changing market conditions. Based on extensive research with experts from the German software company SAP, this definitive book is ideal for architects, developers, and other IT professionals who want to understand the technology and business relevance of ESA in a detailed way – especially those who want to move on the technology now, rather than in the next year or two.
An enterprise architecture tries to describe and control an organisation’s structure, processes, applications, systems and techniques in an integrated way. The unambiguous specification and description of components and their relationships in such an architecture requires a coherent architecture modelling language. Lankhorst and his co-authors present such an enterprise modelling language, ArchiMate, that captures the complexity of architectural domains and their relations and allows the construction of integrated enterprise architecture models. They provide architects with concrete instruments that improve their architectural practice. As this is not enough, they additionally present techniques and heuristics for communicating with all relevant stakeholders about these architectures. Since an architecture model is useful not only for providing insight into the current or future situation but can also be used to evaluate the transition from ‘as-is’ to ‘to-be’, the authors also describe analysis methods for assessing both the qualitative impact of changes to an architecture and the quantitative aspects of architectures, such as performance and cost issues. The modelling language and the other techniques presented have been proven in practice in many real-life case studies. So this book is an ideal companion for enterprise IT or business architects in industry as well as for computer or management science students studying the field of enterprise architecture.
In The New Language of Business, senior IBM executive Sandy Carter demonstrates how to leverage SOA, Web 2.0, and related technologies to drive new levels of operational excellence and business innovation. Writing for executives and business leaders inside and outside IT, Carter explains why flexibility and responsiveness are now even more crucial to success–and why services-based strategies offer the greatest promise for achieving them. You’ll learn how to organize your business into reusable process components–and support them with cost-effective IT services that adapt quickly and easily to change. Then, using extensive examples – including a detailed case study describing IBM’s own experience – Carter identifies best practices, pitfalls, and practical starting points for success.
