Datasheet

10
Par t I: Get ting Started with SOA
suppliers to help it continue to compete. It bought or built business applica-
tions to solve problems all over the company — one at a time. For example,
it bought an application for the corporate finance department, created one
to handle customer claims, and procured other applications to manage
research information about what type of accidents were most common under
what circumstances.
This worked well for many years, until the 1990s, when ABC found itself
competing against financial services companies who decided they could
sell insurance, too. Suddenly, ABC needed to find new ways to compete so
it could sell a larger variety of products to current customers and also find
some new customers. Its leaders thought up exciting new solutions based on
the knowledge of their business and their customers.
In addition, management thought ABC could expand its business by acquir-
ing other insurance companies with complementary products. ABC could sell
these new products to existing ABC customers and sell ABC’s products to the
customers of the companies they acquired. These smart guys and gals under-
stood business strategy. Everyone got really excited until . . .
Management talked to IT, and IT said, “This is really, really exciting, but we
have a small problem.”
“What could it be?” asked management.
“It’s this,” said IT. “We can no longer simply buy or build more software appli-
cations to implement our innovative plans for new products and services. The
business policies and processes that we follow have become more complex.
Everything we want to do has to work in concert with what we already have.
The very running of our company depends on all the business applications
that we built and acquired over years working together smoothly — such as
the programs that tally the premiums people pay; administer the claims we
process; and make risk analysis, payroll, invoicing, and sales commission cal-
culations. When you come right down to it, our company is the aggregation
of all our programs. Everything we need to carry out our day-to-day business
functions — including information about our customers, our products, and our
risk performance — is locked inside these programs and processes.”
“Well,” said management, “You can just write new programs to tie everything
together. We’ll integrate, and we’ll all be very happy.”
And IT said, “Yes, it is possible to integrate, but integrating will take a very,
very long time: at least 18 months. Maybe two years. And by then, you might
want more changes that will take another 18 months or two years. By then, it
might be too late. And,” IT continued, “it will cost lots and lots of money.”
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