Organizations are taking notice of the compelling benefits that Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) promises to deliver. Utilizing secure, standardized components – or Services – that can be efficiently reused and appropriately combined across the enterprise to support changing business priorities, SOA can dramatically improve organizational agility. Hence, you’ve undoubtedly been deluged with information from your ERP provider about its next generation of SOA-enabled applications. Oracle/PeopleSoft users are hearing about Fusion. For SAP users, it’s Netweaver.
This shift among ERP providers poses two key questions your organization should consider: “What is the major new technology consideration swirling around SOA-enabling ERP applications?” and, “How do I start to build – and benefit from – a long-term SOA strategy today without committing to a significant upfront investment?”
Let’s start with the technology. Today’s ERP applications deliver highly integrated and tightly coupled business processes that are fairly efficient. For example, in Oracle, procure-to-pay is handled by pre-built Purchasing, Electronic Procurement, and Accounts Payable modules. However, these applications are difficult to modify or customize when the delivered process does not match your business requirement. Furthermore, it’s highly challenging to develop new processes that could provide competitive advantage or breakthrough performance.
In an SOA environment, future ERP applications will more granularly define individual sub-processes – for instance, ‘route P.O.’ or ‘perform catalog lookup’ – that will facilitate end-to-end business processes. If delivered as promised, the new generation of ERP applications will allow you to better match your best business processes with the software at a lower ongoing cost.
However, these new capabilities require a new class of middleware to work. Case in point: the granular sub-processes will be stored in a library called a Service Repository, as opposed to today’s Module. The processes will be connected by glue called BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) to create end-to-end processes. The messages that execute the business processes will travel along an Enterprise Service Bus and be presented to internal and external users through a Portal. These are all middleware components of the solution.
So, how do you intelligently define and scope your organization’s future SOA environment, including the low-hanging efficiencies that will deliver a fast ROI? Start by understanding business processes at a more granular level than today. At the same time, identify redundancies, e.g. how many applications call for a student record, or an employee, customer or vendor number? Document your processes in the context of your Enterprise Architecture, particularly customizations. From there, develop a middleware strategy that leverages your ERP provider’s next generation of SOA-enabled applications.
CherryRoad believes that, while SOA-based applications certainly represent a new frontier in IT/business alignment, you do not have to make large investments now to take advantage of them. A thorough planning initiative that maps out the most effective approach of integrating your business operations and IT will enable a smoother transition and a lower cost platform over your IT strategic planning timeline.
To learn more about SOA, download our latest White Paper: Realizing Tangible Benefits from SOA in the Near Term. Or, contact us at info@cherryroad.com.