Service-Oriented Architecture for Business Management

Abstract

During the last two decades, many enterprises have put business processes in the focus of their organizational strategies both for internal and collaborative business activities. Business process models provide the IT department with a semiformal, business-driven requirements basis for implementing business strategy into information systems (Scheer, 1999). However, despite notable progress in integration technologies such as workflow management systems (WMS) and enterprise application integration (EAI) systems, executing enterprise applications along a business process has remained the challenge of any universal business process management (BPM) approach. The most recent technology paradigm of service-oriented architecture (SOA) is expected to accomplish seamless and flexible business process automation (Krafzig, Banke, & Slama, 2005). The vision of loosely coupled services, that execute business activities across heterogeneous, distributed software systems via the Internet, captivates by the extent of flexibility and responsiveness given to business management. Thus, service-oriented computing represents more than a concept of software engineering. It is rather considered to be the ultimate driver for a complete business reformation, finally bridging the gap between business strategy and technological infrastructure. Beyond these visionary perspectives, the effects of service-orientation on BPM methods and techniques will be manifold and challenging both for research and practice.