Impact of service orientation at the business level

IBM Systems Journal,  Dec, 2005  by L. Cherbakov,  G. Galambos,  R. Harishankar,  S. Kalyana,  G. Rackham

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Ascent of dynamic processes

In addition to being sequential, traditional processes are also synchronous--that is, processing at each step depends on and waits for the results of the previous step. The new process design (also known as the "choreography" of services) may be dynamic, that is, the choice of subsequent steps may be based on the full or even partial results of previous steps rather than on a predefined static sequence.

The creation of a new service is not just a combination of several existing services. It may involve modification or enhancement of existing services, and these may include steps involving human intervention. For example, human intervention might be required when an unexpected exception occurs and a decision that could not be preprogrammed must be made.

This change in process design requires new approaches to process modeling. New models need to be able to support more than just process decomposition. New concepts, modeling constructs, and tools must be able to capture processes with flexible sequences that are result-based rather than sequential with fixed decision points. Initial work is being done in this area, but not much has been published.

The emerging business-process-management discipline promises to treat the results of process execution as real-time data for the process itself. The availability of real-time process execution information will provide businesses an opportunity to address a wide range of challenges and to improve processes in nearly real time. Consider, for example, the availability of current and accurate information on fleet location, retail inventory, or shipments of goods. This kind of information represents business intelligence of the "closed-loop" kind, never available before. Availability of this information enables improved asset control, better process automation, and enhanced tracking of business activity. Achieving successful process design through a composition of services requires the support of new families of tools such as process engines and rule engines. The description of such tools is beyond the scope of this paper.

Addressing organizational issues

We cover here some characteristics of the service-oriented enterprise related to organizational matters: the organizational changes that are associated with the transition to a service-oriented enterprise, the emergence of service intermediaries, and the increased importance of a common interpretation of service definitions.

Change in organizational structure and roles

If organizational structures remain unchanged, the realization of the enterprise's SOA will be suboptimal. The transition to a service-oriented enterprise requires loosely coupled organizations that are based on the role definitions of service consumers and service providers and the understanding of their relationships. Although the relationships within each unit may remain hierarchical, the relationships between units are not; they are based on the provision and consumption of services.