Enterprise SOA

ESA in action: Mitsui

Mitsui is an excellent example of a company that is putting ESA to work to integrate its operation based on a strategic look at key business processes. Mitsui is one of Japan's largest general trading companies, with more than 700 consolidated subsidiaries, 177 offices worldwide, and a global workforce of more than 38,000 employees. The company focuses on the trading of metals, machinery, chemicals, energy, and consumer goods, and the scope of its operations contains everything from domestic sales in Japan to import/export to offshore trading. Mitsui's strategic goal, set in 2000, is to become "the world's strongest general trading company." But rapid globalization—along with the challenges of market expansion, fierce competition, and the rising volume of data that comes with it—forced Mitsui to make important changes in its corporate structure.

To this end, the company embarked on a massive business reform and integration effort designed to streamline companywide business processes and consolidate the more than 400 individual systems comprising the supporting IT infrastructure. Mitsui's overarching goal was to replace the individual and diffuse efforts of its subsidiaries with a more integrated and centralized model aimed at optimizing, standardizing, and visualizing the operational processes the Mitsui Group had in common.

Begun in earnest in 2001, the first stages of the company's "business reform project" required four years and 670 project members working ...