Enterprise SOA

What is enterprise architecture and how will ESA change it?

An enterprise architecture is two things, only one of which has to do with IT. The first step to creating an enterprise architecture is to understand how the business should best be organized. An enterprise architecture begins with business goals, which are met through the design of a complex of interrelated business processes. The second step specifies how IT will support that organization and the underlying processes.

Historically, enterprise architects have been limited in their ability to design with processes and IT solutions to support them by the flexibility of enterprise applications such as Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management (SCM), and the like. Enterprise applications started as large, complex collections of processes that were configurable up to a point. So an ERP application contained a basic process for running purchase orders or invoices, a CRM application had a basic process for handling a customer inquiry, and an SCM application had various processes embedded within it for interacting with suppliers, monitoring the factory floor, or managing inventory, to name a few.

It is easy to forget that before the advent of ERP and the rest of the enterprise applications that emerged, most business processes lacked standardization. The first generation of enterprise applications created a standard form for the automation of the common processes that appeared ...