Towards a Service-Oriented Enterprise

If an organization is part of a much larger organization, many activities are influenced by the larger parent organization, often slowing down key business processes. Here, RT Insights blogger Tim Vibbert explains the steps the smaller organization should take in order to evolve into a real-time organization.

I have worked with a large organization for several years and this particular organization is only one portion of a much larger one. Because of this, many activities are either influenced or dictated by the parent organization. However, as in many cases of extremely large organizations, enterprise-wide projects slip the schedule by months or even years (and, in some cases, fade away altogether).

So, the organization that I have been working with has toyed with the notion of becoming a Service-Oriented Enterprise (SOE) itself. I have been in an advisory role with this effort and have stressed the need to thoroughly examine the business that the organization is in prior to devising an IT solution. Without fully understanding the nature of their business and how they go about performing that business, there is no way for them to know how to get to their “to-be” state and realize their business goals.

The “IT-first” approach began to truly infiltrate the organization when they decided to develop a set of atomic data services without looking at their current business and IT portfolios. They have been using what I call the “field-of-dreams” approach in hopes that other projects within the organization will leverage these services. I have seen this approach in several other organizations of various sizes but have yet to see it succeed in changing how the business (or IT for that matter) achieves it goals.

Now, this organization is trying to take the same approach by migrating existing solutions and products to the cloud. If they are under the impression that they can simply migrate their IT solutions and products to some type of cloud environment without regard to a business vision or strategy, then they are in for a rude awakening. Just as with Service Orientation, any cloud initiative must be driven by the business and not by IT. IT solutions are simply the enablers for business drivers and vision.

So, in my estimation, if this organization really wants to evolve into a real-time organization, it must provide real-time business information via an IT solution to its thousands of employees on a 24/7 basis through the world.