Service-Oriented Architecture Goes Corporate Mainstream

Web 2.0 (user-generated content) has come to the enterprise in a big way. Far from merely looking the other way while employees spend time on Facebook, Web 2.0 for the enterprise means companies are creating internal social networks for employees, customers, and vendors and customers are taking a larger and larger role in product development.

The buzzword for all this is SOA (service-oriented architecture), which actually has little to do with software design, and everything to do with listening to the customer and involving customers in how applications are developed.

For now, the ideal application architecture is SOA. All corporate application developers want Web 2.0 and business process management (BPM), along with SOA in order to satisfy the short-term and long-term needs of their clients.

Thus, it’s critical to understand that SOA is a term of art that applies not only to software development, but to customer relations as well. It involves making the entire enterprise aware of the customer at every moment.

ESS has a long history of asking its customers to participate in the design of its products. In the early days of the company, we actually sent our customers faxes on a weekly basis, asking for their input! We then moved our efforts to the quickly-emerging Internet. So it isn’t surprising that we are now a leader in rolling out SOA and creating a platform that takes advantage of the insights and needs of our customers.

We are implementing SOA now and are on a five-year plan to continue rolling it out in the technology development of our software. SOA enables us to take information from our customers about emerging issues and problems in their businesses and produce the right solution. This is our strategy to maintain industry leadership and our commitment to enable our customers to solve their real world GRC and EHS problems.

1 comment October 25th, 2007