Mastering Enterprise SOA with SAP NetWeaver® and mySAP™ ERP

Chapter 7. ESA Adoption: The Role of Enterprise IT Architecture

You should now be familiar with ESA’s goals and the impact in IT that a shift to SOA technologies and end-to-end management of business processes can bring about. There are many paths and options for succeeding with ESA. In fact, the road map for every organization will be unique because the details of your specific business drivers, processes, existing IT landscape, and especially your organizational structure and culture will have a huge impact in terms of how you pursue ESA.

Some organizations will include ESA within the framework of larger business process improvement or SOA programs. Others will use ESA as the mechanism to drive these efforts. One thing is certain. The more strategic benefits of the ESA approach cannot be realized from doing business as usual within IT. And simply adopting SAP NetWeaver technologies for implementing individual projects is only part of the process. A successful enterprise IT architecture (EA) program is the best way to deliver better long-term alignment between business and IT organizations, along with the process agility gains discussed in earlier chapters.

Of course, there are tactical benefits from using service-oriented integration and application-development techniques, and this can be a great place to begin piloting ESA adoption, as discussed in Chapter 8. However, those efforts will eventually hit a wall in many organizations if not incorporated into a larger EA initiative. ...