Chapter 10. Case Study: IBM

IBM’s quest to become a more flexible business has produced many lessons for the company. IBM’s goal to become a flex-pon-sive* company started in 2002 with a journey from a monolithic, decentralized company to a more flexible business enabled by SOA. The need for transformation was driven by the competitive environment in which the ability to define and execute business process–driven change was a prerequisite for profitability and growth. The underlying technology that would act as a catalyst to support this change was SOA. Over a four-year period, IBM evolved from exploratory activities and pilots to aggressive adoption and acceleration of SOA assets within the IBM solutions-development process. Managing SOA content, ...

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