Enterprise Services-oriented Architecture (SOA)

 

Service-oriented architecture is a plan for a flexible and opens IT planning for developing services-based, enterprise-scale business solutions. With the SAP NetWeaver technology based on open standards, SOA moves IT planning to higher levels of adaptability. Organise and put together new functions into an SOA-compliant customer landscape is very much easy by the use of SAP's SOA methodology.

 

An enterprise service is usually a series of Web services joint with business logic that can be accessed and used constantly to support a particular business process. Aggregating Web services into business-level enterprise services provides a more important foundation for the task of automating enterprise-scale business scenarios.

 

SOA provides methods for systems development and integration where systems group functionality around business processes and package these as interoperable services. A SOA infrastructure allows different applications to exchange data with one another as they participate in business processes. Service-orientation aims at a loose coupling of services with operating systems, programming languages and other technologies that underlie applications.

 

SOA separates functions into separate units, or services, which developers make available over a network in order that users can combine and reuse them in the production of business applications.

 

 These services communicate with each other by passing data from one service to another, or by coordinating an activity between two or more services. Many commentators see SOA concepts as built upon and evolving from older concepts of distributed computing and modular programming.

This SOA Maturity Model provides a framework for discussion between IT and business users about the applicability and benefits of SOA in an organization across five levels of adoption maturity.