In my previous posts I already explained The Enterprise Architecture show, The enterprise architecture show - episode 2, And … Why We Need the Enterprise Architecture Framework?. This post is about to explain why SAP so concerned about enterprise architecture.
SAP has been pushing Enterprise Service Oriented Architecture (e-SOA) for quite a long time. E-SOA is based on SOA principles and extends SOA with SAP assets in the business world, our business applications. E-SOA lays down an architecture that adopts SAP applications to SOA principles (Autonomy, Simple, well-documented interface, Flexibility and Unity). e-SOA enabled enterprises to create more flexible IT infrastructure to support more agile businesses using ASP applications and technologies.
To support SAP e-SOA architecture, SAP introduced set of technologies (such as NetWeaver), tools (such as CAF toolset), and services (such as ESA adoption program). As I already mentioned in SOA, It’s not about the IT It’s about the Business., although SOA is pushed by the IT world it can be successfully adopted by enterprises without the acceptances, understanding and supporting of the business side. If we need to compose a list of successful SOA adoption points, the first point will be getting the business people involved in the process. The second point will be a holistic view of the enterprise. Developing a service required knowledge and understanding of all the service consumers (both humans and machines). Such knowledge is required to set currently the interface and implementation of the service. To reach such knowledge and understanding we need to get a holistic view of the enterprise. Furthermore, without knowing what your current architecture is, what should be your future architecture, what are the gaps and how youre going to close those gaps, you wont be able to succeed.
Another point that should be addressed to gain success with SOA adoption is the right level of services granularity. Ending up with thousands of services or with few services wont help the service oriented architecture adoption. Enterprises need to find out the right service granularity for them. This granularity should be wider enough to enable flexibility and narrow enough to enable people to use them and communicate between them.
If youll look today for a methodology that will give you a holistic view of the enterprise and will guide you as to how to map your existing architecture, map your target architecture, identifying the gaps, set time-lined projects to close the gaps and governing the entire process; youll find out that enterprise architecture is the methodology you are after.
SAP is not just an application and technology provider; we are also partners of our customers, partners with deep knowledge and experience in 22 industries. As a partner with business oriented attitude we see both SOA and enterprise architecture as concepts, architecture and methodology that will help your business. Pushing enterprise architecture from our perspective has two objectives 1) Provides help for your business and for you to get a better understanding of current architecture and what needs to be changed . 2) Provides help with SOA adoption. Those two objectives support the same goal: making your business more agile and successful.
Natty Gur