The pressure on enterprises to improve operational efficiency and response times to new competitive threats and market opportunities has never been greater.
This pressure is forcing businesses to reevaluate the way they operate, the way IT supports their existing operations and the opportunities for current IT systems to be adapted to support longer term business evolution.
In this executive paper, we describe the potential of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), in the context of helping an organization to achieve True Business Agility. In order for a business to achieve this state of True Business Agility, the organization needs to leverage existing IT systems as much as possible, while optimally aligning the relationship between Business and IT. The most important development is that the traditional gap that exists between Business and IT needs to be bridged, so that IT better understands and can better cater to the needs of the business, while business executives are able to respond more quickly and effectively to changing business needs through more direct access to IT systems.
