Business Driven SOA Customization

Pietro Mazzoleni, Biplav Srivastava

Abstract: Service Oriented Architecture, e.g., Web services, as building blocks for IT based on open standards, assist enterprises become more responsive to the changing business environment when they are implemented and used in the context of business processes. In this direction, packaged integration platforms like IBM’s Composite Business Services or SAP have pre-configured business processes offered as web services. When the demand for a new capability arises, it can be addressed by building new services or by customizing an existing service. Service providers try to cover as much of the potential customer requirements as possible with provided capabilities but a complete coverage is not possible as individual industries might have unique requirements and customers can integrate services from multiple parties. In this situation, the problem is not whether a particular customization method will work but rather how to determine the overall impact of a new requirement in a complex SOA environment in terms of activities to be done and at what cost.