The Pivotal Role of the Business Analyst in a Service Oriented Architecture World
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Introduction
As part of its ongoing work on SOA and Web Services, Gartner Research states that, by 2008, potent business drivers and advances in software technology will prompt more than 60% of enterprises to consider SOA as the guiding principle in the design of new, mission-critical business applications and business processes.
This transition to SOA is influenced by the fact that an increasing number of organizations using Web Services are suddenly experiencing the pain of inefficient business integration. These organizations are now recognizing the need to blend business needs and technical capabilities.
Some ramifications of poor business integration are:
•Supporting existing customers is difficult because internal systems don’t communicate. Within many organizations, systems are typically comprised of multiple, incompatible "islands of information". Although applications may run efficiently as stand-alones, once they are required to interface with others, compatibility issues can surface that add complexity to processes and result in higher costs.
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•Providing access to new customers is expensive and timeconsuming. Within some organizations, the limitations of interfaces require duplicate efforts and/or secondary follow-up to complete customer setups.
•Offering new products/services to customers may be hampered by the limitations of current systems. Buying and selling products/services may require access to business processes and data from a variety of sources. If a seamless interface between these sources is lacking, efficient delivery to
customers is hindered.
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With proper use of the tools and techniques common to the SOA environment, organizations can overcome the limitations of insufficient integration, become more agile, and reduce costs and time-to-market for new products and services.
Bridging the Communications Gap
One of the greatest challenges facing organizations today is bridging the gap that divides business and technology. To do this, the process of mapping business functionality and requirements into information systems models must be extended to include multiple perspectives.
Business Analysts are the pivotal points in providing these perspectives and aligning business goals with investment in technology. To thrive in organizations that adopt SOA, Business Analysts must learn new skills, master them to greater depths of competency and gain additional experience.
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