Joe McKendrick, ebizQ's SOA in Action Blogger, is a nationally published author and consultant
with deep knowledge and insights regarding trends and developments in
the technology industry. He is a contributing editor to a number of
national and international publications and Websites including
Database Trends & Applications, ZDNet, and Webservices.Org. He also
serves as analyst for Evans Data Corp., and is lead analyst for Evans'
Web services and enterprise development management issues surveys.
SOA in Action Blog
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« Are SOA Vendors an Endangered Species? | Main | Even if Your Systems Hit the Big 4-0, are They Still Ready for SOA? » April 19, 2007Bombardier: Talk Business, Not 'SOA' What's the most typical reaction from business managers upon hearing proposals for SOA-enabling their processes? Eyes glazed over? Look to the experience of a major aerospace manufacturer, with huge backend integration challenges, which managed to bring 100 interfaces to its SOA layer from all parts of the business. As recently reported in IT Business, Bombardier had a bevy of heavy-duty systems to bring together into a common service layer. Bombardier uses SAP's R/3 ERP system, NetWeaver, and SAP's business warehouse and business intelligence technologies. The aerospace company also uses Lotus Notes for collaboration, EMC's Documentum for content management and technology from Sun Microsystems, Juniper and CA for security services. A crucial milestone in the SOA project was the creation of the Bombardier Manufacturing Information System, which entailed the integration of eight manufacturing systems resulting in 64 mission-critical real-time interfaces, according to Sean Terriah, manager of IT applications services at Bombardier. The company accomplished 100 mission-critical interfaces using 14 protocols, 10 messaging formats across internal and external systems and network topology. An additional 40 real-time interfaces were created as part of an extended enterprise that integrates with Bombardier's logistics partners, including Caterpillar Logistics, UPS and Fedex, as well as with the U.S. Customs and the German Customs. There is a crucial element to Bombardier's success with SOA, said Terriah: His department didn't call these efforts "SOA." Instead, the discussion always evolved around business requirements. "When we talk to the lines of business, we don't start off with the discussion about SOA, “ he explained. “We see SOA as important for our IT group and it's about our approach to developing new solutions…and the lines of business will just benefit from that approach.” Bombardier is a good example of a company that made SOA an enterprise-wide approach, rather than a siloed IT project. Posted by joemckendrick in SOA | Digg This | Add to del.icio.us Trackback Pings TrackBack URL for this entry:
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