Eight more companies that made SOA happen in 2006
Last week, I cited examples of SOA work that took place over the past year at ten leading companies.
Here are eight more companies that led the way with SOA, originally posted over at my SOA in Action site:
Integrate back-end legacy systems: International Truck developed an SOA-based "Common Vehicle Tracking System" to surface all types of back-end legacy systems and track truck production in near real time, while flagging any defects or bottlenecks in production.
Better connect with partners. MedicAlert built an SOA-based system called E-HealthKEY with the goal of achieving interoperability not only between its own internal applications, but also with partners -- hospitals, doctors’ offices, EMTs, and other medical professionals and establishments -- to provide up-to-date personal health records.
Componentize product offerings: Experian leveraged SOA-based processes and technologies to develop a Customer Event Management system (CEMS) to support its base of leading financial institution customers. The system enables financial institutions to rapidly assess and process new accounts using Experian's online services.
Abstract multiple ERP functions into a single service layer: Washington Group employed SOA-based middleware to move to an SOA that would abstract many of the functions used in various ERP systems across the company into a common service layer.
Streamline requests to IT: The IT operations group at Siemens AG built services around automating and streamlining the processes for fulfilling internal requests to IT for new equipment and passwords. The company releases four to eight new business processes to run on its SOA every six to 12 weeks.
Maintain service quality: The Hartford has a very strong SOA governance effort, led by an SOA steering committee consisting of application architects. Committee members assess proposed new services based on such criteria as supportability, reusability and adherence to the company’s SOA reference architecture.
Keep vendors on their toes: The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been investigating SOA, and launched a Regional Data Exchange, or R-DEx, a series of information sharing pilots with regional databases. Under R-DEx, the FBI has created plug-ins to Justice Department databases for four regional law enforcement data sharing associations, with more to come -- using an SOA registry built with off-the-shelf IT products.
Expand a global reach: Monster -- the online jobsite -- recently expanded its reach to 24 countries across the globe, and needed a service oriented architecture that would stretch across separate regional units, and avoid the need for manual routing of new orders to financial systems for invoicing.