How can enterprises quickly cope with the changing market environment

Challenges

With the increasing competition in the market, enterprises' internal collaboration becomes increasingly complex. How can we quickly cope with the changing market environment with limited resources? Only by optimizing the business process, accelerating the corresponding speed, improving the flexibility of the Organization and the effective use of resources, and continuously innovating can enterprises create their own "distinctive" competitive advantages. Using SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) to effectively combine business processes with information technology is undoubtedly an effective path to business development and success.

Confusions

Mr. Pan's company produces and sells electronic consumption products and is responsible for product services and support. After nearly five years of rapid development, Mr. Pan's company has occupied a certain share in the domestic consumer electronics market. However, the competition is intensifying, which not only causes serious product homogeneity, but also causes high supply chain costs. At present, the company urgently needs to launch a new personal electronic product. Dilemmas: on the one hand, the R & D scale and difficulty of new products have increased, and R & D funds have encountered bottlenecks. On the other hand, the implementation process of product launch plans by various departments is not uniform, the company's original business process seems to have completely lost its role. What's more serious is that if the new system cannot be listed smoothly and the company loses its competitive lead, the company's operation will face huge difficulties. Mr. Pan understands that SOA can effectively utilize business processes and enterprise resources, but where can he start?

Q: currently, SOA is the focus of market and enterprise attention. I have seen that many related materials have a strong technical background and I have no IT background. Can you briefly summarize what SOA is?

A: SOA is short for servicesorientedarchitecture (Service-Oriented Architecture). It is not a narrow it concept. In a broad sense, it is a methodology for solving problems, it divides business components into basic building modules, just as IT infrastructure modularization is achieved through standardized software interfaces, so that flexible business processes can match flexible it processes.

Q: What aspects can soa promote enterprise development? Can you give them some suggestions on the conditions required for implementing SOA?

A: SOA advocates flexibility and reusability and makes full use of existing resources, which is very important for IT applications of small and medium-sized enterprises. At present, SOA is widely used in various industries, for two reasons. First, SOA can help the customer's IT system better face business needs-services and businesses; second, for small and medium-sized enterprises, the advantages of SOA in flexibility are increasingly recognized by users, SOA-based IT systems can help customers quickly respond to business and changes.

For small and medium-sized enterprises, there are three issues to be aware of when implementing SOA. First, do business processes need to be changed? Second, are there many different business applications? Third, do you need system integration to integrate these applications? After consideration, consider whether it is necessary to implement SOA. If an enterprise's products, services, and applications need frequent changes and adjustments, SOA can help it optimize the process.

Q: Will small and medium-sized enterprises face complicated implementation steps and long cycles in implementing SOA? How to effectively integrate with the business development of different industries and enterprises?

A: reducing costs and improving efficiency is more urgent for small and medium-sized enterprises. Just like selling the electronics industry, products need a series of links from initial production to market. If you implement SOA to optimize every production process and enhance process management, You can greatly save costs.

The steps for enterprises to implement SOA are not too complicated. Of course, from implementation to final results, it still takes a period of time. Here, I would like to remind small and medium-sized enterprises that are preparing to implement SOA that they should first know what they are doing first and what they want to achieve. Second, it is also an effective way for companies that are not good enough to implement it through system integrators, independent software developers, and other partners.

Q: Does the implementation of SOA have restrictions on the specific enterprise scale and business characteristics? Can any small and medium-sized enterprise implement SOA?

A: Frankly speaking, I think there are still some restrictions. For example, some small and medium-sized enterprises can do business without too much changes in their business processes. In other words, their applications are still relatively simple, so there is basically no need to consider whether there is a need to implement SOA. I suggest that it is not too late to consider implementing SOA after these enterprises develop to a certain scale.

Q: Are there any industry restrictions on implementing SOA? Are small and medium-sized enterprises having unique advantages in implementing SOA?

A: there should be no industry restrictions, but some industries will have better performance in implementing SOA, such as applications in the financial industry. SOA is widely used in the financial industry. Due to the busy business in this industry, IT infrastructure construction is relatively mature compared with other industries, and it is easier to establish SOA applications. However, for the rapid sales of the electronic manufacturing industry, it is necessary to look at its product production cycle and the development of the enterprise itself, and cannot be generalized. For a certain industry, IBM will have the best examples and hope users can learn from them.

A unique advantage of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in implementing SOA is fast response. Once decided, they will proceed immediately. This is a different aspect from that of large enterprises. To a certain extent, the process from deployment to implementation is accelerated.

Q: As an emerging field, is the current application environment of SOA mature? Are there any success stories to prove the effectiveness of SOA?

A: The progress, cycle, and effect of SOA implementation vary depending on the degree of IT infrastructure in different industries. One thing is certain: As the informatization process in various industries accelerates, the application environment of SOA is also maturing. At present, more and more enterprises are experiencing the effects of SOA.

For example, in the financial industry, through the implementation of SOA, 99% of hosting organizations can coordinate to eliminate failed transactions and reduce business and IT operating costs by 20%. In the consumer electronics industry, the product marketing plan is shortened by 20 thousand by using online design to update 30% parts per week on average. This is also true in other industries.

Link

SOA: helping enterprises implement flexible it

To maintain competitiveness, enterprises are dealing with two problems: maintaining flexibility and reducing costs. Therefore, enterprises need a more economical and flexible IT infrastructure. SOA, a service-oriented architecture, is the development trend of IT infrastructure. It can help enterprises:

* Make better use of existing assets

* Easier integration and management complexity

* Faster response and market release

* Reduce costs and increase reuse

Why does SOA help enterprises achieve this? It can be used as a metaphor for the popular image-the movable print. Before the operationArticleTo engrave a slate, if you want to modify some words in the article, you need to engrave a slate again. SOA is like the movable printing technology. It makes the business process of an enterprise the smallest unit. In technical words, it is called a "service". When an enterprise needs it to change due to business needs, you can flexibly adjust the it of an enterprise just like a group word.

Expert comment

Si shuhui, analyst at SCID consulting Software Industry Research Center

Since the introduction of SOA in 1996, it has actually passed the conceptual hyping and discussion phase into the application promotion phase. Especially enterprise users are more concerned about the application effects of SOA. At present, some vendors such as IBM's success stories also provide reference for other users. For small and medium-sized enterprises, the business model is often flexible but not complex. If you consider future business and scale expansion, IT planning uniformity and scalability are very important, at this point, it is beneficial to deploy it architecture based on SOA from the very beginning, which can avoid the problems of scattered IT systems, difficult to integrate and expand many large and medium-sized enterprises.