Striving for excellence through SOA

17.11.2005
Current IT architecture is a stumbling block for enterprises seeking greater agility through the implementation of service oriented architecture (SOA), the Asia-Pacific president of IBM, Frank Kern said today.

Speaking at the Gartner Symposium, Kern said IT professionals need to compartmentalize the business as a series of individual specialist units by creating 'centers of excellence'.

As enterprises become more specialized internally, IT should follow, Kern said.

"Moving to centers of excellence is an evolutionary process, and one we are accelerating and doing more of at IBM. On a global basis using a global supply chain model, we were able to drag 31 percent more goods at 21 percent less cost - the power of the horizontal, fully integrated supply chain," Kern said.

"By doing that we have improved client satisfaction by two points, we have inventory at a 30-year low; we have reduced our number of suppliers by 80 percent and made 90 percent of our procurement processes hands-free.

"The Department of Veterans' Affairs did component mapping of its business, looked at what it is good at and determined that it could have certain offices in states become centers of excellence to support the whole country."