This chapter introduces a case study that will be further developed throughout this book. It will introduce a fictitious company that is looking to implement SOA Governance following a maturity assessment and a SOA Roadmap elaboration. The case study will help you to understand the concepts being presented in this book, as well as how to apply them to implement Oracle SOA Governance in an easily digestible form by illustrating the typical problems faced by organizations introducing governance, and how the benefits derived from its inception must be measurable and tangible.
The case study is based on actual scenarios experienced by the authors and therefore should provide a realistic view of the key challenges faced when implementing SOA Governance, and how they can be overcome.
Weir & Bell Telecom is a manufacturer and retailer of mobile phones and devices that has experienced rapid growth, following a number of highly successful marketing campaigns, and aggressive growth on the high street and internet. It has a very strong line up of products that are considered niche products and that result in high profit margins.
With competitors poised to release similar products, the company realizes that, in order to achieve its business objectives and thus maintain its leadership position, it needs to vastly improve and exploit its IT processes and infrastructure. Having grown rapidly, the IT department has not developed in line with the business strategy and the board has recently appointed a new Chief Information Officer (CIO) to oversee the IT department, and to develop an IT strategy that is closely aligned with the business strategy. The aim is to allow the organization to increase the efficiency and responsiveness of its supply chain processes by making effective use of digitized processes.
Weir & Bell Telecom has been quite progressive in its IT development to date, and has been using SOA for a number of years. However, SOA has been employed tactically rather than strategically. Furthermore, the company had made some initial investment in Oracle Fusion Middleware products such as Oracle SOA Suite 11g, WebCenter, and Oracle Database. The new CIO has identified SOA as a key enabler to allow the IT department to respond in an agile manner to business and regulatory changes.