
The Four piece Orchestra
Cloud, SOA, BPM and BI – While there is much written individually about these four hot topics of the day, there is perhaps less published as to the roles each play with respect to the other. While each of the four can play a significant role in improving the service capability and reach of a business, with possible reduction in costs and time to market, working together, the impact is vastly compounded.
The Cloud provides assets. It impacts business in two ways: it offers more to all and thereby reduces the value of proprietary assets. It is perhaps the second aspect that is understated but has had a greater impact on systematically eroding the bottom lines of organizations which have come to rely on their leading edge products or services around these products. Market share resulting from decades of huge investments to facilitate development, implementation and innovation is now being challenged by upstarts, because never before has so much been spent by many towards making more available for consumption in small parts, at will, without restrictive commitment. The term “barrier of entry” may well become passé. What started as simply providing excess hardware to others on demand, either by renting out tin or idle processors, has now extended to a ‘pay as you consume’ model that now spans virtually every component of the value stream. Platforms, software and even people are available on demand and increasingly, worryingly native. Worrying to those who depend on a traditional asset base of connections, tin, brick and mortar to protect them.
Service Oriented Architecture, SOA, is constructed on the principle of ‘ease’. The whole idea is to make it easy to invoke technical assets. Functional code is constructed knowing that it will be used, changed, reused and made available to many in a simple, standardized manner. Where possible, the intent is to model a ‘plug and play’ environment. The assets themselves may lie inside the enterprise or outside in the cloud. SOA represents a means to assemble them at will, put together components in different combinations and processes as meets the business need. The principal benefit of SOA is perhaps just this, the ability to change the offering fairly quickly, and thereby demonstrate a shorter time to market.
It is important to recognize that cost savings by itself may not make the business case, especially in the short term. However it is becoming evident that SOA, at least in part, may be necessary to meet competitive pressure and stay in business.
Business process management (BPM) nowadays enjoys an environment where it becomes an enriched conductor of action and sequence, choosing from a wider array of choices that are made available from the Cloud through the use of SOA centric services.
Business Intelligence, BI, is the trigger that sets the symphony moving. While the others can be considered as the means, BI, through the automated interpretation of data acts in real time and starts the music without human intervention!
End-User Experience
With SOA, BPM, BI and Cloud, Enterprises can offer their customers…
- Innovative product offerings that are ahead of the competition
- Customized offers created by analyzing user patterns in real time
- Seamless user experience across different mediums – PC & Mobile devices

Concluding thoughts and The Beginning
There have been certain trends that consistently emerge, irrespective of industry, as durable, fostering allegiance amidst users and producing wealth for those who incorporate them in their offerings. Amongst them, the principle of self-service, transferring power to the user, is perhaps significant. Countless examples of incredible commercial success resulting from followers across varied cultural domains prevail, Facebook, Google, Twitter are examples.
Why? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that they appeal to the age old values of liberty and freedom of expression, home building, ownership of domain and design to satisfy individual desire. The opportunity to provide a structured blank canvass, to build, enrich and provide restricted entry, was realized by Facebook and the value was created by the users themselves. This kind of self governance, that panders to the desire for independence and control, yet with belonging in a greater community, is critical towards widespread acceptance. The quartet plays music of this genre. The choice of content is determined by the user, the options unlimited by the Cloud, and incredibly a means to generate instant gratification without deliberate action, but simply by setting data triggers.
It may be the beginning of a whole new era.