It is important to remember that when discussing and applying Service Oriented Architecture the whole point of the exercise is to make the business or the company more flexible, more adaptive when it comes to change and more manageable. A change in business process is usually triggered by a change in how things are done in the business. The products or services stay the same but the way the business or company sells or markets the product changes. An example of this might be a company that sells computer bags moving from selling through retail outlets to creating a web page and selling thier product online. The company is still selling computer bags but they have changed a business process by having the bags available online. This change then calls for the creation of webpages, online shopping carts etc which needs to be managed.
Service Oriented Architecture is constructed in such a way that business processes within an organisation can be changed without becoming to bogged down with the underlying technical stuff and IT can build from existing business functions to ajust to the business process. To effectively do this it is important that the SOA be coupled with a management process such as buisness process management.
Business process management when conducted with SOA can be an extremely effective way of managing and adjusting to change as it occurs through the business. This management process ‘is the modern approach to designing and managing business processes, and many business managers and business analysts receive training in BPM. All by itself BPM has contributed significantly to the liberation of business from technology.’ (Hurwitz 2007 ). The advantages of using a management strategie with SOA allows the business to work out new functions easily and tie together existing business functions as well as creating and tying in new functions.
It is important to note that SOA management should work to improve the way that the business functions and performs. SOA management is introduced into a business to monitor processors and can provide instant feed back on processes good or bad. Management of SOA is done using various management tools such as creation of new business functions, linking together existing functions and applications and programming of the workflow to carry out processors in the business.