Creating Enterprise Flexibility through Service Oriented Architecture

Today's fast-paced and competitive business environment requires a shift from a disintegrated and closed enterprise structure to a more dynamic and flexible enterprise structure. Enterprise flexibility is the ability of an enterprise to adapt to changing business and stakeholder requirements more efficiently, easily and rapidly. This paper proposes a model to create enterprise flexibility using service oriented architecture approach. This model is based on two key enablers of enterprise flexibility. First enabler is the capability of an enterprise to connect people, processes, and information in a way that allows enterprise to become more flexible and responsive to the dynamics of its environment, stakeholders, and competitors. This requires integration within the enterprise and across the partners, suppliers, and customers of the enterprise. Second enabler is alignment of information technology and business goals. This requires simplification of the underlying technology infrastructure and creation of a consolidated view of, and access to, all available resources in the enterprise. This can be achieved with well-defined enterprise architecture. Based on these two key enablers, we outline our theoretical model explaining the relationship between the attributes of Service Oriented Architecture and enterprise flexibility as a function of agility, efficiency, and adaptability. This paper further discusses the possible expansion of this theoretical model to develop an enterprise architecture framework based on service oriented architecture at the enterprise level.