Businesses are moving away from building or acquiring large, monolithic application systems. Using a service-oriented application design, application software is broken down into its constituent parts, that is into smaller, more modular application components or services. These application services make use of infrastructure software that has also been decomposed into discrete system services. All of these discrete services can be deployed across any number of physical machines that are connected to the Internet. This modular service approach provides great flexibility in terms of system design.

On a side note, the Evaluator's Application Suite (EAS) may well serve as an example of software that is based on the SOA paradigm. Among other characteristics, services are accessible over the Internet and communicate over standard Internet protocols.

A SOA environment causes the focus to shift away from application functionality. Business infrastructure, IT infrastructure and standards are major aspects that need careful consideration.

Business infrastructure is the underlying framework that supports organizations in meeting their business goals. There is no formal definition of business infrastructure. In the context of SOA-based environments, Jenz & Partner has identified a set of elements that constitute business infrastructure (please see here). Business infrastructure elements are shared across multiple organizational units.

The IT infrastructure (technical infrastructure) represents the more technical aspects and, as such, forms the technical foundation of the business infrastructure. Programming languages, frameworks, interfaces, protocols and formats play a predominant role. Of course, hardware is also part of the IT infrastructure.

Standards help organizations get complex IT systems and services to inter-operate. Both business and IT infrastructure rely on standards.

Putting it all Together

The following figure puts the prominent elements of a SOA environment into context.

As organizations are making progress in the transition towards a SOA environment, software evaluation and selection need to cover a broader scope.

In the days of monolithic application systems, each application system used to implement services that we now consider part of the business infrastructure. As a consequence, common services, such as user account management, are factored out into the business infrastructure. Likewise, an Evaluation Specification (and RFP, of course) is composed of application system-specific and business infrastructure-related requirements. Integration is key. 

Evaluation Specification and RFP authors require a rich authoring environment that provides access to a repository, which both contains domain-oriented template Evaluation Specifications, and business infrastructure requirements. Monolithic spreadsheet-based solutions are no longer adequate in the context of a SOA environment. 

To cater for software evaluation and selection based on best practice, Jenz & Partner has developed the Business Infrastructure Requirements Package, which contains a comprehensive set of requirements related to business infrastructure, IT infrastructure and standards. Evaluation Specification authors can import requirements from the ontology-based requirements repository using drag & drop, which helps speed up the authoring process dramatically.

You can view the contents of the Business Infrastructure Requirements Package, which is frequently updated. Please click here to open the Requirements Package Browser in a new window. Please note that a license is needed to fully view the contents of the Requirements Package.