The application landscape is in constant flux. More and more organizations are embarking on large scale Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) projects to build a more flexible enterprise application landscape.

In the process of the transition to a SOA, business infrastructure plays an ever increasing role. Technologies like the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) provide features that help implement a SOA. An ESB lets applications communicate via the bus, which acts as a message broker between applications.

However, an ESB is part of the technical infrastructure and more or less represents glue technology. Over the next years, the focus will shift to business infrastructure.

Application systems, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) packages, come with a built-in business infrastructure, which represents a section of the overall business architecture. For example, an ERP package implements a set of models, such as an organization model, a business process or workflow model, a business rule model, an identity management model, etc. A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) package also implements a set of models, an organization model, a business process or workflow model, a business rule model, an identity management model and some other models.

A large organization which has multiple application system packages running in different business units thus has to cope with multiple business infrastructures, which are not compatible with each other. The question is: Why to maintain multiple models with a lot of duplicate information spread over multiple and disparate repositories?

The next step after taking care of the technical infrastructure is the careful unification of the business infrastructure. SOA as an architectural paradigm paves the way.

Along this line of thinking, it is only consequential to extract business processes, business rules, etc., from applications. Many organizations have started to introduce business process management systems (BPMS), Business Rule Management Systems (BRMS), Identity Management Systems, and so on. Thus, organizations effectively implement centralized services and tap a significant potential of cost savings.

When it comes to the acquisition of software, it will be no surprise to find out that typically more than 50% of the features are associated with business infrastructure.

From a business viewpoint, the´business infrastructure is concerned with models to a large extent (see article ). The technical viewpoint focuses on aspects such as data storage, integration technologies and the software lifecycle.

Jenz & Partner has made available a Requirement Templates Package, which contains business infrastructure requirements and covers both the business and the technical viewpoint. It makes your job easier and helps you customize your Evaluation Specification in a fraction of the time needed without it. The Requirements Package is constantly being updated and enhanced to reflect technology advances.