Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is the buzzword of the day. However, SOA is just one building block of the information architecture. It seems that awareness of the business aspects of information architecture is growing lately. Much has been written and said about the technical side of the coin, and very little about the business side.

Some vendors seem to be keen to coin new terms, such as 'Business Infrastructure Software'. However, in the absence of a formal definition, it is left to the vendors to attach a meaning. It comes as no surprise that meanings are more or less different. Anyway, vendors have realized that it needs more than stressing technical aspects to the point of exhaustion.

So, what is business infrastructure? It is certainly more than the combination of a variety of technologies, such as business process management (BPM), business rule management, enterprise content management (ECM), and so on. It is also about models, methodologies, patterns, vocabularies, etc.

When we started developing the Business Infrastructure Requirements Package, the expectation was that the package would eventually contain not more than 1000 requirements. Reality proved us wrong! The Business Infrastructure Requirements Package now contains more than 2200 entries (800+ requirement categories and 1400+ ready-to-use functional requirements), which amounts to more than 4 months of full-time work. We are not finished yet. However, by now, most of the ground has been covered and the growth rate will flatten.

A SOA and respective software is an enabling technology for the implementation of a software landscape that meets the exact software requirements of an enterprise. But what are the actual requirements? Is it still possible to create off-the-shelf, one size fits all RFP (Request for Proposal) templates?

We found that this is now a thing of the past and no longer adequate. Therefore, when it comes to software evaluation and selection, it must be possible to create a custom RFP (Request for Proposal) quickly and easily. There must be two sources: A base template which contains a set of typical requirements, and a repository that contains business infrastructure-related requirements. The Evaluator's Application Suite (EAS) has been designed to suit this need.

Additional Information:

The Growing Role of the Business Infrastructure  

How to Create an RFP in Record Time

Business Infrastructure Requirements Package