Business Intelligence and Service Oriented Architecture—Improving IT Investments

Information Technology does not solve business problems. Rather, IT can be used as an enabler to meet goals, targets and position the organization in the minds of the customer. A Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) can enable higher level services from more primitive business processes. The result is a flexible, agile organization. However, in some cases, without a business model, an SOA can be implemented but the result is islands of incompatible services. In the era of data analytics, the evolution of business intelligence has assumed a more dominant role. Proponents argue that Business Intelligence subsumes SOA. Other practitioners argue that Business Intelligence (BI) and SOA are distinct from each other as each aims to deliver different perspectives to an organization. This chapter challenges this view by developing a framework where both SOA and BI are pivotal to delivering the business model. The analytics, business intelligence and data mining handshake with the SOA, allowing decision makers to plan, coordinate and control resources to meet the goals, targets and performance measures set for the organization. Business Intelligence and SOA need not operate on different levels for an organisation. In an era where companies are trying to go from barely surviving IT expenses towards developing an IT portfolio, the more options for technologies supporting asset data management, warehousing and mining to interact and co-exist are necessary. Putting aside arguments of Business Intelligence versus SOA, we propose that they can handshake and bring out the collaborative synergies to enable organizational decision making to address the competitive challenges in today’s global marketplace.