The latter half of the ‘noughties’ witnessed a number of new IT initiatives (and new variations on old initiatives) that deflected business focus away from strategic investments in SOA and BPM (although small-scale tactical deployments have
continued to increase). In particular the Web 2.0 experience of informal collaboration has found its way into the corporate mindset, raising the awareness of the importance of providing technology that will assist in enabling internal collaboration and collaboration between the organisation and its customers and partners. This is starting to redefine the strategic thinking within organisations towards ‘Enterprise 2.0’. At the same time the very fundamental aspects of IT ownership are being challenged by the promised cost-effectiveness of Software as a Service and Cloud computing. Further initiatives such as the need to process in-stream data (rather than data captured in databases) have promised a new type of real-time intelligent application, and the relentless progress towards affordable ‘always on’ connectivity through an expanded range of client devices is likely to change current usage profiles beyond any expectations the industry had just a few years ago.

However, piecemeal adoption of the many initiatives is likely to lead to a fragmented architecture with an inevitably high cost of ownership, and will increase the complexity of implementing further innovations. Instead, a holistic view of the architecture should be developed, which will put each component into context both in terms of the enabling technology and the benefits that can be expected. The reality is that none of these should be regarded as stand-alone solutions – they all just play a role in the evolving information society. Organisations will need to find a way of fitting all of these initiatives in to a set of agile processes enabled by a service infrastructure that accommodates ongoing change. The impact of this is that for the first half of this new decade the IT industry will need to demonstrate a strong focus on how all of these initiatives can be made to reinforce one another instead of becoming alternatives vying for investment.

BPM and SOA are often described as separate issues, but they are essential linked and better regarded as different perspectives on a single approach to system construction. The BPM and SOA symposium will address this overall theme and
show the central roles that they will continue to have in delivering a capability level that combines operational effectiveness with the ability to absorb continual changes to the IT and business environments.