Designing Service-Oriented Information Systems Architectures
Raf Haesen · 2007
Abstract. This paper introduces the research that is conducted in co-operation with KBC Bank & Insurance Group, one of the top three bank-insurers in Belgium with a key position in Central-Europe. Information-intensive organisations in general and those in the financial sector in particular, currently face major challenges in keeping up with continu-ing globalisation trends that are catalysed by recent ICT progressions. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) has been introduced as a means to define, implement and manage aligned business and ICT solutions that ought to support these trends. Until now, many researchers and com-mercial vendors have focused on the technological aspects of SOA. How-ever, the introduction of a certain technology in the enterprise does not automatically yield satisfactory results since appropriate methodologies leveraging the advantages of a particular technology are usually missing. This research will alleviate these problems by laying down technology-independent, conceptual foundations for service- and component-oriented architectures, with a main focus on the design and redesign of informa-tion systems. 1