Building the Agile Enterprise: With SOA, BPM and MBM

In the last ten years IT has brought fundamental changes to the way the world works. Not only has it increased the speed of operations and communications, but it has also undermined basic assumptions of traditional business models and increased the number of variables. Today, the survival of major corporations is challenged by a world-wide marketplace, international operations, outsourcing, global communities, a changing workforce, security threats, business continuity, web visibility, and customer expectations. Enterprises must constantly adapt or they will be unable to compete.

Fred Cummins, an EDS Fellow, presents IT as a key enabler of the agile enterprise. He demonstrates how the convergence of key technologies--including SOA, BPM and emerging enterprise and data models--can be harnessed to transform the enterprise. Cummins mines his 25 years experience to provide IT leaders, as well as enterprise architects and management consultants, with the critical information, skills, and insights they need to partner with management and redesign the enterprise for continuous change. No other book puts IT at the center of this transformation, nor integrates these technologies for this purpose.


"Building the Agile Enterprise not only covers many corner stones of enterprise agility, it delivers an integrated view of how agility is enabled by policies and a business awareness supported by technology architecture/design patterns. Fred Cummins has hit the mark by aggregating the many tributaries of agility instead of picking one pattern and/or technology. This is a sophisticated and integrated atlas that is a challenge for IT professionals to implement, but a must for flourishing organizations."

~Jim Sinur, Vice President, Gartner


"Never before has technology been so close to the business. In fact, technology is becoming more and more embedded in the business. This means that change has to go hand in hand on both at the business and the technology side, - or that technology has to at least support the high demands of business change. In particular, enterprise agility is a major requirement for those organizations that want to succeed in this new world dominated by rapid change. Business are increasingly asked to change and to react quickly to changes in market conditions - look at what's happening currently in the car manufacturing space with the increases in petrol prices or in the financial community with the sub-prime crises as just two examples. This book provides a marvelous, clear, and comprehensive road map of how key technologies such as service-oriented architecture, business process management, and model-based management are instrumental and key in realizing a truly agile enterprise. It explains why and how a structured and strategic approach to SOA, along with the adoption of other available paradigms and technologies, can enable future enterprise agility. As Fred suggests, this is a must-read for CIOs, enterprise architects, and IT management in general that is embracing transformation and innovation programs; I would go further and say that some key chapters will make great reading for CxOs outside IT and in the driving seat of the enterprise."

~Diego Lo Giudice, Principal, Forrester Research


"The author, Mr. Cummins, has already made a tremendous contribution to the discipline of Enterprise Business Management through his leadership in the development of business modeling standards as a co-chair of the Object Management Group's Business Modeling and Integration Domain Task Force. This book breathes life into those standards, with simple and clear explanations of how to apply these and other information technology standards in what is described as the Agile Enterprise, incorporating and expounding upon the most important trends in the advancement of information technology, such as Service Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management, culminating in a what he defines and explains as the discipline of Model Based Management. The authors level of experience is obvious from the generous use of industry examples and analogies. A must read for business leaders that need to demystify these technologies and standards, and other agents of enterprise transformation and adaptation!"

~George Thomas, Enterprise Chief Architect, US General Services Administration (GSA)

* Shows how to integrate and deploy critical technologies to foster agility.

* Details how to design an enterprise architecture that takes full advantage of SOA, BPM, business rules, enterprise information management, business models, and governance

* Outlines IT's critical mission in providing an integration infrastructure and key services, while optimizing technology adoption throughout the enterprise.

* Illustrates concepts with examples and cases from large and small commercial enterprises.

* Shows how to create systems that recognize and respond to the need for change.

* Identifies the unique security issues that arise with SOA and shows how to deploy a framework of technologies and processes that address them.

在過去的十年中，資訊科技對世界運作方式帶來了根本性的改變。它不僅提高了業務操作和溝通的速度，還動搖了傳統商業模式的基本假設，增加了變數的數量。如今，全球市場、國際業務、外包、全球社群、不斷變化的勞動力、安全威脅、業務連續性、網絡可見性和客戶期望等因素都對大型企業的生存提出了挑戰。企業必須不斷適應，否則將無法競爭。

EDS公司的研究員Fred Cummins將資訊科技視為敏捷企業的關鍵推動者。他展示了包括SOA、BPM和新興企業和數據模型在內的關鍵技術的融合如何被利用來改變企業。Cummins利用自己25年的經驗，為IT領導者、企業架構師和管理顧問提供了他們與管理層合作並重新設計企業以實現持續變革所需的關鍵信息、技能和見解。沒有其他書籍將資訊科技置於這種轉型的中心，也沒有其他書籍將這些技術整合在一起以實現這一目的。

Jim Sinur，Gartner副總裁表示：“《建立敏捷企業》不僅涵蓋了企業敏捷性的許多基石，還提供了一個整合的視角，說明了政策和技術架構/設計模式如何支持業務意識的敏捷性。Fred Cummins成功地整合了敏捷性的許多支流，而不是選擇一種模式和/或技術。這是一本複雜而整合的地圖集，對於實施IT專業人員來說是一個挑戰，但對於蓬勃發展的組織來說是必不可少的。”

Diego Lo Giudice，Forrester Research首席表示：“從未有過如此貼近業務的技術。事實上，技術越來越多地融入業務中。這意味著變革必須在業務和技術兩方面同步進行，或者至少技術必須支持業務變革的高要求。特別是，對於那些希望在這個由快速變化主導的新世界中取得成功的組織來說，企業敏捷性是一個重要需求。企業越來越多地被要求在市場條件變化時迅速變革和反應，例如目前汽車製造業中的汽油價格上漲或金融界中的次貸危機等。這本書提供了一個奇妙、清晰且全面的路線圖，說明了服務導向架構、業務流程管理和基於模型的管理等關鍵技術如何在實現真正敏捷企業方面起到重要作用。正如Fred所建議的，這是CIO、企業架構師和整體IT管理人員必讀的書籍，他們正在擁抱轉型和創新計劃；我更進一步認為，一些關鍵章節對於IT以外的C級高管和企業的決策者來說也是很有價值的。”

作者Fred Cummins通過他在物件管理組織的業務建模和整合領域任務組的聯席主席的領導地位，已經對企業業務管理學科做出了巨大貢獻。這本書將這些標準注入生命，以簡單明瞭的解釋說明如何應用這些和其他信息技術標準在所謂的敏捷企業中，並且融入和闡述了信息技術發展中最重要的趨勢，如服務導向架構和業務流程管理。