Clearly the economy is a top-of-mind issue for decision makers in every industry. And although we’ve already discussed how BPM can drive organizational efficiency in a down economy, a recent blog post inspired us to revisit the topic from a slightly different angle.

Despite the speculation that SOA’s days are numbered, Joe McKendrick provides a brief IT history lesson that corroborates why it is now more important than ever for companies to proactively build better services that will recession-proof their business in the future.

If a business thrives on providing service, why cut back on IT investments that are intended to make these services more efficient for the company and convenient for their consumers?

McKendrick also discusses a recent Q&A post by Michael Poulin that explained how SOA can save businesses during the economic crisis. Though skeptics may think this is a bold statement, Poulin notes:

“By going slower and “tightening the belt,” the business cuts its core — serviceability and [Service Orientation] SO. This results in lower sustainability and higher risk of total crash even if the business freezes. Another reason could be the business continues doing the same things and in the same way but slower, in smaller volume, and with less reserves. When a business shrinks, it gradually loses ability to analyze market situation, new conditions, changed demand, and so on. That is, its low-level processes and operations get more and more out of sync with the changing external environment. This makes the organization even more fragile.

In contrast, if understood on time and properly applied to the organization, SO can guide the organizational structure that increases organization “survivalability” via flexibility. SO can provide its best results right when the market turmoil is quite high.”

Both Poulin and McKendrick paint an astute picture on SOA’s potential to rebuild and enhance business services.

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