SOA Master Class 2 - Strategy Primer and Reference Services

The term "business services" and "IT services" is an interesting one. The concept in Catalyst is can be found in the Fusion journey decomposing Processes into elementary business processes (simple process steps or "process fragments" as we call them) That can then be lined to logical Task steps in an application.

I tend to use the concept to describe "business services" as executable processes (BPEL specifications) and "IT services" are web service encapsulations (WSDL specifications). Here is a slide that summarises this concept.

There are many types of services that could be termed business services. The criteria for defining what is a Business service I have written using the LeF current thinking which provides a 2 by 2 matrix for classifying Processes (See larger slide pack below). Basically SOA type business services are those process steps that are repeatable, commodity based activities. They may be simple web service calls for getting a list of part numbers for a self service web site or could be a complex orchestrated process written in BPEL and held in a BPMS engine.