Service-oriented IT-architectures for Business Intelligence

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2006 in the subject Computer Science - Commercial Information Technology, University of Vienna (DKE Wirtschaftsinformatik), 22 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Einstein made that famous statement many decades ago, and it's still relevant today for building superior software systems. Unfortunately, as anyone who has been in the IT industry for long can point out, far too many software systems have failed Einstein's test. Some are made too simple to carry out the duties they are supposed to perform. Others are made too complex, and the costs of building and maintaining them have rocketed, not to mention the nearly impossible tasks of integrating different systems together Businesses nowadays operate in a fast changing and highly complex environment, with more competitors fighting for potential clients. This environment calls for businesses that have the ability to rapidly react on changes and thus are highly flexible in their nature. With the high amount of knowledge available to businesses it becomes harder to identify changes in the market and make the correct decisions. This is where Business Intelligence comes into discussion which aims at supporting exactly this process of evaluating the data and knowledge available and making decisions. But knowledge is often stored in different locations throughout the business, especially in international businesses with many different country offices the issue of different IT-applications used that can not communicate with each other appears to be a major problem. This creates a demand for service-oriented architecture. Overt the last four decades IT systems have grown exponentially, leaving companies to handle increasingly complex service architectures. Traditional architectures have reached the limit of their capabilities, while traditional needs of IT organisations persist. IT departments still need to respond quickly to new business requirements, continually reduce the cost of IT to the business and an integrate new business partners and customers. In this paper I would like to take a closer look at the concept of service-oriented architecture and examine the role of it with regards to Business Intelligence. At first I will introduce the topic of business intelligence, in the second part of the paper which is my main focus, I aim at providing deeper insight on service-oriented architecture. I will then concentrate on the question how this architecture is connected to Business Intelligence, giving a case study of Deutsche Post as example.