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78 Chapter 3 • Enterprise Systems Architecture

extracting the features of the enterprise content management platform as services across the life
cycle of the content. This way, businesses can take advantage of enterprise content management
resources in a manner that is flexible and reusable.
As business process management and enterprise content management systems cross over
many departments and, as a result, many systems, the SOA approach works well with them.
Therefore, the point of SOA in enterprise content management involves extracting functionalities
from legacy systems, developing applications, and incorporating enterprise content management
into areas where it didn’t exist previously.
Cloud Architecture

Cloud computing (CC) has recently emerged as a powerful platform to support the growing
needs of many organizations that do not want to own and maintain complex software systems for
the enterprise. There are high costs and headaches with software purchasing, installation, and
maintenance today; IT staff have to contend with networking, technical support, security,
privacy, compliance and other issues, which makes it very expensive to own software. The cloud
computing platform provides a great alternative for these organizations as they do not have to
purchase, install, or maintain the software applications, nor do they have to worry about security,
privacy, and legal issues associated with data storage (assuming they choose to store their data
bases on the cloud environment). Of course, the cloud computing platform is risky for organiza-
tions as it forces them to rely on cloud computing vendors for reliability, security, and continuity
of enterprise applications. However, as the cloud computing platform settles down in near future
and with large vendors like Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP starting to integrate their applications
and services on this platform, more and more organizations will adopt this platform.

BOX 3-1 Microsoft and SOA

For developers interested in creating new SOA-based applications, Microsoft developed a new series of
services that utilizes the company’s BizTalk server technology.
BizTalk Services offers a merged identity, access control, and verification, which are all based on
WS-Trust standards. BizTalk Relay Services connects physical networks, allowing links between
systems so cross-organizational messages can be sent behind firewalls. The Internet Service Bus offers
a straightforward message bus. The BizTalk Workflow Services allows applications to be created
graphically by developing flowcharts.
Some analysts believe these BizTalk services will increase efficiency and performance while
cutting down on infrastructure and operation costs. Additionally, it is believed that these services will
reduce the production of infrastructure software within the company. At the same time, the development
team will be more capable of crafting and developing secure services.
BizTalk Services is intended to fix problems concerning low-level infrastructure. This is
something that is utilized in projects in order to expand their capabilities. Also, the services are capable
of handling complex infrastructure. A major benefit is that they can be incorporated into Windows
Communication Foundation (WCF). As a result, it will be easier for developers to tend to their
infrastructure concerns and focus on business goals.
All in all, BizTalk Services promotes Microsoft’s maxim of providing software plus services,
which is viewed as a hybrid approach. On top of its other products, this gives Microsoft an edge over its
competition. From a technical point of view, the company’s approach provides better performance for the
end user.