Title: The strategic value of SOA: a comparative case study in the banking sector

Authors: Richard L. Baskerville, Marco Cavallari, Kristian Hjort-Madsen, Jan Pries-Heje, Maddalena Sorrentino, Francesco Virili

Addresses: Department of Computer Information Systems, Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, P.O. Box 4015 Atlanta, Georgia 30302-4015, USA. ' TeamLab s.a., Via Curti, 2, 6901 Lugano, Switzerland. ' The IT University of Copenhagen, Rued Langgaards Vej 7, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark. ' The IT University of Copenhagen, Rued Langgaards Vej 7, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark. ' Dipartimento di Scienze economiche, aziendali e statistiche, Universita degli Studi di Milano, Via Conservatorio 7, 20122 Milano, Italy. ' Dipartimento Impresa Ambiente e Management, Universita degli Studi di Cassino, Via S. Angelo, Loc. Folcara, 03043 Cassino (FR), Italy

Abstract: Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has helped to drive increasingly intense global competition. In turn, this intensity increases the need for flexibility and rapid changeability in ICT to support strategies that depend on organisational agility. We report a comparative, cross-cultural case study of the implementation of Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) at a Scandinavian bank and a Swiss bank. The strategic rewards in the adoption of SOA appear to go beyond marketplace issues of ICT capability acquisition, and unexpectedly arise in the creation of an extensible organisational ICT architecture. The extensibility of the ICT architecture that results from the adoption of SOA provides potential for greater organisational agility (and thereby competitiveness).

Keywords: SOA; service-oriented architecture; strategic values; banks; banking; extensibility; reusability; service evolution; information technology; ICT; communications technology; globalisation; Switzerland; Scandinavia; organisational agility; competitiveness.

DOI: 10.1504/IJITM.2010.029433

International Journal of Information Technology and Management, 2010 Vol.9 No.1, pp.30 - 53

Published online: 30 Nov 2009 *

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