Realizing the business value of service-oriented architecture: The construction of a theoretical framework

Service-oriented computing (SOC) has emerged over the past decade as an alternative and powerful approach to application development and has sparked an increasing shift from inflexible proprietary software to more open service-oriented computing environments. These service-oriented environments focus on harnessing the power of the Internet and delivering business functionality through services. Organizations in many industries have turned to service-oriented computing environments through the adoption of service-oriented architecture (SOA). Services are the fundamental elements of SOA and are based on Internet standards and represent specific business functions. SOA is transporting organizations from the old world of inflexible and expensive traditional IT architecture to a brave new world where applications are provided in the form of standardized services. Despite the increasing adoption of SOA within academia and practice, an analysis of the extant literature by this study reveals a clear lack of research on the business perspective of SOA and in particular on the business value of SOA. Indeed, the business value of IT (BVIT) research area-a fundamental area of research within the IS discipline-is considered by many as being under-researched and in need of an expanded research agenda. This study constructs a theoretical framework and develops a set of propositions and hypotheses to investigate how the business value of SOA is realized. It illustrates that the combination of a SOA implementation and complementary resources enable the creation of SOA-enabled resources via multiple enablers. These SOA-enabled resources produce emergent SOA capabilities which realize business value at the process level and at the level of the organization.