The enterprise application as we know it is dead. Zombie-like, it still lumbers along, lifelike enough to fool many IT professionals. But, make no mistake – it is dead.
In today’s climate of ever-accelerating change, big, one-size-fits-all applications do not help organizations do business more effectively. The monolithic applications that prevent companies from adapting to new business challenges are giving way to a matrix of services that has come to be called the service-oriented architecture (SOA).
The characteristic complexity and rigidity of traditional systems results in the too-familiar misalignment between IT and the business. The IT side is bogged down with the burden of maintaining 20th century systems and processes that have become too bloated and inefficient to deal with the demands imposed by the 21st century business environment. In many organizations, that maintenance burden approaches 80 percent of the total IT budget.
