Businesses are being held back from competing on a
global stage by a lack of process integration, according to half of
IT managers questioned in a recent survey.
AT&T subsidiary
Sterling Commerce used the Gartner Application and Web Services
Summit in Rome to announce the findings of a survey of 374 IT
managers in the UK, France and Germany.
The survey, carried out by
Vanson Bourne, found
that 44% of respondents believe a lack of IT process is limiting
their ability to compete at a global level.
Chris Hayes, senior product marketing manager for Sterling
Commerce said the survey shows that a large number of European
businesses are still struggling to take control of internal and
external IT process integration.
“The integration challenges revealed by this survey reflect
companies’ desire to continue to leverage the value of their
existing IT systems, but this needs to be done in a manner which
delivers the adaptability necessary to handle ongoing business
change and future business growth,” added Hayes. “To deliver this
flexibility across heterogeneous IT systems and gain maximum return
on their IT assets, many companies are turning to a
service oriented architecture approach.”
But he said that
businesses misunderstand what SOAs offer. “Too many
organisations think that an SOA approach requires a revolutionary
deployment of yet another new set of standards and protocols, but
in fact SOA is an architecture which can and should encompass and
utilise existing systems and technologies,” he added.
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