As financial services companies face shifts in customer behavior, consolidation and increasing regulatory requirements, the book outlines a road map to better cope with these pressures and help simplify technology adoption. Written for C-level technology executives at banks and insurance companies, the book provides a vision and approach for tomorrow's solution landscape for financial services organizations. Complete with industry insight on internal and external market challenges from banking and insurance executives and leading industry analysts, the book offers practical examples of how to utilize SOA standards to help the business.

"This book is a resource to help banking and insurance executives understand and leverage SOA and enterprise services at the technology and business levels," said Thomas Balgheim, senior vice president, Financial Services, SAP AG. "The premise of SOA is based on the principles of exchange and interoperability; this vision cannot be achieved when every bank and insurer or software vendor has its own definition of a service-enabled IT environment."

Book highlights include:

• SOA and enterprise services: How a common "language of business" can help banks and insurance companies better leverage SOA and its promises of flexibility.
• Characteristics of enterprise service-oriented architecture: Architectural concepts, deployment and model-driven design
• Designing an application landscape: Business-driven design approach, types of services, architectural plan
• SAP's approach to enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA): Software layers, service design, process platform, component clusters, process platform
• Standards-based business applications: Semantic, technical, and portability standards
• Transition to enterprise SOA: Critical success factors
• Enterprise SOA checklist: Steps to successful deployment