A Service Oriented Perspective of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems

This paper brings forward a service oriented perspective, based on practical experiences from designing information systems (IS) as services. Viewing IS as services are beneficial but still an unexplored approach in organizations. In this paper, we present an analysis of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERPs) systems through the perspective of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). This paper contributes to the debate on viewing ISs as services by presenting a view of SOA-architected ERPs. We discuss the question whether SOA or ERP fulfills business needs. The analysis of ERPs from a SOA perspective provides the conclusion that the question is not about SOA or ERP but rather to provide SOA architected ERPs. By viewing ERPs as services it is clear that the combination of ERPs and SOA is one way forward when designing ISs that aims at bridging gaps between IS and business e.g., processes and, allowing the business to fuse with IS forming servitized SOA based ERPs.