Our Evolution towards SOA

It is through our most important projects that we have evolved towards SOA. These projects are detailed in our Success Stories section, but here are the main aspects of these projects that illustrate our gradual adoption of SOA best practices : 

An SOA Case Study: Agility in Practice

Here is a case study explaining a project delivered at ING Card in the Netherlands.  To give you a first impression, you may read the following translated summary or go directly to the article of Alcedo Coenen published here.

The Challenges of the Project:

The project (named NCS) had to meet five clearly defined strategic business needs:

• To introduce the management of new credit card customers who did not already have an ING account, which had not been a possibility before and which required a new customer management system 
• To offer customers the possibility of managing their account through a Web site, enabling them to find information concerning their transactions on a daily basis.  The same information had to be available to all the other sales channels
• Ensure a credit check and fraud detection for all new applications
• Develop a solution offering maximum flexibility for the opening of new markets and introduction of new products
• Establish a central source for rules of credit available to all the divisions of ING

The Solution:

The desired agility of the system to be developed was obtained on account of three fundamental development principles:

• An N-Tier Architecture
• A Services Orientation
• A Business-Class Parameterization

The Results:

The NCS project successfully met the expectations by developing a system now responsible for the management of the customers, able to carry out the services offered via the Web and, finally, to manage the new requests for credit cards by reducing the risks of fraud. The three development principles made it possible to answer expectations, in particular in regards to system agility.  The services orientation proved to be the most significant development principle for NCS because it accelerated its deployment into new markets, optimized the business processes without changing the system, and facilitated its connectivity to other systems.