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A service orientation case study

Ftlogo_1A company's geographical dispersal can cause problems for IT, but British American Tobacco (BAT) is implementing a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to gain a consistent platform for their global systems without constraining local regions who retain significant autonomy

With more than 300 brands, BAT covers 180 markets with 87 factories in 66 countries, and building IT infrastructure is an ongoing task. Kevin Poulter, Application Technology Manager with world-wide responsibility for application infrastructure and technology components, says BAT was disillusioned with "traditional" methods. "Momentum in our organisation has come from people finding integration expensive and difficult," he says. "The approaches we were using were too expensive and too slow."

BAT's SOA project began nearly three years ago and has progressed incrementally by consultation and by winning the hearts and minds of technicians and management. Mr Poulter explains how the first 9-12 months were spent introducing new ideas, "We tried to seed some concepts to gain traction with our markets in areas where they had immediate problems," he says.

May 06, 2006 |