Lynn Holmlund
CIO magazine
+1-508-935 4526
lholmlund@idgenterprise.com 

SOA Consortium and CIO Magazine Announce Winners of SOA Case Study Competition
Winners in Energy/Utility, Regulatory and Government/Public Sector
Industries Demonstrate Success in their SOA Projects

Needham & Framingham MA, USA – September 16, 2009 – The SOA Consortium™ and CIO magazine are proud to announce the winners of the 2009 Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Case Study Competition. The overall winner is Cisco Systems, Inc. IT, with special recognition going to organizations in the Energy/Utility, Regulatory and Government/Public Sector Industries. All of the winners have successfully delivered business or mission value using an SOA approach. For more information about each of the winners, visit http://www.soa-consortium.org/winners-09-pr. 

The goal of the SOA Case Study Competition was to highlight business success stories and lessons learned to provide proof points and insights for other organizations considering or pursuing SOA adoption. To qualify for the competition, the SOA project must have been completed with demonstrated business results.

Overall Winner: Cisco Systems, Inc. IT
Cisco Systems, Inc. designs, manufactures and sells hardware, software and services to create Internet and networked based solutions. Cisco wanted to create a consistent, unified ordering experience for users of its online commerce applications. The “Commerce Transformation” initiative is based on SOA principles that have allowed Cisco IT to create a solid architectural and technology foundation for both existing and future application development. One of the first projects developed within the Commerce Transformation initiative was the Partner Deal Registration (PDR) application, since most of Cisco’s revenues come through partner channels. Among the many benefits of this application, deal cycle time has been reduced by 50 percent. The Commerce Transformation initiative is already delivering scalable solutions, enhancing customers’ experiences, and providing the partner ecosystem with secure access to business services like pricing, promotions and configuration tools. It also allows Cisco to more easily and cost-effectively support new business models and enter new markets.

In addition to recognizing the overall winner, special recognition was given to the following:

• Special Recognition in Energy/Utility: BlueStar Energy
  BlueStar Energy is an independent retail electric supplier, certified to sell electricity in Illinois, Maryland and the District of Columbia. In addition, BlueStar provides green power and energy efficiency solutions to home and business customers. BlueStar sponsored an enterprise-wide SOA initiative to unite business and technology. BlueStar adopted a mature enterprise architecture (EA) called NextStar™ with the goal of streamlining and automating core business processes. The NexStar project has helped BlueStar grow 12,197% over five years and has contributed to $24 million in estimated savings over five years.
   
• Special Recognition in Regulatory: Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)
  FINRA is the largest independent regulator for all securities firms doing business in the United States. FINRA’s SOA project consolidated the New York Stock Exchange Member Regulation systems with the NASD Member Regulation systems. The size and complexity of the project, which involved combining large application portfolios and legacy business processes, required multiple teams in different locations working effectively in parallel to meet the aggressive schedule. Using an SOA approach enabled FINRA to deliver the project faster and reduced the risks inherent to large development teams. The business-centric service design and modularity of the SOA approach provides flexible deployment to support current business processes and to rapidly adapt to support future business process.
   
• Special Recognition in Government/Public Sector: New York State Department of Taxation and Finance
  The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance is responsible for the administration of the state’s tax laws, including the administration of related local taxes, and the management of the State Treasury. The goal of the e-MPIRE project was to establish a 21st century government system and toolset. The planned business value of e-MPIRE was to eliminate the risks of having the core departmental systems on unsupported platforms, give the user a single interface into all systems and build agility to adapt to changing legislative and business requirements. The e-MPIRE project gave the department the ability to process high volumes of income tax returns and deliver refunds to taxpayers at a dramatically improved rate, with a near real time evaluation for fraud, up from 24 hours with the old system.

“I would like to congratulate Cisco IT and all of the vertical industry winners on their fantastic achievements with Service Oriented Architecture. The SOA Consortium has a vision of SOA as a business strategy that provides real ROI, and our winners have certainly provided real-world proof across many industries,” said Richard Mark Soley, Ph.D., executive director, SOA Consortium. “The winners of this contest have made the case that SOA delivers value. Hopefully other organizations will be inspired by our winners’ success to look at how SOA can deliver that value to their own organizations.”

“The SOA case study submissions displayed an impressive depth of real business value delivery,” said Maryfran Johnson, editor in chief, CIO magazine and events. “It's great to see how closely aligned SOA has become to the core IT mission of driving successful projects at these winning organizations."

To view more in-depth information about all of the SOA Case Study Competition winners, visit http://www.soa-consortium.org/winners-09-pr. 

###

About CIO
CIO produces award-winning content and community resources for information technology executives thriving and prospering in this fast-paced era of business, as well as creates opportunities for information technology and consumer marketers to reach them. The CIO portfolio includes CIO.com, CIO magazine (launched in 1987), CIO Executive Programs and the CIO Executive Council. CIO properties provide business technology leaders with analysis and insight on information technology trends and a keen understanding of IT’s role in achieving business goals. The U.S. edition of the magazine and website are recipients of more than 200 awards to date, including two Grand Neals from the Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Awards and two Magazine of the Year awards from the National Society of Business Publication Editors. CIO websites and printed publications appear in more than 20 countries, including Australia, Canada, France, India and Sweden. CIO Executive Programs—a series of face-to-face conferences including the CIO 100 Symposium & Awards™—provide educational and networking opportunities for pre-qualified corporate and government leaders. The CIO Executive Council is a member-led executive organization, consisting of current and future business leaders working to impact the intersection of business, technology and strategy. CIO, and sister brands Computerworld, CSO, Demo, InfoWorld, IT World and Industry Standard are produced by a subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world’s leading technology media, research and event company. Company information is available at http://www.idg.com.

About The SOA Consortium
The SOA Consortium is an advocacy group of end users, service providers and technology vendors committed to helping the Global 1000, major government agencies, and mid-market businesses successfully adopt Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) by 2010. SOA Consortium founding enterprise members include Fortune 200 companies in Financial Services, Travel, Manufacturing, Retail and Telecommunications. Sponsors are Cisco, HP, IBM Corporation, Layer 7 Technologies, MegaPractical, NEC Sphere, SPARX Systems and Sun Microsystems, Inc. Participants include Fortune 1000 corporations, major government agencies and non-governmental organizations. Any organization may join the SOA Consortium. The SOA Consortium is managed by OMG.

For more information, please visit http://www.soa-consortium.org/ or email info@soa-consortium.org. 

Note to editors: SOA Consortium, OMG and Object Management Group are trademarks of Object Management Group. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.