Resumen
The financial services industry in continental Europe is in a stage of transformation. To decrease costs and simultaneously enhance customer utility, banks are increasingly focusing on their individual core capabilities while exploring different sourcing options for non-core capabilities. Consequently, they are disaggregating their value chain into independently operable functional units. This transformation and disaggregation has, however, come at a considerable price. A new approach to system architecture is needed that reduces the complexity and costs of coupling information systems as well as increases flexibility to accommodate change. Service-oriented architectures provide such an approach. Service-oriented architectures are a promising step toward modular design of business functionality in banking, providing a method to reduce complexity and increase the flexibility of coupling internal and external business units.