Today’s economies and commodity markets are swinging rapidly, barriers to global competition are disappearing, and empowered customers are changing preferences and expectations faster than businesses can respond. In such an environment businesses must be able to work smarter, increasing business agility while optimizing their costs. Only too often we find ourselves restrained from meeting these imperatives by siloed processes and rigid IT systems that inhibit collaboration and dramatically slow the process of change.

While BPM and SOA each have value on their own, IBM believes that they are naturally synergistic, and best when done together for business and IT agility, opt...