Sony Pictures Entertainment and Tata Consultancy Services Sign Landmark Service-Oriented Architecture Agreement

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) on January 22, 2008 has announced that it has signed an agreement with Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc. (SPE) to develop and deploy Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions that allow Sony and its customers to better use all of its IT assets to advance their business goals. Based on industry best practices, the SOA solutions combine a set of best-of-breed technologies, tools, patterns and standards from Sony Pictures, TCS and BEA Systems to help enterprise organizations align business functions for greater flexibility and efficiency.

Sony Pictures and TCS have created a world class SOA framework that enables enterprise organizations to quickly sense and respond to changing market conditions. Centered on the deployment of reusable and network-aware applications, the SOA framework leverages key business assets within and beyond enterprise boundaries, with interoperability, independent of platforms, languages and protocols. The framework benefits enterprise organizations across various industry verticals including media & entertainment, insurance, banking, retail, financial services and manufacturing.

In addition to substantial return on Investment, the SOA approach enables enterprise organizations to streamline business processes and benefit from a reduction in development time and maintenance effort, services accessibility, an "always-on" infrastructure and improved data integrity and delivery capabilities, among others.

"SOA adoption is a key enabler for the 21st century enterprise and we are committed to helping our clients develop and implement state-of-the-art solutions. TCS has been heavily involved in SOA activities for clients all over the globe and have the processes, methodologies and skills in place to help them maximize their success," said N Chandrasekaran, Executive Director and COO for TCS.

Supported by BEA AquaLogic BPM, BEA AquaLogic Data Services Platform and BEA AquaLogic Service Bus, the enterprise SOA framework is designed to help accelerate modeling, testing and deployment of new business processes and applications, while assisting with the transformation of existing legacy software assets to SOA.

TCS maintains its lead in SOA as its Industry assets continue to help customers develop scalable and robust business applications. According to the Forrester Research report, "The Forrester Wave: North America SOA Integration, Q3 2006" (September 2006), TCS was positioned as a strong performer. The report states that of all the Indian vendors, TCS has the clearest strategy and approach to SOA, and it is focused on training its consultants in SOA concepts and approaches.