Paul Coby, chief information officer for British Airways (BA), says a service-oriented architecture (SOA) will help the airline develop its self-service approach and ensure the customer remains the priority.

As self-service technologies such as online check-in become the norm among airlines, Coby is keen to stay ahead of the game. He says SOA ­ a flexible architectural process that allows the reuse of resources ­ will enable BA to respond quickly to customer service issues.

“Anyone can buy the technology to have online check-in, but the clever thing is how you integrate it with the customer experience. SOA enables you to get things right by allowing you to make short-term changes where you need to be flexible and agile, such as making sure the seating policy is right,” says Coby.

“If you set up the systems correctly, unlike the old days where you had to go into some code, SOA allows you to get things done by rules. For example, seating policy or an upgrade can be based on a set of rules or criteria. There is a lot you can do quickly to manage systems by allowing analysts to change parameters.”

Coby says BA has already built a range of new systems with SOA in mind, but still has to undertake development work. “We can’t instantly do what we want to do with SOA, as the technologies are only just becoming mature,” he says.

BA is using an enterprise service bus (ESB) ­ a distributed middleware system for integrating enterprise IT assets using an SOA-based approach.

“The direction in which we are heading is the ability to manage things directly by putting the business in control of the system so it can fine-tune and change things,” says Coby.

“For example, with marketing engines in the BA.com web site, the business can define which group it wants to talk to in order to make offers.”

Service orientation is also crucial for the development of BA’s self-service staff portal. “With SOA, we should be able to move much more quickly in what we want to make available to staff,” says Coby.

“Instead of building a system that takes nine months, it can be done in nine seconds.”

However, Coby says that it is important to realise the limitations of SOA. He says service orientation cannot change the fundamental actions of systems, but if IT organisations understand the architecture, they should be able to create more flexible systems.

For example, Coby says SOA can help with convergence projects, as passengers embrace mobility and look to use phones to receive flight information and check in at the airport.

“We need to keep thinking about new technologies that give people what they want and mobility ranks highly with the new generation of passengers,” he says. “SOA can help us apply the right processes as we converge.”