March 2010: O2, the UK mobile phone company, has turned to Oracle-based service oriented architecture (SOA) to regain control of applications development and costs.
O2 spent 2008 setting up the infrastructure based on Oracle, and governance platforms, which runs on IBM Power servers. It identified which services it needed first, and hired software house Torry Harris Business Systems (THBS) as its services-writing "factory".
David Howden, O2's SOA business architect, said that business unit owners are responsible, along with IT, for providing THBS with the functional specification for a service. THBS, working in "agile development" with six-week and eight-week "sprints", is responsible for delivering the services.
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