Making information available in a utility-like fashion is the utopia of the enterprise software system. In your office or home, we take for granted that we can plug our electronic devices into the electrical power system and it will just work. All of these devices agreed on a standard for making the grid and the devices work together. In essence, this is the same goal we are trying to accomplish in the enterprise, but on a much grander scale.

In our analogy, the power grid is the system of processes in an organization. It is literally hundreds of processes and their sub-processes that have been defined. Each of these processes has well defined interface points, where humans or other processes join the conversation and interact. Picture a 3D model of all of the processes in an enterprise linked together. Natural flow of information takes place within a process, between processes and between organizations. Web Service Orchestration enables the creation of a system flow that mimics the needs of a business.