SOA article written for Enterprise Systems Journal

SOA: You’ll Need More than Technology

To transform a company’s architecture to an SOA model, a systematic long-term roadmap is critical.

4/3/2007

by Anthony Gold

Every few years the IT industry embraces the "next big thing." Occasionally, it is a technology in search of a solution or a technology ahead of its time. However, many times it is a technology that solves a real problem just as the requirement emerges. A recent "next big thing"—open source (e.g., Linux)—addressed the IT needs of lower cost, increased flexibility, and freedom of choice. It took years and the commitment of both large IT providers and customers of all sizes to take open source from an interesting idea to today’s mainstream successful development and product model.

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is the current "next big thing." After years of discussion and definition, SOA is being actively deployed just as businesses are focused on more effectively integrating business processes and IT services for greater flexibility and managed cost. Built on supporting technologies such as object orientation and open standards, SOA helps make IT more responsive by addressing the very real business issues of code and functional reuse, the cost of development and maintenance, and improving business agility and responsiveness.

Read the rest of my article here at ESJ.