One of the most powerful byproducts of a services-oriented architecture (SOA) is the impact on the customer experience. An SOA can simplify IT which leads to better delivery time and stronger business processes. When you can roll out products and services faster and quickly adapt applications to user needs, an SOA can be the difference between being marginally customer-centric and truly customer-centric.
The good news is that many companies have the technology in-house to make this happen, and others just need to invest in tools that offer Web-services APIs or let them make their data ready for XML. Financial services has been at the forefront of SOA, yet other industries are quickly catching on. Some are using portals that let customers and partners conduct transactions and access information, and others are looking at the service approach as a business philosophy. It's time to take a good look at what SOA can offer and what it can do for your organization.
