Last year SOAs made the leap from being merely an interesting technology to becoming the cornerstone of leading-edge corporate IT strategies. For example, BAA chose the Sonic ESB (enterprise service bus) to underpin the implementation of a service oriented architecture at Heathrow's Terminal 5 to provide reliable and seamless integration of time-critical events and processes across operational systems.
So why are IT managers with responsibility for mission-critical applications such as supply chains, manufacturing, financial trading and airport operations driving their teams toward an SOA-based future? Because SOA offer the opportunity to achieve broad-scale interoperability and provide the flexibility required to continually adapt technology to business requirements.
One reason for this rapid transition is the availability of commercial, off-the-shelf SOA infrastructure software.
As IT managers develop their SOA plans they often come to the conclusion that infrastructure software is needed to fulfill their objectives for flexibility, robustness and control. The ESB has emerged as the pre-eminent form of SOA infrastructure software.
