Telecom providers are competing tooth and nail to provide consumer and business customers with the latest and greatest value-added services. This smorgasbord of offerings includes everything from ring-tone downloads to hosted messaging, accounting, and other business services. An SOA makes perfect sense in this have-it-your-way environment because it enables providers to cobble together new offerings with those of third parties and integrate them quickly with their internal, mainframe-based billing, provisioning, and other support systems.
That's exactly the approach British Telecom (BT) wanted to take in serving its SMB broadband customers.
The hosted scenario is especially appropriate for businesses with fewer than 100 employees because oftentimes these organizations lack sufficient support services or suffer from understaffed IT departments.
