SOA is about much more than integration using Web services technologies – it has the potential to enable IT and the business to start to talk and collaborate using a common language. In our research, we’ve found that there are four steps involved in getting to this common language: using SOA to increase software flexibility; increase software reuse; increase the comprehensibility of IT to the business; and lastly, increase the visibility of the value of IT.
The first two steps are the most talked-about aspects of SOA, and they are closely related. The first is basically about using SOA simply as a way to carve existing applications up, and develop new systems in a modular fashion, so that changes are potentially localized and the impact minimized; the second is about organizing a portfolio of services so that as many of them as possible can be shared across multiple systems.
