Here's a dirty little software secret: Enterprise applications developed during the Internet bubble of just a few years ago often continued to suffer with the "one size fits all" mistakes borne by the previous generation. The client/server computing of the '90s often was criticized as expensive and hard to implement because it forced companies to change their business processes to fit the software. But when these applications became Web-enabled, essentially nothing changed. Inflexible and lacking customization, these Web 1.0 applications were conveniently marketed as compliant with business process "best practices." Yet customers were still forced to adapt their businesses to the software.Enter service-oriented computing, the next-generation computing wave that until now has been mostly about system infrastructures and stand-alone applications sharing services with each other. Today, service-oriented computing has hit the application development world with a vengeance. Custom software development teams inside corporations and vendors alike are discovering tools and technologies that enable next-generation service-oriented business applications (SOBAs) that are completely adaptable to unique customer business models, processes and individually defined "best practices."
