Five bridge components help create a vivid mental picture of the five components an organization needs to expose the unique value embedded in their core enterprise systems and extend that value into a modern service-oriented architecture (SOA). What is an SOA, and why is it desirable?
Although SOA is a complicated subject, the basic premise is fairly simple. The idea is to avoid building new applications from scratch each time, and also to avoid duplicating applications, data and business rules in one part of the organization that already exist in another part of the organization. Instead, applications are built quickly out of existing blocks (like a modular home) and draw information from different places throughout the organization without actually changing where the information lives.