Service-Oriented Architecture: What It Is and What It Isn't

Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.

  Strategy  

Open any IT newsletter or magazine and you are sure to find something on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). Go to any IT conference and if you are not in the know about SOAs, you will be an outcast for sure. 

The IT industry loves a new BUZZ: new approaches and technologies that vendors can rally behind, create new jargon and expectations with and market to death; SOAs fill that bill to a “T”.

While SOAs are a really good thing, they are mostly about exchanging data between applications in a way that is traceable, manageable and reliable. SOAs are basically a layer of software that sits between an application and the communications network, be it the Internet, VPN, WAN, etc. What makes them different, beyond the technology, is the philosophy behind them, which promotes a full understanding of the organization’s stakeholder expectations, goals, objectives, work processes, etc., before deploying; in essence all the things that every IT group should do before deploying any ubiquitous infrastructure or high-impact business applications. However, like all technologies, the value to be gained is up to the buyer to build in. In and of themselves SOAs deliver nothing more than a means to move data.

According to www.service–architecture.com:

“A service-oriented architecture is essentially a collection of services. These services communicate with each other. The communication can …

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