SOA From a Management Perspective: Part One
Joe Strub - January 5, 2007

We have been hearing about service-oriented architecture (SOA) for some time. Now, major software players are starting to lay out their plans and strategies. Some are even willing to assign delivery dates. As a company, you cannot ignore SOA, since we are constantly told that, from a software perspective, it is the best thing since sliced bread or, to use an updated analogy, the TV remote control. Regardless of your views, chief information officers (CIOs) need to outline their plans and be prepared to respond to executive management's question: "What are we doing?" This note sounds the alert, raises the flag, or fires the warning flare as to why converting to SOA does not appear to be an easy transition and cannot be accomplished with smoke and mirrors. Accordingly, we will look at the basics of SOA; the rollout plans of major software vendors; the benefits of SOA; concerns about SOA; and why the implementation of SOA won't be easy...