Best Practices 2005: Service-oriented architecture

It started as just another buzzword, but by the end of 2005 service-oriented architectures had been firmly established as the new Holy Grail in enterprise application integration.

An architectural style whose goal is to achieve “loose coupling” among interacting software agents, a service-oriented architecture (SOAs) is difficult to define. That’s because the business drivers can be so vast – including a desire to harmonize legacy applications to creating workable Web services – but also because of the different ways IT managers can achieve it. In some cases, it requires a complete overhaul of the way software has been engineered throughout an organization. In others, it may be possible to “wrap” some services around existing software deployments.

Some of the industry’s largest vendors made considerable investments in SOA products and services last year, though customers learned to make sure that such products offered something new. In other words, they learned to make sure there was some substance behind the SOA.

Up close expertise

Interac architect sounds off on SOA
q&a George Galambos, IBM Fellow and a contributor to the ubiquitous banking framework, explains the key business drivers behind service-oriented architectures. Also: The future of Java and .Net

SOA in the news

IBM builds on service-oriented architecture strategy
Rational, Tivoli and WebSphere add-ons to allow code reuse

Ellison praises Siebel’s SOA efforts at customer event
As part of a strategy for the next generation of customer relationship management, Siebel Systems Inc. announced what it is calling an open standards-based service oriented architecture framework for CRM applications.

Editorials and commentary

Everything is illustrated
Trillium Health CIO Wayne Mills has something you’ve got to see

IT Business Blogs: Software invention in the business world
A programmer searches for a way to explain the mysteries of code

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