Hype alone would have IT executives believe that in coming years service-oriented architectures will be as standard within companies as morning coffee. But network professionals and industry analysts say it won't be that easy, because SOA is something you build, not buy.< . . .
Hype alone would have IT executives believe that in coming years service-oriented architectures will be as standard within companies as morning coffee. But network professionals and industry analysts say it won't be that easy, because SOA is something you build, not buy.

"There is no such thing as SOA; it is not a noun, it is a verb, 'service orienting'," says James Kobielus, an analyst with Burton Group.

And the verb implies that work needs to be done to service orient applications and networks. Work to define and execute an overall strategy, to train developers, to retrofit existing applications, to implement standards, to build new layers of middleware, to define new levels of management, to devise new security defenses, and to construct methods to track it all.

It's all needed because the SOA concept is one in which components, whether they are full applications or single-function code such as a mortgage calculator, can be shared, reused and loosely coupled into composite applications across a distributed network.

The link for this article located at nwfusion.com is no longer available.