SOA What!?

Sun Microsystems defines Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) as: “An integrated software infrastructure and design approach that leverages Web computing standards for delivering business functions as shared services.” The goal of an SOA is to render your information systems secure, flexible, agile and cost effective. Simply put, this architecture’s purpose is to bridge the gap between information systems and business processes.

Most information systems are self contained based on specific business needs. This normally results in complex interfacing between systems. Over time, this type of structure becomes cumbersome and costly to maintain. By adding layers, a SOA can assist organizations in becoming more efficient and effective allowing them to react and deploy IT more quickly, thus reducing costs.

The result is reduced deployment cycles that eliminate the need to rip and replace each time new services need to be implemented. SOA structures IT applications so business processes can be separate from specific functions. The outcome is that various systems are free to integrate with one another. As it should be, business drives IT.

Service Oriented Architecture applications are not only limited to internal information systems. They also allow organizations to interface externally with partners and/or clients, even if they employ different technology platforms. This business value has not gone unnoticed, seeing that technology giants such as IBM, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and Hewlett-Packard provide the tools and entire platforms which facilitate the integration between thousands of available software applications.

For more information, please visit the following link: Sun Microsystems SOA