SOA is said to enable business organizations to be more competitive at the same time as providing the IT departments with the means to respond to organizational demands of new ways of working. But what is SOA? How can I use it in my company? Can my older systems be SOA enabled? First some basic SOA definitions:
Free standing, independent components
Combined by loose coupling
Message (XML) based instead of API based
Physical location etc. not important
With SOA, your organization may reuse of existing assets (your existing application systems) to a greater extent and may respond faster to change requests. These benefits are attributed to several critical elements of SOA:
The services reflect logical business activities.
New services can be added or created to existing services without affecting the existing service implementations.
The services communicate by standard protocols providing broader interoperability.
SOA encompasses legacy systems (i.e. existing, often older application systems) and processes so that the effectiveness of existing investments is preserved and may even be increased.
Services have an interface and are message-oriented.
The introduction of SOA provides a platform for the technology and business departments in a company to meet common goals of the modern enterprise.