The foundation for SOA
SOA really involves a lot of blocking and tackling for IT shops full of heterogeneous systems that must be integrated and disparate data stores that have accumulated over the years. Rationalizing legacy systems and cleaning up data is too much like the old IT grid and it is tempting to put a SOA Band-Aid on top and hope for the best. The problem is the Band-Aid comes off and the festering mess shows through the best of top-down designs.
I have been fortunate to work on many successful SOA engagements that have spanned several years using SOA for integration and information management as a foundation for business process automation and innovation. I have worked with colleagues and experts in the data management field to build a solid information foundation for SOA and seen SOA grow at companies from the ground up – from legacy systems and data up to the presentation layer.