How To Build Your SOA Platform

Building an effective service-oriented architecture (SOA) platform requires cohesive integration of both new product categories, such as SOA repositories and enterprise service buses (ESBs), and existing product categories, to which vendors are making many SOA enhancements. A comprehensive SOA platform can require large investments, and few enterprises can afford to build one all at once in a big bang approach. Even for enterprises that can afford a big bang approach, the pace of change in SOA products makes it too risky. At the other extreme, ad hoc purchasing of whatever seems good for each project is a recipe for wasting money and reducing SOA's long-term benefits. The best approach is to place tactical SOA platform investments within a planning framework for evolving a strategic SOA platform. If, along the way, you are able to justify large investments to accelerate your platform build-out, so much the better.