SOA: The Next Technology Inflection Point By Paul Lord, Westbrook Technologies

Driven by the universal adoption of Web services and convergence of key standards, service-oriented architectures (SOA) have emerged as the key enabling technology for interoperability among disparate pieces of software regardless of the network architecture, platform, or programming language. SOA is not a software product, but is a framework for designing and building applications and services that allow for data to be exchanged where and when it is needed. Service-oriented architectures are the next technological inflection point that will drive organizations to build applications that are designed from the outset to collaborate with other applications both within and beyond their enterprise boundaries.

Electronic document and content management systems have come a long way from their original beginnings. The first systems were centered on scanning and storing paper documents as digital images. While "effective" for that time and the technology available, many users were simply not satisfied with these simple systems and wanted to do more - such as pass the document around a network, manage electronic documents like a Microsoft Word file, and exchange data from the scanned images with a legacy application.

It seems that users of electronic document management (EDM) technology have always wanted more out of the technology and have been pushing vendors to constantly improve and innovate. And, after roughly 20 years of improvement and innovation, electronic document management is no longer a simple document storage solution used to keep digital documents after the work has been completed. Today's systems have become an integrated component of the daily work whether that is accounts payable, claims processing, or managing records for compliance purposes.

The fundamental problem with software and hardware applications is that they are still built as stand alone systems that do one thing well but do not easily interoperate with other systems. Phrases such as "islands of automation" and "data silos" while more than 20 years old, are still valid concepts and still describe the state of the software industry today.

The convergence of key technologies such as XML, SOAP Messages, WSDL and HTTP signify that software applications can interoperate with each other and information can be shared openly and freely provided that the application is designed from the outset to exploit these technologies.

With the advent of service-oriented architectures the software industry is beginning to develop and write applications that freely communicate with other applications, reduce the complexity of new software applications, and allow existing systems to share data. SOA and related technologies are driving software vendors to build applications that are inherently open and capable of interoperating with other applications as opposed to the traditionally closed and monolithic systems that exist throughout industry today.