Simply stated; A Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) allows an organisation to easily orchestrate or link distinct services together to fulfill new or changing business requirements. The key word above being "easily".

In a changing environment an organisation that can quickly and easily adapt will benefit, or at least that's the theory! SOA does lead to reuse, abstraction, encapsulation and all that other good stuff, but on a service level (macro) rather than the traditional micro level. This all adds up to an ability to realise possibilities rather than simply seeing or dreaming of them.

An analogy would be a vehicle and all the services it offers. The steering service, acceleration service, braking service (etc)... Individually they all provide a fine service for the organisation. Together, used wisely, these services become a vehicle and could be the next Paris-Dakar winner (or perhaps I've gone too far with the analogy). One problem with the above analogy is that tomorrow we might need to fly to the moon and if these services are "tightly coupled" there could be a slight doubt about our vehicle. SOA provides a loosely coupled solution which can be easily extended and orchestrated into the new vehicle we'll need for tomorrows flight.

Learn more about this author, Tony Kennah.
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