A Brief Overview of Service Oriented Architectures (SOA)
Service oriented architecture (SOA) aims to deliver flexible and reusable software services in support of core business functions. To accomplish this, a suite of single purpose application modules (SOA services) is created that take advantage of existing IT resources (e.g. applications and infrastructure) to automate business processes.
Services are modular applications and are built to embody specific functions that arise in multiple business processes: for example, getting customer information (Figure 1). They are delivered through an application neutral platform – usually Web based – and can be reused and combined in different ways to create more complex business applications that support business processes.