SOA's Business Value (three articles)

Neil Ward-Dutton (Research Director at Macehiter Ward-Dutton) has penned three useful articles about Service Oriented Architecture:

• SOA’s Business Value (Part I of III) - Understanding the “S” and the “A” of SOA ...
  In order to kick things off, I want to start from first principles. But I won’t bore you with talk of SOAP, WSDL, UDDI or any one of a hundred other acronyms. Instead I want to concentrate on a broader perspective of what the “S” and the “A” in SOA mean. In my mind, both “service” and “architecture” have meaning far beyond the context within which most discussion of SOA is taking place. ... SOA makes most sense as a way of thinking about IT which explicitly recognises that all IT organisations are service providers, with customers which have a variety of needs. And SOA should help IT organisations act in a systematic way which improves the overall quality of the service that they provide to those customers.
  
  
• SOA’s Business Value (Part II of III) - SOA is about much more than integration using Web services technologies – it has the potential to enable IT and the business to start to talk and collaborate using a common language. In our research, we’ve found that there are four steps involved in getting to this common language: using SOA to increase software flexibility; increase software reuse; increase the comprehensibility of IT to the business; and lastly, increase the visibility of the value of IT.
  
  
• SOA's Business Value (Part III of III) - SOA, done right, can show the way for IT organisations to clearly demonstrate the value they provide to their "customers" - the businesses they work within.