Web services technology has now advanced so that functions within existing application programs and suites - as well as functions within ERP (enterprise resource planning, CRM (customer relationship management), SCM (supply chain management) and other packages - can be easily and reliably published to an intranet or the Internet for remote execution using SOAP, WSDL and UDDI. But what has been missing until now is an automated way to invoke available Web services based on business rules. This technology is now becoming available with business process management languages and tools.

Until now, the term "service-oriented architecture" (SOA) has been synonymous with "Web services." I use SOA more precisely: to invoke Web services using business process management tools and languages. This is an important distinction. SOA is expected to make a significant contribution to the future of systems development technologies as indicated in the following paragraphs.