SOA is a way of delivering IT functionality as a set of services, based on existing IT investments, that can be recombined and redeployed in many different ways in order to address new requirements at minimum cost and with minimum delay.

It may have seemed that SOA was another of those buzzwords that came along and was never going to live up to its hype. Now, however, all of the major pieces of the jigsaw are available and large productivity gains are being reported by early adopters.

The conference will feature speakers including Rob Hailstone, IDC’s director of European Service-Oriented Architecture and Application Platforms research, case studies from Standard Life and BT, and presentations from expert organizations in the field, including IBM, Sonic Software, ObjectStore, BEA, Information Builders, Compuware, SeeBeyond, Select Business Solutions, and Attachmate. Also exhibiting alongside these companies will be Systinet, AmberPoint, WebMethods, and MetaMatrix.

Attendance is FREE for the first 100 attendees from end-user organizations, subject to validation from IDC.