Until recently, most IT managers have focused on deploying service-oriented architectures on transaction systems and production apps, but now, some managers are exploring how to apply SOAs to the data warehouse and activities like business intelligence and business analytics.

Previously, organizations coded their applications and reports to connect with specific data for specific purposes, effectively hardwiring their data infrastructure. The SOA "eliminates hardwiring applications to the data," explains Wayne Eckerson, director of research at The Data Warehouse Institute.

Not only does the SOA decouple the request for data from specific databases, applications and servers but it "gets you out of the business of writing each new report from scratch," Eckerson says. Instead, the organization creates a reporting service that will pull the requested information from multiple data sources if necessary and massage the various pieces of data as needed to return the desired result. Using a services approach, the organization can generate what amounts to custom reports in days, if not hours, rather than the weeks, or even months, it usually takes to produce custom reports, according to Eckerson.