Businesses everywhere are investing in service-oriented architecture (SOA) - or thinking about doing so. And while it may be a very smart move for some, it will probably mean doing things differently from what is familiar.

For one thing, both the business side and the developers have to alter the way they think about how an implementation is judged, because SOA may very well be invisible to most of its stakeholders.

“If done properly, an end user should never know whether SOA is being used or not,” said Bruce Johnson, a partner and consultant at Toronto-based ObjectSharp.com.