New uses of existing technologies are providing companies a degree of flexibility never before seen. Today more than ever, CIOs possess the tools to keep their organizations nimble. By utilizing Software as a Service and Service Oriented Architectures, CIOs can easily react, even lead, this new phase of business transformation.

To start, let’s clarify the definitions of these popular terms:

• Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) are not products; they are an architectural style based on long-standing technologies and standards. SOA provides a flexible, loosely-coupled way of implementing a system, focusing only on what a service does and ignoring the how or where.
• Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software delivery model, wherein a common code base is maintained in a multitenant instance. Customer configurations and connections sit in a layer above the core code and the complete operation – development, deployment/hosting, maintenance and upgrades – is provided by the software developer as a service and often priced as a subscription. SaaS is also referred to as “on demand,” because capacity and seats can be added or subtracted, as the user requires, without additional procurement or deployment efforts.