As evidenced by the runaway success of Xtreme Fighting or the ratings-hungry catfights on American Idol, we love rivalries -- the bloodier the better. It's not surprising, then, to hear so much talk lately of service-oriented architecture vs. software as a service, or SaaS. It's as though there were some sort of service smackdown going on within IT organizations with both sides hunkering down behind opposing server racks, exchanging verbal volleys regarding superiority of their respective definitions of service. But if you peer into your typical data center, you won't see anyone painted in blue screaming, "I am William WallSaaS!" Quite the opposite, in fact -- forward-thinking users are finding significant business opportunity by combining SaaS and SOA. In the world of acronyms, these users have literally done their own pseudo-math with the two broad concepts, reconciling their respective definitions of service like so:
SaaS + SOA = SaaSOA
