SYS-CON Events announced today that IBM joined SOA World Conference & Expo 2007 East as "platinum sponsor." IBM is the world's leading technology provider of SOA and Web Services solutions. IBM's "SOA" website answers the question "Why Service Oriented Architecture and IBM?" as "Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a business-centric IT architectural approach that supports integrating your business as linked, repeatable business tasks, or services. SOA helps users build composite applications, which are applications that draw upon functionality from multiple sources within and beyond the enterprise to support horizontal business processes."

SOA World Conference & Expo 2007 East 
According to industry analyst firm Gartner Group, by 2008 more than 60 percent of enterprises will use SOA as the guiding principle when creating mission-critical applications and processes. "Businesses that ignore the potential of SOA will find themselves outpaced by rivals who improve their agility and transform themselves into new kinds of enterprises," says Gartner analyst Yafim Natis.