No, it had nothing to do with this weekend's autumnal equinox. That seems to happen every year about this time. What I'm talking about is the subtle shift within the realm of SOA, in which vendors (both open and closed source) seem to have suddenly discovered that SOA is as much about b-to-b integration as it is about modernizing and integrating systems that live inside the firewall. Call it a paradigm shift, a tipping point, a shakabuku or whatever you like. The SOA solar system has changed.

Earlier this year, Microsoft had the surprising foresight to begin a beta program in which the company would offer its BizTalk Server as a hosted integration server under the brand name BizTalk Services -- yep, integration as a service (IaaS), not to be confused with the existing notion of infrastructure as a service.