Back before I began my career in computers, I studied physics. One of the concepts that fascinated me was that of nuclear fusion - bringing two particles together to form a new, heavier particle and at the same time producing energy.

In the business world, I find the concept of a merger between two companies very much akin to the concept of fusion. You have two companies, which are the particles in this analogy, and you bring them together, creating one new particle, the new company, as well as energy. We can debate the actual value of energy in this analogy, but from my perspective when you bring two companies together, you have a duplication of functions (most of the time), and those duplicates that are discarded as a result can be considered the energy.

Service-oriented architecture enters the picture as we begin to consider how to fuse two organizations together. In the world of physics, you often need to accelerate particles at each other at high speeds to overcome the innate positive charge of the particles, which causes a repulsive effect the closer the particles come to each other.