Or, for our Canadian friends, SO “A” What?
Seriously, we in the converging infotainment industry always are, like Indiana Jones — looking for the “Lost Ark” — striving for the next “silver bullet”, the “killer app”. So, how does SOA, or Service Oriented Architecture, fit into this long-running, many-act play and what are some likely outcomes and opportunities… especially for network service providers?
What is SOA anyway? As Wikipedia sees it, “Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that guides all aspects of creating and using business processes, packaged as services, throughout their lifecycle, as well as defining and provisioning the IT infrastructure that allows different applications to exchange data and participate in business processes loosely coupled from the operating systems and programming languages underlying those applications.” I’m not one to question Wikipedia, but let’s see if I can help explain this further…