As companies continue the pursuit of reaping the cost savings and productivity enhancements offered by integrating real-time voice traffic over the corporate Wide Area Network (WAN), unified communications (UC) has found an unlikely ally: service-oriented architecture (SOA).

 Traditionally, application development is a slow-moving process: businesses recognize the functionality they need within their infrastructures and request that IT departments develop an application that addresses the need. Before SOA, in the time it would take IT to develop, test, and train staff on the solution, the issue had often times evolved or changed to the point where the applications needed to be modified – or worse – scrapped altogether. The allure of SOA is that it enables administrators to re-use code and thereby not re-create the wheel every time a ticket comes in. The end result is a drastic reduction in the amount of time it takes to develop and deliver applications while enabling companies to link services in new and innovative ways.