I have seen IT-proclaimed silver bullets come and go, and so am skeptical about claims of newfound breakthroughs. But service-oriented architecture (SOA) seems to be something that can deliver on its promise. I have hopes for SOA because it just might deliver to IT what mass customization has delivered to manufacturing. With mass customization, we hold an inventory of a small number of standard, nearly finished products that we assemble as close to the customer as possible and as late as possible. From this inventory of standard parts, we can build a nearly infinite combination of products to meet changing customer demands. As an analogy, think of how a small set of Lego blocks can be used to create an amazing variety of "products." Imagine what we smart IT types can do with a well-designed, well-thought-out set of services that we assemble as needed, when needed.
