Buying into the soa ideal - software infrastructure

IN THEWHIZZYworld of enterprise IT, customers have to takewhatever patent remedies their vendors give them, and the favouritemedicine of the moment is labelled `SOA??. Hailed by some as the biggest revolution in IT since client/ server platforms replaced centralised hosts in the 1990s, SOA brings one important difference. Client/server replaced one thing thatwas workingwith another thatwas unproven, and turned out to be very expensive in terms of cost of ownership (oftenmore than offsetting up-front savings in hardware). SOA,meanwhile, is more of an evolution, and can be implemented on a piecemeal basis. It is supposed to enhance rather than replace existing systems and components.