Lessons from an SOA pioneer (TMCnet)

(InfoWorld Electronic News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)Today, SOA (service-oriented architecture) is the undisputed champion of IT trends. But IT professionals have seen other megatrends come and go, some successful, some disastrous. Many companies remain skeptical about SOA, in part because most deployments are recent, leaving any assessment of long-term viability inconclusive.

Yet a handful of deployments that began before the SOA acronym was coined are beginning to suggest how effective the service-based approach to application architecture and business agility can be over the long haul. Among these, Con-Way Transportation Services stands out as an ambitious, successful reinvention of one enterprise's application infrastructure.